(Part 2) Best music appreciation books according to redditors
We found 117 Reddit comments discussing the best music appreciation books. We ranked the 44 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
A list of the affected posts in chronological order:
Yeah... I really don't condone self-teaching for many reasons, but obviously you don't want to hear that right now, so this is just a bit of a disclaimer.
Personally, I think if you're going to study on your own, it's really worth it to get a good background in the "bookwork" elements of singing, like vocal anatomy and pedagogy, as well as language work.
On that end, I would recommend books like Doscher's The Functional Unity of the Singing Voice, McKinney's The Diagnosis and Correction of Vocal Faults, Miller's The Structure of Singing, and McCoy's Your Voice: An Inside View. These are really not easy reads, per se, but they should give you a really good foundation in understanding what's going on physically, and being aware of potential problems in vocal health and hygiene, which is arguably the biggest reason to study with a teacher. (In other words, a good understanding of the physical vocal structure can help prevent unknowingly contorting it in an unhealthy way).
I would also strongly recommend some study in language, diction, and text. Even for non-classical singers, it's worth it to know about how diction and articulation works. Diction for Singers, A Handbook of Diction for Singers, and International Phonetic Alphabet for Singers would be a good start. (And in general, a working understanding of IPA is crucial).
You can also work on text analysis - I'm not really a poetry/text specialist so I can't recommend any specific books, but I'm sure there are many out there.
Marchesi's Bel Canto: A Theoretical and Practical Vocal Method is another resource to look into, as it contains many exercises designed for technical practice - I liken it to the Hanon exercises commonly found in piano curricula. However, I will definitely warn that these exercises can be easily done incorrectly and can lead to the development of very bad habits, so please proceed with caution and be aware that there are many ways to execute the exercises, some of which are not healthy.
In addition, I would recommend a broad study in music theory, music history, and ear training. [Musictheory.net](http://www.musictheory.net] and Teoria.com are well-respected websites that offer lessons and exercises to learn beginner to intermediate level music theory concepts. Good-ear.com is another website I often recommend that focuses more on ear training. I would also recommend checking out the sidebar and FAQs over at /r/musictheory for more details.
In addition to these websites, some books worth mentioning include Berkowitz's A New Approach to Sight Singing, Music for Analysis, Caplin's Classical Form, Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music, Grout's A History of Western Music, and Schoenberg's Structural Functions of Harmony. While of course you don't need to have a doctorate in music theory to begin singing, I think it can only be helpful to have a really broad basis of understanding in various parts of music, as they directly affect your ability to read, understand, and interpret music.
Anyway, that should give you a pretty decent start. Please feel free to post if you have any additional questions.
Depends on what sort of rep you're in to (into?). I read a lot of popular music scholarship. These are books that I have either read or am going to read, in no particular order:
Brad Osborn - Everything in its Right Place: Analyzing Radiohead
Robert Walser - Running with the Devil:Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music
Walter Everett - The Foundations of Rock
Walter Everett - The Beatles as Musicians: The Quarry Men through Rubber Soul, Revolver through the Anthology
† Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis, ed. John Covach and Graeme Boone
Richard Middleton - Studying Popular Music
Allan Moore - Song Means:Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song
†Analyzing Popular Music, ed. Allan Moore
† = A bunch of essays crammed into a book. These are nice because you can read a 20-50 page study on a topic and move on.
I'll recommend these as more general reading, geared toward classical music but useful in other styles as well:
William Caplin - Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (Every researcher in the field knows or should know this one. I would also recommend Hepokoski and Darcy - Elements of Sonata Theory, which is the other big form book, but it is a veritable tome and hardly light reading. Not that much of what I've recommended is very light.)
Janet Schmalfeldt - In the Process of Becoming:Analytic and Philosophical Perspectives on Form in Early Nineteenth-Century Music (I haven't read this yet, but it's in the same universe of form studies as the above.)
Kofi Agawu - Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music (Agawu has written a lot on various topics and should be on your radar.)
Alfred Mann - The Study of Fugue (Broken up into two parts: part 1 is a history of fugue, part 2 is about fugal technique.)
I'll point you toward this one since it is totally awesome and helped me to understand medieval liturgical music theory and culture (though you might find yourself lost if you are not already familiar with some of the concepts):
Anna Maria Busse Berger - Medieval Music and the Art of Memory
You might also consider ordering a hard copy of some journal issues, as these can be quite compact and give you a lot of breadth.
Journal of Music Theory (JMT)
Music Theory Spectrum (MTS)
I take it you are in the USA?
In the uk the book Stucture af fabric is a good reference for construction methods and techiques
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Mitchells-Structure-Fabric-Part-Pt-Building/0131970941
building construction illustrated is still valid as well.
but a word of caution.
You may not like the way you are being taught, but play their game. It is a game but there is stuff to learn, don't dissmiss it because it's not the same stuff as you want to learn, get stuck in and ace it and THEN look at another path,
don't use "I don't like the way they are doing it" to cover for "I'm not very good at the things we are being asked to do". And just ignoring the tutors way of working and what they are pushing you for will just be antagonistic and you wont learn much.
Remember that the architects' key skill and value add is not in construction detailing, we MUST know about it and you are right that great buildigs must be designed in a way that is intrinsically linked to their construction methods and materials. but it's ALSO really important, especially in your early student days, that you are able to dream big, talk about that dream, explain the vision and get people to buy into it. That's what they are teaching you, don't miss the point.
I'll add that you should look into Stefan Koelsch's work (here is a link to his book), in addition to many others that study music and language processing. There definitely seem to be shared neuronal resources when processing both.
Huh. I don't think I've ever heard those terms. To me what you're describing sounds like a mix of psychoacoustics, phonology, and semantics.
