How Music Works

 How Music Works

By John Powell

 

This book is inspiring for the full spectrum of music lovers.  From those that create music to those who enjoy music.  In my house music on Pandora is always playing thanks to the many Alexas placed strategically.  The book begins with the science of music, specifically how sound works.  Touching on subjects such as frequency and decibels, which transitions nicely to notes, pitch, perfect pitch.  The author spends time on the difference between noise and notes.  This difference is foundational as he moves in to the instruments that make the notes, describing the features of different instruments.  This part is later appreciated later in the book as he discusses the thought and effort in composing music.

In composing music, the reader becomes aware of the building blocks of creating the desired outcomes in terms of mood, the prime objective of music.  These blocks include

1.       Harmony

2.       Scales

3.       Chords – Major and Minor

4.       Rhythm

5.       Choice of instruments

Its interesting to learn in this book how relatively new, in terms the history of civilization the composition of western music is.  It is suggested that this evolution began in the fifteen century.  Beginning with what we now term as orchestral classical music and moving forward through jazz, and pop/rock.  I take a humorous note that Rap is not mentioned in this book of music.  Using the word humorous to lessen the blow, following the authors style to add his sense of humor.  A mood to keep the reader engaged from the front to back of the book.  Net-net this book will definitely give the reader, no matter how enmeshed he is in music, to have an even greater appreciation for music.

One of the key reliefs in this book is while it goes in to great detail of the structure, construction, composing, and listening of music: the author expresses that music is about feeling, and if a rule is broken because it feels good…it ok.

 

Notes:

·       Page 14: we are not designed to hear our own voices too loudly, in case they drown out any other noises …like lions, avalanches Sticking a finger in your ear improves the feedback between your mouth and your brain helps you monitor your own pitch

·       Page 23: Music notes are different from non-music noises because every music note is made up of ripple pattern which repeats itself.  …  Our eardrums flex in and out as the pressure ripples push against them. However, our eardrums can’t respond too quickly or too slowly – we can only hear patters which repeat themselves more than twenty times a second but leass often than 20,000 times per second.

·       Page 34: The general rul is that any note is made up of fundamental frequency together with its “twice frequency”, its “three times frequency”, its “four times frequency”.  and so on.  All these frequencies are called harmonics of the note.

·       Page 39: The basic sound of each instrument is called timbre.

·       Page 43: Differences between instruments when a not is just starting …  these start up notes are known as transients.

·       Page 44: There are many more frequencies involved in most real notes, so these ripple patters have different timbres is because the produce notes which contain different mixes of these harmonics

·       Page 45: The technical name for the collection of favored frequencies of an instrument is called format.

·       Page 57: it is now generally accepted that it takes 10,000 to achieve expert level in almost any activity.

·       Page 65:  The pipe organ gives us lots of choice in timbre, but the great thing is that groups of these different sets of tubes can be played at the same time to give you hundreds of possible combinations …  For the big finale you might want all the tubes on the organ to join in – which will require you to pull all the stops, which is where the phrase comes from.

·       Page 71: When composers are writing something for an orchestra to play, they have to bear in mind the thee timbres of each instruments at their disposal and then distribute the musical jobs accordingly.

·       Page 76: It is interesting to realize that quiet piano notes have a different timbre to loud ones because you hit a sting harder you get a different mix of harminics … which gives the notes a more complex harsher sound.  This means that pianists have some timbre control linked to their control of loudness.

·       Page 77: The piano was invented in 1709 … and was continuously developed over the next hundred years or so.

·       Page 78:  Another problem is the fact that if you set your synthesizer to produce a certain ripple pattern, the timbre will remain the same over the whole range of notes from high to low – and as we saw earlier real instruments don’t do that.

·       Page 79:  Even if the loudest – strongest component was 33Hz, the overall pattern would only be completing its dance 100 times – so the fundamental frequency is 110Hz.  … This is because only the 110Hz can be the head of the family which may include 220Hz, 330Hz etc … If you hear the following collection of frequencies: 220Hz, 330Hz, 440Hz etc, you will hear it as a tone with a fundamental frequency of 110Hz.

