Reddit Reddit reviews The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It

We found 4 Reddit comments about The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It
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4 Reddit comments about The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It:

u/Jongtr · 29 pointsr/musictheory

Now there's a surprise (not).

I.e., this is hardly news, although it's always interesting to read more research of this kind. Philip Ball's book The Music Instinct (2010) - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-Instinct-Works-Cant-Without/dp/0099535440 - is a good survey of music's role in human societies, with plenty of evidence of what different cultures don't have in common. E.g., almost all cultures recognise octave equivalence, and most recognise the perfect 5th. Beyond that it's all up for grabs. It's not just that other cultures don't recognise "dissonance", it's that the notion of dissonance is itself cultural. Obviously we all hear the same mix of frequencies, but we don't all feel the need to distinguish aesthetically between smooth or clashing ones, let alone have a natural preference for the former.
Essentially, our tastes are formed soon after birth (maybe even in the womb) by what we hear, largely by what we hear repeated. The repetition of any stimulus lends it significance to an infant, because the human brain is a pattern-seeking organ. At a very young age, we quickly get used to familiar patterns in music, which become the "right" sounds we enjoy later.

u/MacNulty · 4 pointsr/psychology

Music instinct is also a good one.

Edit: I mean this book, for the record.

u/flimflam61 · 1 pointr/Music

If you find it hard or impossible to listen to certain genres of music then you should change the way that you listen to music. To help you do that i would recommend reading The Music Instinct

u/JockMctavishtheDog · 1 pointr/Documentaries

This is also the name of a book I've recently read from 2011;

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-Instinct-Works-Cant-Without/dp/0099535440