This Is Your Brain On Music

Mother Nature's Son - The Beatles

By way of comparing the overall audio quality or soundscape of songs, the book describes "The pastoral, open-space beauty" of this song [in contrast to the "swampy, deep-south ambience" of "Green River."]

We Are All Made of Stars - Moby

Appears in the first paragraph of Chapter 1, "To some people, 'music' is Busta Rhymes, Dr. Dre, and Moby."

People Are People - Depeche Mode

Mentioned in the context of trying to define music: "What do the music of Bach, Depeche Mode, and John Cage fundamentally have in common?"

Blue in Green - Davis, Miles

Reference made to his solos, and to the "air" - the empty space between notes: "Miles Davis famously described his improvisational technique as parallel to the way that Picasso described his use of a canvas: the most critical aspect of the work, both artists said, was not the objects themselves, but the space between objects. In Miles' case, he described the most important part of his solos as the empty space between notes, the 'air' that he placed between one note and the next. Knowing precisely when to hit the next note, and allowing the listener time to anticipate it, is a hallmark of Davis' genius. This is particularly apparent in his album 'Kind of Blue.'"

Happy Birthday - Marilyn Monroe

"Here is 'Happy Birthday' starting on C."

Happy Birthday - Elvis Presley

"Here is 'Happy Birthday' starting on F."

Peter and the Wolf (clip 2) - Prokofiev, Sergei; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Bernard Haitink cond. Alec McCowen narraror.

"Different instruments use different parts of the range of available pitches. Prokofiev used the flue to represent the bird, and the French Horn to represent the wolf in 'Peter and the Wolf.' The characters' individuality in 'Peter and the Wolf' is expressed in the timbres of different instruments and, each has a leitmotiv – an associated melodic phrase or figure that accompanies the reappearance of an idea, person, or situation."

Do-re-mi - Rogers & Hammerstein; Original cast recording featuring Julie Andrews

"The note names in Western music run from A to G, or in an alternative system, as Do - re - mi - fa - sol - la - ti - do (the alternate system is used as lyircs to the Rogers & Hammerstein song 'Do-re-mi' from The Sound of Music: 'Do, a deer, a female deer, re, a drop of golden sun…')."

Hot Fun In the Summertime - Sly & The Family Stone

"In 'Hot Fun In The Summertime' by Sly & The Family Stone, Sly and his backup singers are singing in octaves during the first line of the verse 'End of the spring and here she comes back.'"

Nutcracker - Tchaikovsky, Pytor Ilyich

"When Tchaikovsky wants us to think of Arab or Chinese culture in the Nutcracker Ballet, he chooses scales that are typical to their music, and within just a7 few notes we are transported to the Orient."

Great Gate of Kiev - Moussorgsky, Modest Petrovich; Radio Symphony Orchestra Moscow, Alexander Mikjailov cond.

"Throughout our lives, we form associations through whatever visual, auditory and other sensory cues accompany musical patterns we may hear. The associations are so powerful—and the scales distinguishable enough— that only a few notes are needed: The first three notes of David Bowie’s 'China Girl' or Mussorgsky’s 'Great Gate of Kiev' (from Pictures at an Exhibition) instantly convey a rich and foreign (to us) musical context."

Do It Again - Steely Dan

"All of us, even without musical training, can tell the difference between major and minor chords even if we don’t have the terminology to name them; we hear the major chord as sounding happy and the minor chord as sounding sad, or reflective, or even exotic. This example from Steely Dan’s 'Do It Again' (from the album Can't Buy A Thrill) uses only minor chords. (In early versions of the book, I mentioned Pink Floyd's 'Sheep' as an example of a song with only minor chords, but I was wrong, it contains some major chords. Subsequent printings have corrected this, please see the Errata section of the website."

Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry

"We typically hear major chord as sounding happy and minor chord as sounding sad, or reflective, or even exotic. The most basic rock and country music songs use only major chords: 'Johnny B. Goode,' 'Blowin’ in the Wind,' 'Honky Tonk Women,' and 'Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,' for example."

Sheep - Pink Floyd

"All of us, even without musical training, can tell the difference between major and minor chords even if we don’t have the terminology to name them; we hear the major chord as sounding happy and the minor chord as sounding sad, or reflective, or even exotic. This example from Pink Floyd’s 'Sheep' (from the album Animals) uses only minor chords. "

Lucky Man - Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Appears in the discussion on the invention of synthesizers. Mention is made to Emerson, Lake & Palmer: they "sculpted their sound around the synthesizer."

Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles

"Starting in the late 1950s, scientists began experimenting with building the synthesis capabilities of the organ into smaller, more compact electronic devices, creating a family of new musical instruments known collectively as synthesizers. By the 1960s, synthesizers could be heard on records by the Beatles (on 'Here Comes the Sun' and 'Maxwell’s Silver Hammer') and Walter/Wendy Carlos (Switched-On Bach), followed by groups who sculpted their sound around the synthesizer, such as Pink Floyd and Emerson, Lake and Palmer."

Switched on Bach - Walter/Wendy Carlos

"Starting in the late 1950s, scientists began experimenting with building the synthesis capabilities of the organ into smaller, more compact electronic devices, creating a family of new musical instruments known collectively as synthesizers. By the 1960s, synthesizers could be heard on records by the Beatles (on 'Here Comes the Sun' and 'Maxwell’s Silver Hammer') and Walter/Wendy Carlos (who recorded an entire album of Bach with synthesizers playing all the parts 'Switched-On Bach'), followed by groups who sculpted their sound around the synthesizer, such as Pink Floyd and Emerson, Lake and Palmer."