For psychoacoustics a great start would be a relatively recent text like Music in the Human Experience (Hodges and Sebald). For your purposes, chapters 8 and 9 would be relevant ("Music Cognition" and "Music and the Brain", respectively).
I realize that you're not looking exclusively for music-related literature on this topic, which is why I suggested you also look into some phonological literature. This I can't point you toward, as the extent of my knowledge on the subject goes little further than a linguistics crash course in university.
If you're looking for historical philosophical writings on the topic, I've got nothing. I'm far from an expert on this topic. But I hope this helps!
Enjoyment of Music is a $15 rental.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393912558/
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That Ornithology book is a tough one. Sold out on Amazon. About $125
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Epidemiology 101 is a $23 rental.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0763754439/
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Principles of Animal Behavior (Third Edition) wasn't available for rent via amazon either but new @ $65
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393920453/
So that's $228 @ Amazon.
You overpaid by about $125 -- UNLESS you really wanted to keep those books as permanent references, since this appears to be part of your major, or something, based on your flair.
Yes, this is a sort of "internet" classic. It's been available for several years now and is quite a good read. That one might be the draft, but it doesn't matter too much — he mostly got it right the first time. It's a great book. Still, the published version from 2007 is a little better organized and has fewer errors. You should probably get it if possible.
I also quite like Analysis, Synthesis, and Perception of Musical Sounds by James Beauchamp (even more expensive than Puckette's book!), and if you want to get, like, super nerdy about synthesis, there's always Bibao's Numerical Sound Synthesis (more expensive yet!!).
I took a basic music appreciation class in high school, and we used a textbook called Listen, which I really liked. It provided easy to understand information and 3 CDs with a good overview of every era of classical music. It's a good place to start.
You can certainly find books on music psychology, but I doubt you'll find anything on personal preferences (because those depend on your own experiences and associations).
Try these:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Your-Brain-Music-Understanding/dp/1843547163
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Musicophilia-Tales-Music-Oliver-Sacks/dp/0330523597/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Music-Instinct-Works-Cant-Without/dp/0099535440/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Psychology-Music-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0190640154/
I really enjoyed a book called The Music Instinct: https://www.amazon.com/Music-Instinct-Works-Cant-Without/dp/0199896429
I just got this book for Christmas, it's a great read. Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for but it explains a lot and I know a lot about music theory and I found myself knowing a lot of what was already in the book, but it definitely makes you think in ways that would be up your alley. here is the link: http://www.amazon.ca/Music-Instinct-Works-Cant-Without/dp/0199754276/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1302919675&sr=8-1
To add to the books already listed by others:
The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music, Peretz & Zatorre,
http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Neuroscience-Music-Isabelle-Peretz/dp/0198525206
Music, Language and the Brain, Patel,
http://www.amazon.com/Music-Language-Brain-Aniruddh-Patel/dp/0195123751
Music and Emotion, Juslin & Sloboda,
http://www.amazon.com/Music-Emotion-Research-Affective-Science/dp/0192631888
University libraries should have them.
It's not really limited in research, plenty of neurologists have done studies into the subject. There are schools where you can study music therapy which isn't a bunch of pseudoscience, it's built on solid research.
This book is a good laymen's summary but it gets a bit preachy near the end.
Another post recommended This is Your Brain on Music which is also a great book as well.
This is what I used GC Practicum in the seminary. It was a very good book. I also chanted for a long time before that and own a Liber Usualis as well as other texts.
Also, I was around priests, monks and solemn high masses all the time so I am familiar with the tones that are to be used. You can find full chanted offices on youtube. Even in the seminary we hardly ever did solemn tones unlesss it was a big feast, even in the Carmel we didn't do solemn tones that often.
The best way to show you would just be to hear someone else and get some training from a cantor. I could walk you through it over the phone or Skype since I have some formal training. I also know of others who could walk you through it, I am friends with 4 or 5 professional cantors on Facebook.
I wouldn't chant any solemn tones with your family unless everyone had it memorized. Like maaaaaybe the solemn Salve Regina, but I've heard adults struggle with that one and it's not that hard. If you have trouble with tones, monotone is the best way to go, even for the Salve Regina. But if you can sing Credo III and not miss a beat, you should be fine for the vast majority of plain chant.
Let me know if you want to talk, just pm me.
Edit: With that book I linked you to above, you should be able to play any chant on a keyboard or piano easily. It is very easy. Unfortunately I can't find any audio samples of plain chant on YouTube. I would have to sing it for you.
Music and Chess: Apollo Meets Caissa by Achilleas Zographos
https://www.amazon.com/Music-Chess-Apollo-Meets-Caissa/dp/1941270727
A great book connecting music and chess without needing too much knowledge in music.I fully suggest it especially if you dont want a book entirely focused on the moves of a game etc.
I posted this after skimming the discussion of 'Catholic metalheads' [sic] and black metal.
I hope this is an edifying read.
For those further interested in a deeper look at the morality of music, Fr Basil Cole, OP wrote this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Music-Morals-Theological-Appraisal-Psychological/dp/081890660X
A description from Jeff Mirus of Catholic Culture:
>Readers who liked my analysis What about Bad Music?, or even those who disagreed with it, owe it to themselves to read the book Music & Morals by Basil Cole, OP. Fr. Cole was a jazz musician before becoming a Dominican priest, and he did an extensive study of the relationship between music and morals for his doctoral dissertation.
https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otc.cfm?id=510
And finally, at this link, you can find a very good (albeit long, about an hour) conference talk by a good and holy FSSP priest, Fr Ripperger:
http://www.sensustraditionis.org/webaudio/Tulsa/Music.mp3
Here he talks about the morality of music, as well.
I hope you find this edifying.