Sixth Form Recommended Reading

This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin This is the first book to offer a comprehensive explanation of how humans experience music and to unravel the mystery of our perennial love affair with it. Using musical examples from Bach to the Beatles, Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution, shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience. Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. In

The Story of Music by Howard Goodall In his dynamic tour through 40,000 years of music, from prehistoric instruments to modern day pop, Howard Goodall leads us through the story of music as it happened, idea by idea, so that each musical innovation – harmony, notation, sung theatre, the orchestra, dance music, recording, broadcasting – strikes us with its original force. He focuses on what changed when and why, picking out the discoveries that revolutionised man-made sound and bringing to life musical visionaries from the little-known Pérotin to the colossus of Wagner. Along the way, he also gives refreshingly clear descriptions of what music is and how it works: what scales are all about, why some chords sound discordant and what all post-war pop songs have in common.

How Music Works by John Powell Have you ever listened to an incredible piece of music and wondered exactly why it makes you want to dance or cry? Are you mystified by how musicians just 'know' what notes to play next when they're improvising? Or why certain notes sound great together and others clash? Discover the answers in this ear-opening tour of how music works. John Powell, a classically-trained composer and a physics professor, decided to write this entertaining, pain-free guide to the ingredients of music when he discovered that all the other books on the subject gave him a headache. Here he reveals the often little-known facts and fascinating science behind what we listen to, explaining the basics of harmony, scales, chords, keys and rhythm in a way that's easy for everyone to understand.

This Is Your Brain On Music Levitin offers

nothing less than a new way to understand it, and its role in human life.