All Along the Watchtower - Hendrix, Jimi

"This is the third song on the list. Here, we hear Jimi soloing using his wah-wah pedal. Psychedelia and the 60s had to be represented. I wanted to play something by Led Zeppelin because they begat all of heavy metal. I wanted to play something by Hendrix because he was arguably the greatest electric guitar icon. I wanted to play another Beatles song to show off their versatility. For several days, it was a toss-up between The Beatles trying to imitate Hendrix ('Helter Skelter') and Hendrix covering a Beatles tune (a rare live recording of 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band.') Although I love both those songs, in the end I felt hard pressed to justify that either one was one of the six greatest (or six most representative) songs in all of rock; I had arrived at them through a purely intellectual process and, as is often the case, had lost sight of the real purpose of the exercise. I also wanted to play 'Stairway to Heaven' just because it showed the two sides of heavy metal – the pastoral, acoustic ballad side in its intro – and the shredding vocals and blistering electric guitar solo of its outro. I also felt that I needed something that showed off electric guitars and distortion. In the end, I opted for 'All Along the Watchtower' by Hendrix because it is an iconic rock tune, and it allowed me to sneak in Dylan (who wrote the song). I don't think that any Led Zeppelin or Beatles fan would begrudge the choice and it gave John Pierce a chance to hear Hendrix. It was exciting for me to watch his reactions to hearing Hendrix for the first time. I only wish that I could take some drug or treatment that would temporarily render my mind and ears with a sort of musical amnesia, so that I could once again experience one of the most profoundly exciting events of my life: hearing Jimi Hendrix for the first time."

Anarchy in the U.K. - The Sex Pistols

"This is the sixth song on the list. Punk had been around in the 60s with groups like The Standells, The Syndicate of Sound, and The Blues Magoos, it was around in the 1980s with The Buzzcocks, The Dead Kennedys and it is still around today with Social Distortion, Bad Religion, and others. But the Sex Pistols (along with The Ramones) are considered to be the archetypal punk band and represent a particular sound and energy that is in a world by itself. This song represents the democratization of music that punk stood for, the idea that music-making shouldn't require years and years of technical practice in order to effectively communication genuine emotion."

Michelle (clip 2) - The Beatles

"For the past two hundred years or so, timbre has become increasingly important. A standard component of music across all genres is to restate a melody using different instruments – from Beethoven's 'Fifth' and Ravel's 'Bolero' to The Beatles' 'Michelle' and George Strait's 'All My Ex's Live in Texas'."

Michelle (clip 4) - The Beatles

"For the past two hundred years or so, timbre has become increasingly important. A standard component of music across all genres is to restate a melody using different instruments – from Beethoven's 'Fifth' and Ravel's 'Bolero' to The Beatles' 'Michelle' and George Strait's 'All My Ex's Live in Texas'."

All My Ex's Live in Texas - Strait, George

"For the past two hundred years or so, timbre has become increasingly important. A standard component of music across all genres is to restate a melody using different instruments—from Beethoven’s Fifth and Ravel’s 'Bolero' to the Beatles’ 'Michelle' and George Strait’s 'All My Ex’s Live in Texas.' New musical instruments have been invented so that composers might have a larger palette of timbral colors from which to draw. When a country or popular singer stops singing and another instrument takes up the melody—even without changing it in any way—we find pleasurable the repetition of the same melody with a different timbre, as when the pedal steel guitar takes over the melody from George Strait in this song."

Bolero (Clip 2) - Ravel, Maurice

"Ravel used timbre as a compositional device in Boléro, repeating the main theme over and over again with different timbres; he did this after he suffered brain damage which impaired his ability to hear pitch. Composers such as Scriabin and Ravel talk about their works as sound paintings, in which the notes and melodies are the equivalent of shape and form, and the timbre is equivalent to the use of color and shading."

Bolero (Clip 4) - Ravel, Maurice

"Ravel used timbre as a compositional device in Boléro, repeating the main theme over and over again with different timbres; he did this after he suffered brain damage which impaired his ability to hear pitch. Composers such as Scriabin and Ravel talk about their works as sound paintings, in which the notes and melodies are the equivalent of shape and form, and the timbre is equivalent to the use of color and shading."

Nutcracker Suite - The Chinese Dance - Tchaikovsky, Pytor Ilyich

"Timbre is more than just the sound that the different instruments make. Composers use timbre as a compositional tool, such as the almost-comical bassoon that opens up the Chinese Dance from the Nutcracker Suite."

Here's That Rainy Day - Getz, Stan

"Composers use timbre as a compositional tool; they choose musical instruments – and combinations of musical instruments – to express particular emotions, and to convey a sense of atmosphere or mood, as in the sensuousness of Stan Getz's saxophone on 'Here's That Rainy Day."

Feuillet d'album, pianist Vladimir Horowitz - Scriabin, Alexander

"Composers such as Scriabin and Ravel talk about their works as sound paintings, in which the notes and melodies are the equivalent of shape and form, and the timbre is equivalent to the use of color and shading."

