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Interdisciplinary perspectives on the capacity to perceive, appreciate, and make music. Research shows that all humans have a predisposition for music, just as they do for language. All of us can perceive and enjoy music, even if we can't carry a tune and consider ourselves “unmusical.” This volume offers interdisciplinary perspectives on the capacity to perceive, appreciate, and make music. Scholars from biology, musicology, neurology, genetics, computer science, anthropology, psychology, and other fields consider what music is for and why every human culture has it; whether musicality is a uniquely human capacity; and what biological and cognitive mechanisms underlie it. Contributors o...
A state-of-the-art overview of the latest theory and research in music psychology, written by leaders in the field. This authoritative, landmark volume offers a comprehensive state-of-the-art overview of the latest theory and research in music perception and cognition. Eminent scholars from a range of disciplines, employing a variety of methodologies, describe important findings from core areas of the field, including music cognition, the neuroscience of music, musical performance, and music therapy. The book can be used as a textbook for courses in music cognition, auditory perception, science of music, psychology of music, philosophy of music, and music therapy, and as a reference for rese...
Ranging widely through discoveries in acoustics, emotion, healing, cognition, neuroscience, and infant development, Silvia Bencivelli covers the state of the art in research about our relationship with music and presents several possible conclusions.
Scientists have long theorized that abstract, symbolic thinking evolved to help humans negotiate such classically male activities as hunting, tool making, and warfare, and eventually developed into spoken language. In Finding Our Tongues, Dean Falk overturns this established idea, offering a daring new theory that springs from a simple observation: parents all over the world, in all cultures, talk to infants by using baby talk or "Motherese." Falk shows how Motherese developed as a way of reassuring babies when mothers had to put them down in order to do work. The melodic vocalizations of early Motherese not only provided the basis of language but also contributed to the growth of music and art. Combining cutting-edge neuroscience with classic anthropology, Falk offers a potent challenge to conventional wisdom about the emergence of human language.
The presence of the phenomenological body is central to music in all of its varieties and contradictions. With the explosion of scholarly works on the body in virtually every field in the humanities, the social as well as the biomedical sciences, the question of how such a complex understanding of the body is related to music, with its own complexity, has been investigated within specific disciplinary perspectives. The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Body brings together scholars from across these fields, providing a platform for the discussion of the multidimensional interfaces of music and the body. The book is organized into six sections, each discussing a topic that defines the field: the moving and performing body; the musical brain and psyche; embodied mind, embodied rhythm; the disabled and sexual body; music as medicine; and the multimodal body. Connecting a wide array of diverse perspectives and presenting a survey of research and practice, the Handbook provides an introduction into the rich world of music and the body.
A commentary on the communicative universality of music citing real-world examples from rituals, education, work, and healing.
"This volume will be of particular interest to medical professionals, neuroscientists, neurologists, psychologists, educators, music therapists, musicologists, sound engineers, computer scientists. Manuscripts address how the tools of cognitive neuroscience have provided new insights into where and how rhythm is coded in the brain; production and perception abilities and the relationship between the two; the use of music as a tool for the investigation of human cognition and its underlying brain mechanisms; recent research investigating various aspects of musical memory and learning, and implications for medical rehabilitation for patients with memory disorders; advances in the fields of developmental auditory neuroscience, empirical music aesthetics, and music emotions in normal and disordered development such as autistic spectrum disorders; mutual interactions between music and language in children and adults with cochlear implants; and human communication of information, ideas, and emotional states, and the shared networks of speech and motor processing with musical processing"--NYAS Web site
What can infants hear? What are their reactions to music? Is it useful for them to sing and listen to music? Is their auditory sensitivity developed before their birth? At what age do they start singing, and clapping their hands? How can their musical development be improved? These (and other) questions are present in today's debate on music education and the responses are normally given in an intuitive way. It is now necessary and urgent to sketch a developmental profile of infants, starting from their earliest manifestations. In the last 30 years, research in this field has been progressively developed. In most cases research has been devoted to single aspects of more complex problems. Mor...
A presentation of music and language within an integrative, embodied perspective of brain mechanisms for action, emotion, and social coordination. This book explores the relationships between language, music, and the brain by pursuing four key themes and the crosstalk among them: song and dance as a bridge between music and language; multiple levels of structure from brain to behavior to culture; the semantics of internal and external worlds and the role of emotion; and the evolution and development of language. The book offers specially commissioned expositions of current research accessible both to experts across disciplines and to non-experts. These chapters provide the background for rep...
"A Family Guide to Parenting Musically is a resource for families who want to make music a more meaningful part of their daily life. The guide is full of ideas about how to engage in musical parenting (doing things to help your child grow musically) and parenting musically (using music to achieve parenting goals). Designed for parents, grandparents, caregivers, and friends, this guide includes ages-and-stages chapters as well as chapters organized by musical activities and scenarios. Seventy activities offer families specific ways to explore the ideas that all humans are musical, music is important, and there are many ways to be musical. Based on the author's research and teaching with families and music over the last 20 years, as well as mothering her own four musical children, A Family Guide to Parenting Musically provides developmental information and research-based discussions in an easy-to-read format. The guide provides insights about using music to make parenting a little (or a lot!) easier, more fun, and more meaningful"--