Music affects our physical well-being often without our being aware of it. This book reveals the power of music from classical through Jazz and New Age forms to heal emotions and transform lives using simple, step-by-step exercises and 39 musical activities.

From the author of The Changing Mind and The Organized Mind comes a New York Times bestseller that unravels the mystery of our perennial love affair with music ***** 'What do the music of Bach, Depeche Mode and John Cage fundamentally have in common?' Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. From Mozart to the Beatles, neuroscientist, psychologist and internationally-bestselling author Daniel 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. In This Is Your Brain On Music Levitin offers nothing less than a new way to understand music, and what it can teach us about ourselves. ***** 'Music seems to have an almost wilful, evasive quality, defying simple explanation, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know . . . Daniel Levitin's book is an eloquent and poetic exploration of this paradox' Sting 'You'll never hear music in the same way again' Classic FM magazine 'Music, Levitin argues, is not a decadent modern diversion but something of fundamental importance to the history of human development' Literary Review

The author of the New York Times bestseller This Is Your Brain on Music reveals music’s role in the evolution of human culture in this thought-provoking book that “will leave you awestruck” (The New York Times). Daniel J. Levitin's astounding debut bestseller, This Is Your Brain on Music, enthralled and delighted readers as it transformed our understanding of how music gets in our heads and stays there. Now in his second New York Times bestseller, his genius for combining science and art reveals how music shaped humanity across cultures and throughout history. Here he identifies six fundamental song functions or types—friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge, and love—then shows how each in its own way has enabled the social bonding necessary for human culture and society to evolve. He shows, in effect, how these “six songs” work in our brains to preserve the emotional history of our lives and species. Dr. Levitin combines cutting-edge scientific research from his music cognition lab at McGill University and work in an array of related fields; his own sometimes hilarious experiences in the music business; and illuminating interviews with musicians such as Sting and David Byrne, as well as conductors, anthropologists, and evolutionary biologists. The World in Six Songs is, ultimately, a revolution in our understanding of how human nature evolved—right up to the iPod.

Drawing on perspectives from music psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, musicology, clinical psychology, and music education, Music and Mental Imagery provides a critical overview of cutting-edge research on the various types of mental imagery associated with music. The four main parts cover an introduction to the different types of mental imagery associated with music such as auditory/musical, visual, kinaesthetic, and multimodal mental imagery; a critical assessment of established and novel ways to measure mental imagery in various musical contexts; coverage of different states of consciousness, all of which are relevant for, and often associated with, mental imagery in music, and a critical overview of applications of mental imagery in health, educational, and performance settings. By both critically reviewing up-to-date scientific research and offering new empirical results, this book provides a unique overview of the different types and origins of mental imagery in musical contexts, various ways to measure them, and intriguing insights into related mental phenomena such as mind-wandering and synaesthesia. This will be of particular interest for scholars and researchers of music psychology and music education. It will also be useful for practitioners working with music in applied health and educational contexts.

An edited collection of papers which explore a large number of topics related to musical imagery. Musical imagery can be defined as our mental capacity for imagining sound in the absence of a directly-audible sound source, meaning that we can recall and re-experience or even invent new musical sound through our inner ear. The first part of the volume is focused on theoretical issues such as the history, epistemology, neurological bases, and cognitive models of musical imagery. The second part presents various applications of musical imagery in performance and composition, and provides the reader with a broad overview of the many musical activities which are concerned with musical imagery.;Musical imagery is a truly interdisciplinary subject, and it is the belief of the editors that a plurality of approaches, ranging from the introspective and philosophical to the experimental and computational, is the most fruitful strategy for exploring the subject of musical imagery.

Conducting and Rehearsing the Instrumental Music Ensemble is the most comprehensive guide on the rehearsalprocess for conducting instrumental music ensembles. Ideal for the advanced instrumental music conductor seeking to look beyond basic conducting technique, this work breaks the multidimensional activity of working with an ensemble, orchestra, or band into its constituent components. Advanced students of conducting will find within the full range of conducting activities: • Chapters on the infrastructure of the rehearsal, the rehearsal environment, 10 rehearsal essentials, score study, music imagery, inner singing, and rehearsal procedures (with an emphasis on an integrated approach to rehearsing) • The technical priorities of intonation and tuning, rhythm patterns, ensemble sonority (tone, balance, blend, color and texture), and articulation • The musical priorities of tempo and ensemble precision, phrasing and the musical line, style and interpretation, dynamics and musical expression • Emphasizing the expectations of 21st-century conductors, the challenges of conducting and rehearsing contemporary music, preparing conductor profiles and self-evaluations, and moving from the rehearsal process to concert performance Conducting and Rehearsing the Instrumental Music Ensemble is a great resource for teachers and students of conducting, as well as current conductors wishing to further hone their skills.