Every Breath You Take - The Police

"The rhythmic ratio of 2:1, like the octave in pitch ratios, appears to be a musical universal. We see it in The Police's 'Every Breath' You Take (da-da-bump da-da baaaaah), in which there are again three levels:
Ev-ry breath you-oo taaake
1 1 2 2 4
(The 1 represents 1 unit of some arbitrary time just to illustrate that the words 'breath' and 'you' are twice as long as the syllables 'Ev' and 'ry', and that the word 'take' is four times as long as 'Ev' or 'ry' and twice as long as 'breath' or 'you.')"

William Tell Overture - Rossini, Gioacchino

"In the William Tell Overture by Rossini (what many of us know as The Theme from the Lone Ranger) we hear a series of notes of two different lengths, long and short; the long notes are twice as long as the short ones: da-da-bump da-da-bump da-da-bump bump bump (here I've used the 'da' syllable for short, and the 'bump' syllable for long)."

Straight Up - Abdul, Paula

"Paula Abdul's 'Straight Up' and AC/DC's 'Back In Black' have a tempo of 96, meaning that there are 96 beats per minute. If you dance to 'Straight Up' or 'Back in Black' it is likely that you will be putting a foot 96 times per minute. On 'Straight Up' there is so much going on it is difficult to describe it in words. The drums play a complex, irregular pattern with beats as fast as sixteenth notes, but not continuously – the 'air' between drum hits imparts a sound typical of funk and hip-hop music. The bass plays a similarly complex and syncopated melodic line that sometimes coincides with and sometimes fills in the holes of the drum part. In the right speaker (or the right ear of headphones) we hear the only instrument that actually plays on the beat every beat – a Latin instrument called an afuche or cabasa that sounds like sandpaper or a beans shaking inside a gourd. Putting the most important rhythm on a light, high-pitched instrument is an innovative rhythmic technique that turns upside-down the normal rhythmic conventions. While all this is going on, synthesizers, guitar, and special percussion effects fly in and out of the song dramatically, emphasizing certain beats now and again to add excitement on repeated listenings. Because it is hard to predict or memorize where many of these are, the song holds a certain appeal over many, many listenings."

Walk This Way - Aerosmith

"Tempo refers to the pace of a musical piece—how quickly or slowly it goes by. If you tap your foot or snap your fingers in time to a piece of music, the tempo of the piece will be directly related to how fast or slow you are tapping. Aerosmith’s 'Walk This Way' has a tempo of 112."

Hotel California - The Eagles

"Tempo refers to the pace of a musical piece—how quickly or slowly it goes by. If you tap your foot or snap your fingers in time to a piece of music, the tempo of the piece will be directly related to how fast or slow you are tapping. The Eagles' 'Hotel California' has a tempo of 75."

Jailhouse Rock - Presley, Elvis

"In music with lyrics, the words don't always line up perfectly with the downbeats; in 'Jailhouse Rock' part of the word 'began' starts before a strong beat and finishes on that strong beat. It works especially well on 'Jailhouse Rock' because in speech the accent is on the second syllable of 'began;' spreading the word across lines like this gives the song additional momentum."

Frére Jacques ('Are You Sleeping') - Barney the Dinosaur

"In music with lyrics, the words don't always line up perfectly with the downbeats; in 'Jailhouse Rock' part of the word 'began' starts before a strong beat and finishes on that strong beat. Most nursery rhymes and simple folk songs, such as 'Ba-ba black sheep' or 'Frére Jacques' don't do this."

Rock and Roll Music - Berry, Chuck

"When people clap their hands or snap their fingers with music, they sometimes quite naturally, and without training, do something different rhythmically than they would do with their feet: they clap or snap not on the downbeat, but the second beat and the fourth beat. This is the so-called back-beat that Chuck Berry sings about in his song 'Rock and Roll Music.'"

Instant Karma - Lennon, John

"John Lennon said that the essence of rock and roll songwriting for him was to 'Just say what it is, simple English, make it rhyme and put a backbeat on it.' In 'Rock and Roll Music' (which John sang with The Beatles), as on most rock songs, the back beat is what the snare drum is playing: the snare drum plays only on the second and fourth beat of each measure, in opposition to the strong beat which is on one, and a secondary strong beat on three. This backbeat is the typical rhythmic element of rock music, and Lennon used it a lot as in 'Instant Karma' (*whack* below indicates where the snare drum is played in the song, on the backbeat):

'Instant karma's gonna get you'
(rest) *whack* (rest) *whack*
'Gonna knock you right on your head'
(rest) *whack* (rest) *whack*
. . .
And we all *whack* shine *whack*
on *whack* (rest) *whack*
Like the moon *whack* and the stars *whack*
and the sun *whack* (rest) *whack*"

My Favourite Things - Rogers & Hammerstein; Original cast recording featuring Julie Andrews

"My Favorite Things' is a song in waltz time, or what is called 3/4 time. The beats seem to arrange themselves in groups of three, with a strong beat followed by two weak ones. 'RAIN-drops-on ROSE-es and WHISK-ers-on KIT-tens-(rest) .' ONE-two-three ONE-two-three ONE-two-three ONE-two-three."

Take Five - Brubeck, Dave

"5/4 time is used once in awhile, the most famous examples being Lalo Shiffrin's theme from 'Mission Impossible,' and the Paul Desmond song 'Take Five' (recorded here by the Dave Brubeck Quartet with Desmond on alto sax). As you count the pulse and tap your foot to these songs, you'll see that the basic rhythms group into fives: ONE-two-three-four-five, ONE-two-three-four-five. There is a secondary strong beat in Brubeck's composition on the four: ONE-two-three-FOUR-five. In cases such as this, many musicians think of 5/4 beats as consisting of alternating 3/4 and 2/4 beats.'"

