How your brain interprets music

[bitflipper]

Billy Hume, my newest favorite music educator / commentator, talks about why someone might not be able to sing on pitch no matter how hard they try.

My bassist really works hard on his vocals, and does fine on leads but often beats his head against the wall trying to find his harmony part, and is often flat when he does find it. He's asked me how I do it, and I honestly don't know what to tell him. I said I just "see" harmonies in my mind, similar to Melodyne blobs on the computer screen.

This might suggest that this may be an innate skill, meaning something you can't train for. Or at least a skill you have to pick up early in life, like learning a second language. 

 

 

[sjoens]

1 hour ago, bitflipper said:

like learning a second language. 

For some, the accent is easier than the language.  For most tho, it's just the opposite.

[User 905133]

Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia

[henkejs]

Interesting stuff. The Oliver Sacks book is a great read. Other related books I've enjoyed: Daniel Levitin's "This Is Your Brain on Music" and "I Heard There Was a Secret Chord." "Of Sound Mind" by Nina Kraus also explores the mechanisms of hearing with a lot of attention to music perception.

This area has become something of an obsession with me since acquiring diplacusis (hearing the same tone as a different pitch in the left and right ears). More recently my perception of pitch has become so distorted that notes a couple of octaves apart sound out of tune (for example the C below middle C and the C two octaves higher). Brain retraining exercises seem to help, but it's been challenging.

[bitflipper]

22 minutes ago, henkejs said:

Daniel Levitin's "This Is Your Brain on Music"

I came here to suggest that one as well - you beat me to it. That one's written by a guy who has a unique perspective, in that he was a music producer for many years before abandoning that career to become a psychologist.

I have just downloaded Nina Kraus' book after reading a short sample on Amazon, so thanks for that suggestion. I've long been fascinated by sound perception as a hack for mixing. Like what a "wide and deep" mix really means, or how masking works, or why some note / timbre combinations are pleasing while others are not. These, I believe, can all be explained in mechanical terms. 

There is a contributor to this forum that I greatly respect for his mixing chops, but who once perplexed me by stating that "Science to me in the audio field is a waste of time".  I had a moment of cognitive dissonance, wondering how he could be so good at something he'd never attempted to understand objectively. Right brain left brain something something.

[Gswitz]

I really like Billy h too.