Salisbury Hill - Gabriel, Peter

As part of the discussion of beats and of integer ratios of tone durations, "Pink Floyd used 7/4 for their song 'Money' as did Peter Gabriel for 'Salisbury Hill'; if you try to tap your foot or count along, you'll need to count 7 between each strong beat."

Sixth Symphony - Tchaikovsky, Pytor Ilyich; Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Charles Dutoit cond.

"The three most common meters in Western music are: 4/4, 2/4, and 3/4. Other rhythmic groupings exist, such as 5/4, 7/4, and 9/4. Tchaikovsky uses 5/4 time for the second movement of his Sixth Symphony. As you count the pulse and tap your foot to it, you’ll see that the basic rhythms group into fives: ONE-two-three-four-five, ONE-two-three-four-five. "

One Note Samba - Sergio Mendez

"Despite its name, the song 'One Note Samba' by Antonio Carlos Jobim actually contains many notes. However, as you'll hear in this example, one note is featured throughout the song with changing chords accompanying it, and we hear a variety of different shades of musical meaning as this happens."

Hotel California (Clip 2) - The Eagles

"One thing that most of us are expert in, even if we are non-musicians, is recognizing familiar chord progressions, even in the absence of the well-known melody. Whenever The Eagles play this chord sequence in concert:
B minor / F# major / A major/ E major / G major / D major / E minor / F# major
they don't have to play more than three chords before thousands of non-musician fans in the audience know that The Eagles are going to play 'Hotel California.' And even as they have changed the instrumentation over the years, from electric to acoustic guitars, from 12-string to 6 string guitars, people recognize those chords; we even recognize them when they're played by an orchestra coming out of cheap speakers in a Muzak version in the dentist's office. Here are two musical excerpts, the first from their well-known studio recording, and the second from a live concert."

Teenage Lobotomy - The Ramones

"The surgical separation of a portion of the frontal lobe, the prefrontal cortex, from the thalamus, is called a lobotomy. So when The Ramones sang 'Now I guess I'll have to tell 'em/That I got no cerebellum' in their song 'Teenage Lobotomy' they were not being anatomically accurate, but, well, it's a great rhyme and why not give them some artistic license?"

Fantasy - Impromptu in c# minor opus 66 - Chopin, Frédéric

"Whenever we hear the lowest notes on the piano or double bass, we are not actually hearing 27.5 or 35 Hz, because those instruments are typically incapable of producing much energy at these ultralow frequencies: Our ears are filling in the information and giving us the illusion that the tone is that low. We experience illusions in other ways in music. In piano works such as Sindig’s 'The Rustle of Spring' or Chopin’s Fantasy-Impromptu in C-sharp Minor, op. 66, the notes go by so quickly that an illusory melody emerges. Play the tune slowly and it disappears. Due to stream segregation, the melody 'pops out' when the notes are close enough together in time—the perceptual system holds the notes together—but the melody is lost when its notes are too far apart in time."

Lullaby of Birdland, G&G (clip 1) - Shearing, George

"George Shearing created a new timbral effect by having guitar (or in some cases, vibraphone) double what he was playing on the piano so precisely that it sounded like a completely new instrument – listeners come away wondering, 'What is that new instrument?' when in reality it is two separate instruments whose sounds have perceptually fused."

- Gilmour, David

"The guitar sound of Pat Metheny or David Gilmour of Pink Floyd use multiple delays of the signal to give an otherwordly, haunting effect that triggers parts of our brains in ways that humans had never experienced before, by simulating the sound of an enclosed cave with multiple echoes such as would never actually occur in the real world – an auditory equivalent of the barbershop mirrors that repeated almost infinitely."

Chain Lightning - Steely Dan

"The setting up and then manipulating of expectations is the heart of music, and it is accomplished in countless ways. Steely Dan do it by playing songs that are essentially the blues (with blues structure and chord progressions) but by adding unusual harmonies to the chords that make them sound very unblues—for example on their song 'Chain Lightning.'"

I Want You (She's So Heavy) - The Beatles

"The setting up and then manipulating of expectations is the heart of music, and it is accomplished in countless ways. In 'I Want You (She's So Heavy)' the Beatles violate expectations by first setting up a hypnotic, repetitive ending that sounds like it will go on for ever; based on our experience with rock music and rock music endings, we expect that the song will slowly die down in volume, the classic fade out. Instead, they end the song abruptly, and not even at the end of a phrase - the end right in the middle of a note! (Yes, this is actually how the song ends!)"

Mr Syms - Coltrane, John

"The setting up and then manipulating of expectations is the heart of music. [...] Miles Davis and John Coltrane made careers out of reharmonizing blues progressions to give them new sounds that were anchored partly in the familiar and partly in the exotic.'"

Looking Out My Back Door - Creedence Clearwater Revival

"Rhythm expectations are violated often as well as pitch expectations. A standard trick in electric blues is for the band to build up momentum and then stop playing altogether while the singer or lead guitarist continues on. The classic ending to an electric blues song is another example. The song charges along with a steady beat for two or three minutes and—wham! Just as the chords suggest an ending is imminent, rather than charging through at full speed, the band suddenly starts playing at half the tempo they were before. In a double whammy, Creedence Clearwater Revival pulls out this slowed-down ending in 'Lookin’ Out My Back Door'—by then such an ending was already a well-known cliché—and they violate the expectations of that by coming in again for the real ending of the song at full tempo."

Pride and Joy - Vaughan, Stevie Ray & Double Trouble

"Rhythm expectations are violated often as well. A standard trick in electric blues is for the band to build up momentum and then stop playing altogether while the singer or lead guitarist continues on, as in Stevie Ray Vaughan's 'Pride and Joy,' Elvis Presley's 'Hound Dog' or The Allman Brother's 'One Way Out.'"

You Really Got Me - The Kinks

"Using timbre to violate genre expectations. 'When Van Halen were the newest, hippest group around they surprised fans by launching into a heavy metal version ((first portion of this excerpt) of an old not-quite-hip song by The Kinks, 'You Really Got Me' (the Kink's version is the second portion of this excerpt). "

Pierrot Lunaire -The Sick Moon - Schönberg, Arnold

"Modern composers such as Schönberg threw out the whole idea of expectation. The scales they used deprive us of the notion of a resolution, a root to the scale or a musical 'home,' thus creating the illusion of no home, a music adrift, perhaps as a metaphor for a 20th century existentialist existence (or just because they were trying to be contrary). We still hear these scales used in movies to accompany dream sequences to convey a lack of grounding, in underwater or outer space scenes to convey weighlessness."

Seek and Destroy - Metallica

"We develop schemas for particular musical genres and styles; style is just another word for repetition. Our schema for a Lawrence Welk concert includes accordions, but not distorted electric guitars, and our schema for a Metallica concert is the opposite (try to picture accordions in this)."

Ninth Symphony (Ode to Joy) - Beethoven, Ludwig van

"Consider what Beethoven does to expectations with the melody to the main theme from the last movement of his Ninth symphony ('Ode to Joy'). These are the notes of the melody, as solfege, the do-re-mi system:
mi - mi - fa - sol - sol - fa - me - re - do - do -re - mi -mi re re
The main melodic theme is simply the notes of the scale! The most well-known, overheard and overused sequence of notes we have in western music. But Beethoven makes it interesting by violating our expectations. He starts on a strange note and ends on a strange note. He starts on the third degree of the scale (as he did on the Pathétique sonata), rather than the root, and then goes up in stepwise fashion, then turns around and comes down again. When he gets to the root – the most stable tone – rather than staying there he comes up again, up to the note we started on, then back down so that we think and we expect he will hit the root again, but he doesn't; he stays right there on re, the second scale degree.
The piece needs to resolve to the root, but Beethoven keeps us hanging there, where we least expect to be. He then runs the entire motif again, and only on the second time through does he meet our expectations. But now, that expectation is even more interesting because of the ambiguity: we wonder if, like Lucy waiting for Charlie Brown, he will pull the football of resolution away from us at the last minute."

Bumping up and down - Raffi

"We could try to define heavy metal or rock music as being based on three chords (the I, IV and V, so-called 'power chords'). But this definition falls part: lots of songs have three chords and power chords that are not heavy metal, including most songs by Raffi."

Bron-yr-aur (clip 2) - Led Zeppelin

"Can we characterize music by Arisotelian definitions? What about genres of music, such as heavy metal, classical, or country? Such attempts would certainly fail. We could, for example, say that heavy metal is a musical genre that has (a) distorted electric guitars; (b) heavy, loud drums; (c) three chords, or power chords; (d) sexy lead singers, usually shirtless, dripping sweat and swinging the microphone stand around the stage like it was a piece of rope; (e) ümlauts in the gröup names. But this strict list of definitions is easy to refute. Led Zeppelin – the quintessential heavy metal band and arguably the band that spawned the genre – has several songs with no distorted guitars at all ('Bron-y-aur,' 'Down By The Seaside,' 'Goin' to California,' 'The Battle of Evermore'). "

Revolution 9 (clip 1) - The Beatles

"Even within the category of a single artist, people make graded distinctions that imply a prototype structure. If you ask me to pick out a Beatles song, and I select 'Revolution #9' (an experimental tape piece, with no original music, no melody or rhythm, which begins with an announcer repeating 'Number 9, Number 9' over and over again) you might complain that I was being difficult."

God Must Be A Boogie Man - Mitchell, Joni

"'Even within the category of a single artist, people make graded distinctions that imply a prototype structure. [...] Joni Mitchell's jazz foray with Charles Mingus is not what we usually think of when we think of Joni Mitchell."

A Foggy Day - Sinatra, Frank

"Because people store prototypes in their memory, most listeners can recognize a song in tranposition almost immediately and without error. We can recognize all kinds of deformations of the original tune: shrunk or stretched interval sizes, tunes played backward, and changed rhythms. This is like what a jazz artist does with a well-known song, or standard. When we compare Frank Sinatra's version of 'A Foggy Day' with the version by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, we hear that some of the pitches and rhythms are the same and some are different; we expect a good vocalist to interpret the melody, even if that means changing it from the way the composer originally wrote it."

Brain Damage - Pink Floyd

"Music is quite robust in the face of transformations and distortions of its basic features. We can change the arrangement—say from bluegrass to rock, or heavy metal to classical—and, as the Led Zepplin lyric goes, the song remains the same. Here is the 'Dark Side of the Moon' by progressive rock group Pink Floyd and a recording of a bluegrass group, the Austin Lounge Lizards, playing the same song using banjos and mandolins."

New Year's Day - U2

"In the explanation of pop/rock songs existing in singal canonical versions. '... Every time we've heard [...] U2's 'New Year's Day,' they've been in the same key.' "

Like a Virgin - Madonna

"How accurate is the average person’s memory for music? After hearing a song thousands of times, might the actual pitches become encoded in memory? To study this, I used Halpern’s method of simply asking people to sing their favorite songs. I excluded songs that existed in multiple versions and songs that had been recorded more than once, which would exist out-there-in-the-world in more than one key. I was left with songs for which there is a single well-known recording that is the standard, or reference— songs such as 'Time and Tide' by Basia or 'Opposites Attract' by Paula Abdul (this was 1990, after all), as well as songs such as 'Like a Virgin' by Madonna and 'New York State of Mind' by Billy Joel. "

Opposites Attract - Abdul, Paula

"How accurate is the average person’s memory for music? After hearing a song thousands of times, might the actual pitches become encoded in memory? To study this, I used Halpern’s method of simply asking people to sing their favorite songs. I excluded songs that existed in multiple versions and songs that had been recorded more than once, which would exist out-there-in-the-world in more than one key. I was left with songs for which there is a single well-known recording that is the standard, or reference— songs such as 'Time and Tide' by Basia or 'Opposites Attract' by Paula Abdul (this was 1990, after all), as well as songs such as 'Like a Virgin' by Madonna and 'New York State of Mind' by Billy Joel. "

Time and Tide - Basia

Speaking about Levitin experiment (1994?) - explaining the stimulus preparation, "I was left with songs for which there is a single well-known recording that is the standard, or reference—songs such as 'Time and Tide' by Basia or 'Opposites Attract' by Paula Abdul (this was 1990, after all), as well as songs like 'Like A Virgin' by Madonna and 'New York State of Mind' by Billy Joel."

Cathy's Clown - Everly Brothers, The

"Overall timbral presentations, soundscapes, can apply to whole eras of music. 1980s rock, heavy metal, 1940s dance hall music, and late 1950s rock and roll are fairly homogenous eras or genres. Many of us can hear a song and accurately guess what era it belongs to. One clue is often the echo, or reverberation, used on the voice. There is a rich, warm echo made by a large tiled room on recordings by The Everly Brothers, such as 'Cathy's Clown' and 'Wake Up Little Susie.'"

Heartbreak Hotel - Presley, Elvis

"Overall timbral presentations, soundscapes, can apply to whole eras of music. 1980s rock, heavy metal, 1940s dance hall music, and late 1950s rock and roll are fairly homogenous eras or genres. Many of us can hear a song and accurately guess what era it belongs to. One clue is often the echo, or reverberation, used on the voice. Elvis Presley and Gene Vincent had a very distinctive 'slap back' echo, in which you hear a sort of instant repeat of the syllable the vocalist just sang. You hear it on 'Be-Bop-A-Lula' by
Gene Vincent and by Ricky Nelson, on 'Heartbreak Hotel' by Elvis, and on 'Instant Karma' by John Lennon."

Wake Up Little Susie - Everly Brothers, The

"Overall timbral presentations, soundscapes, can also apply to whole eras of music. [...] 1980s rock, heavy metal, 1940s dance hall music, and late 1950s rock and roll are fairly homogenous eras or genres. [...] And many of us can hear a song and accurately guess what era it belongs to. One clue is often the echo, or reverberation, used on the voice. [... There] is the rich, warm echo made by a large tiled room on recordings by The Everly Brothers, such as 'Cathy's Clown' and 'Wake Up Little Susie.''"

Twist & Shout - The Isley Brothers

"If we're real music fans, we might even displace a prototype in favor of another based on knowledge that we gain. Take for example, the song 'Twist & Shout.' You might have heard it countless times by live bands in various bars and Holiday Inns, and you might also have heard the recordings by The Beatles and The Mamas & The Papas. One of these latter two versions may even be your prototype for the song. But if I tell you that The Isley Brothers had a hit with the song two years before The Beatles recorded it, you might reorganize your category to accommodate this new information.'"

Tryin' to Do Something to Get Your Attention - Hartford, John

"As scores of theorists and philosophers have noted, as well as the songwriter John Hartford in his song 'Tryin' To Do Something To Get Your Attention,' music is based on repetition."

Back In Black - AC/DC

"Honky Tonk Women' by the Rolling Stones begins with cowbell, followed by drums, followed by electric guitar; the meter stays the same and our sense of the beat does, too, but the intensity of the strong beats unfolds. (And when we listen on headphones the cowbell comes out of only one ear for more dramatic effect.) This is typical of heavy metal and rock anthems. 'Back in Black' by AC/DC begins with the hi-hat cymbal and muted guitar chords that almost sound like a small snare drum for 8 beats until the onslaught of electric guitar comes in. Jimi Hendrix does the same thing in opening 'Purple Haze' – 8 quarter notes on the guitar and bass, single notes that explicitly set up the meter for us before Mitch Mitchell’s thunderous drums are ushered in."

Hypnotized - Fleetwood Mac

"Sometimes composers tease us, setting up expectations for the meter and then taking them away before settling on something strong – a sort of musical joke that they let us in on. Stevie Wonder's 'Golden Lady' and Fleetwood Mac's 'Hypnotized' establish a meter that is changed when the rest of the instruments come in."

Super Freak - James, Rick

"And, of course, listeners disagree about whether something has a good groove or not, but to establish some common ground for the topic here, most people feel that 'Shout' by The Isley Brothers and 'Super Freak' by Rick James have a great groove, as does 'Sledgehammer' by Peter Gabriel.'"

I'm On Fire - Springsteen, Bruce

"Groove is the way in which beat divisions create a strong momentum, a quality that moves the song forward and invites us into a sonic world that we don’t want to leave.'I'm On Fire' by Bruce Springsteen, 'Superstition' by Stevie Wonder, and 'Ohio' by The Pretenders all have great grooves, and are very different from one another. But there is no formula for how to create a great one."

Sledgehammer - Gabriel, Peter

"Groove has to do with a particular performer or particular performance, not with what is written on paper. Groove can be a subtle aspect of performance that comes and goes from one day to another, even with the same group of musicians. And, of course, listeners disagree about whether something has a good groove or not, but to establish some common ground for the topic here, most people feel that 'Shout' by The Isley Brothers and 'Super Freak' by Rick James have a great groove, as does 'Sledgehammer' by Peter Gabriel.'"

Billie Jean - Jackson, Michael

"Although some danceable songs have been made with drum machines (Michael Jackson's 'Billie Jean' and Paula Abdul's 'Straight Up,' for example), the gold standard of groove is usually a drummer who changes the tempo slightly according to aesthetic and emotional nuances of the music; we say then that the rhythm track, that the drums, 'breathe.'"

Lowdown - Boz Skaggs

"Story of Michelle Zarin's wine and cheese. ''Lowdown.' 'Lido.' 20 minutes had gone by.'"

Songs for Swinging Lovers - Sinatra, Frank

Beginning of Chapter 7, "... On 'Swinging Lovers,' every note he sings is perfectly placed in time and pitch. I don't mean 'perfectly' in the strict, as-notated sense; his rhythms and timing are completely wrong in terms of how the music is written on paper, but they are perfect for expressing emotions that go beyond description. His phrasing contains impossibly detailed and subtle nuances — to be able to pay attention to that much detail, to be able to control it, is something I can't imagine. Try to sing along with any song on 'Swinging Lovers.' I've never found anyone who could match his phrasing precisely—it is too nuanced, too quirky, too idiosyncratic."

Concerto No. 1 in D for Violin & Orch, Op. 6- I Allegro Maestoso- Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840) Sarah Chang not in expanded index - Chang, Sarah

"What about that class of people that we all acknowledge are true musical experts – the Alfred Brendels, Sarah Changs, Wynton Marsalises, and Tori Amoses? How did they get what most of us don't have, an extraordinary facility to play and perform? Like experts in mathematics, chess, or sports, experts in music require lengthy periods of instruction and practice in order to acquire the skills necessary to truly excel. In several studies, the very best conservatory students were found to have practiced the most, sometimes twice as much as those who weren’t judged as good. When we say that someone is talented, we think we mean that they have some innate predisposition to excel, but in the end, we only apply the term retrospectively, after they have made significant achievements. "

Jacob Marley's Chain, Mr. Harris (clip 2) - Mann, Aimee

"Sometimes as Aimee Mann sings, I hear the traces of a little girl's voice, a vulnerable innocence that moves me because I feel that she is reaching down deep inside and confessing feelings that normally are expressed only to a close friend. Whether she intends to convey this, or really feels this, I don't know – she may have been born with a vocal quality that listeners interpret as having those feelings, whether she does or not. In the end, the essence of music performance is being able to convey emotion. Whether the artist is feeling it or was born with an ability to sound like they're feeling it may not be important."

Urge for Going - Mitchell, Joni

"Many of the greatest musicians of our era lacked formal training, including [...] Joni Mitchell. [...] Joni Mitchell had sung in choirs in public school, but had never taken guitar lessons or any other kind of music lessons. Her music has a unique quality that has been variously described as avant garde, ethereal, and as bridging classical, folk, jazz, and rock. Joni uses a lot of alternate tunings; that is, instead of tuning the guitar in the customary way, she tunes the strings to pitches of her own choosing. This doesn't mean that she plays notes that other people don't – there are still only 12 notes in a chromatic scale – but it does mean that she can easily reach with her fingers combinations of notes that other guitarists can't reach (regardless of the size of their hands). [...] A string that is pressed on ('fretted') has a different sound than one that isn't due to a slight deadening of the string caused by the finger; the unfretted or 'open' strings have a clearer, more ringing quality, and they will keep on sounding for a longer time than the ones that are fretted.
When two or more of these open strings are allowed to ring together,
a unique timbre emerges. By retuning, Joni changed the configuration of which notes are played when a string is open, so that we hear
notes ringing that don't usually ring on the guitar, and in
combinations we don't usually hear. You can hear it on her
songs 'Urge for Going' and 'Refuge of the Roads' for example.'"

One After 909 - The Beatles

"Rather than memorizing every chord or every note, we build up a framework within which many different songs can fit, a mental template that can accomodate a large number of musical pieces. [...] Any rock musician can play 'One After 909' by The Beatles even if they've never played it before if they are simply told that it is a 'standard 16 bar blues progression.' That phrase is a framework within which thousands of songs fit. 'One After 909' has certain nuances that constitute variations of the framework.'"

Many Rivers to Cross - UB40

"Mentioned when discussing Alexandra Lamont's study on children's recognition and preferance of music to which they were exposed in the womb. She included reggae pieces as stimuli (singled-out pieces for each baby to hear on a regular basis). 'Then, one year later, Lamont played babies the music that they had heard in the womb, along with another piece of music chosen to be matched for style and tempo. A baby who had heard UB40's reggae track 'Many Rivers to Cross' heard that piece again, a year later, along with 'Stop Lovin' You' by the reggae artist Freddie McGregor.'"

Bibbidy Bobbidy Boo - Disney

"At first, children tend to like simple songs, where simple means music that has clearly defined themes (as opposed to, say, four-part counterpoint) and chord progressions that resolve in direct and easily predictable ways. As they mature, children start to tire of easily predictable music and search for music that holds more challenge. I became fascinated with big band and swing music when I was eight, around the time my grandfather gave me his collection of 78 rpm records from the World War II era. I was initially attracted by novelty songs, such as 'The Syncopated Clock,' 'Would You Like to Swing on a Star,' 'The Teddy Bear’s Picnic,' and 'Bibbidy Bobbidy Boo'—songs that were made for children. But sufficient exposure to the relatively exotic chord patterns and voicings of Frank de Vol’s and Leroy Anderson’s orchestras became part of my mental wiring, and I soon found myself listening to all kinds of jazz; the children’s jazz opened the neural doors to make jazz in general palatable and understandable.
"

Surfin' USA - The Beach Boys

"When I lived in Northern California as a kid, Creedence Clearwater Revival was huge – they were from just down the road. When I moved to Southern California, CCR's brand of quasi-cowboy, country-hick music didn't fit in well with the surfer/Hollywood culture that embraced The Beach Boys and more theatrical performance artists like David Bowie.'"

All of Me - Billie Holiday

"In classic jazz, the artist begins by playing the main theme of the song; often the song is a well-known song from Broadway, or it’s a song that had already been a hit for someone else; such songs are called 'standards,' and they include 'All of Me'."

Blue Moon (clip 1) - Holiday, Billie

"Blue Moon', as sung here by Billie Holiday, is an example of a song with AABA form. A jazz artist may play around with the rhythm or feel of the song, and may embellish the melody. After playing through the form of the song once, what jazz musicians refer to as 'the head,' the different members of the ensemble take turns improvising new music over the chord progression and form of the original song. During the improvisations, some artists stick close to the original melody, some add ever distant and exotic harmonic departures. Sometimes the musicians also share part of a chorus – each musician playing 4 or 8 measures, and then handing off the solo to another musician, a sort of musical relay race. In the second example you can hear the trumpet and saxophone trading solos. When everyone has had a chance to improvise, the band returns to the head, playing it more or less straight, and then they're done. "

Symphony No. 5 - Mahler, Gustav

"The elements of music can themselves form a barrier to appreciation of a new piece of music. Obviously, if music is too loud or too soft, this can be problematic. But even the dynamic range of a piece—the disparity between the loudest and softest parts—can cause some people to reject it. This can be especially true for people who use music to regulate their mood in a specific way. Someone who wants music to calm her down, or someone else who wants music to pep him up for a workout, is probably not going to want to hear a musical piece that runs the loudness gamut all the way from very soft to very loud, or emotionally from sad to exhilarating (as does Mahler’s Fifth, for example)."

- Lennon, John

"Timbre is another barrier for many people and its influence is almost certainly increasing as I argued in Chapter 1. The first time I heard John Lennon's voice, or Donald Fagen's voice, I thought the voices were unimaginably strange. I didn't want to like them.'"

Urge for Going - Mitchell, Joni

"But the chords Joni plays, as a consequence of her unique composition and guitar playing styles, aren’t typical chords: Joni throws notes together in such a way that the chords can't be easily labeled. [...] Joni's genius is that she creates chords that are ambiguous, chords that could have two or more different roots. When there is no bass playing along with her guitar (as in 'The Circle Game' or 'Urge For Going'), the listener is left in a state of expansive aesthetic possibilities. Because each chord could be interpreted in two or more different ways, any prediction or expectation that a listener has about what comes next is less grounded in certainty than with traditional chords. And when Joni strings together several of these ambiguous chords, the harmonic complexity greatly increases; each chord sequence can be interpreted in dozens of different ways, depending on how each of its constituents is heard.'"

Jet Airliner - The Steve Miller Band

"The blues progression – either verbatim or with some variations – is the basis for rock and roll music, and is found in thousands of songs including 'Jet Airliner' by The Steve Miller Band (which is surprisingly similar to 'Crossroads')."

Rock and Roll Music - Berry, Chuck

"In the context of harmony, and the fact that the blues progression - either verbatim or with some variations – is the basis for rock and roll music."

The Thrill Is Gone - King, B. B.

"Once we start using tetrads instead of triads for chords, a great deal of rich tonal variation is possible. Rock and blues tend to use only the dominant 7, but there are two other types of 'seven' chords in common use, each conveying a different emotional flavor. [...] 'The Thrill is Gone' by B. B. King uses minor seven chords throughout (a minor triad with a minor third on top).'"