·       Page 85:  If we have two instruments, we only get double the effect if the Up-down-up-down pressure ripple are perfectly in step with each other – so they can act together to give an Up-Down-Up-Down pressure ripple.  But this synchronization never happens.

·       Page 96: the human hearing system is more sensitive at some frequencies than others.  This means that a 32dB high note from a flute will sound to a human than a 32db from a bass guitar.

·       Page 102: The child is now using scales, that is limited numbers of recognizable jumps in pitch.  These jumps are called intervals.  … 

·       Page 102: The careful choice of notes which sound good together gives us chords, and chords are the basis of harmony.

·       Page 103: As we shall see, harmonies are not always harmonious and it is the composer’s job to build up tension and occasionally and then relax it.

·       Page 103: Film composers often use only three of four tunes for an entire film, and they need to change the feel of the melody to match the moods of different scenes.

·       Page 103: Composers often deliberately choose a sequence of anxious- sounding chords to build up tension before easing it with some harmonious combinations – composing is rather like telling a story or a joke, in that the composer needs to set up a situation and then resolve it in some way.

·       Page 105: the higher note has a frequency which is exactly twice that of the lower note – and the interval between such notes is called an octave.

·       Page 106: So if we hear the 110Hz note first and then both of them together, the brain is not provided with any new frequencies – it just gets a double dose of some of frequencies it heard in the original note.

·       Page 110: notes that are too close together produce harsh combinations.  Consecutive notes on a scale are either a semitone or a tone apart in pitch… notes that are a semitone apart compete for our attention rather than support each other.

·       Page 111: Chords and harmonies form the backgrounds to the melody and also support the punctuation of the phrasing of the music.

·       Page 112: A chord played as a stream of its individual notes as calle appreggio and this is the basis of popular folk guitar.

·       Page 113: this method of playing the same tune after a certain delay is called a cannon.

·       Page 114: Composers have to use a lot of skill to write counterpoint- and a piece which relies on the interplay of counterpoint as its main content is called a fugue.  …One distinctive feature of most fugues is the involve tunes that have an easily recognized beginning.

·       Page 118:  the link between the terms of “scale” and “key”…Lets take the C major as an example.  The scale of C major involves a specific group of seven notes but they are only called aa scale if you play them one after another.

·       Page 119: Sales are based on a series of intervals, which are divisions of a naturally occurring interval called an octive.

·       Page 119:  Musicians don’t generally use more than about seven different notes at a time – even if the octave has been divided up into more steps than this.

·       Page 120: the limit of our short term memory is about seven items

·       Page 123: To get a decent sounding scale we want to have a team of notes which have five frequencies which are related together. … The top string needs to have a fundamental frequency which is twice that of the lowest string. – and everything is based on this naturally occurring interval. …for the optimum teamwork, the strings should also have frequencies which are related to the frequency of the lowest string.

·       Page 135: They didn’t have a theory for their tuning method, because you don’t need theory to make good music.  (this must be sarcasm or else throw this book away)

·       Page 142: Music composed in major keys sounds more self-confident and generally happier than music composed in minor keys.

·       Page 143: The group of seven that make up a major scale (or key) are the most closely related group from the original choice of twelve.  This makes them sound good and strong together.

·       Page 143: Minor keys involve substituting a couple of the major scale notes for less supportive of the original group of twelve.

·       Page 145: Moving from one key to another during the course of a piece is called modulation.

·       Page 149: When the “almost there” notes appear in the melody or the harmony it makes a fairly clear demand to get “there” so the listener has a feeling that the next note should be the key note.  In fact, this effect is so strong that the technical term for the “almost there’ note is the leading note.

·       Page 150: The technical term for any phrase ending in music is a cadence.

·       Page 152: We use all three types of minor scale within a singe piece of music.  We use the original one if the theme is descending, one of the others if the music is ascending: and the third one to make up the accompanying chords.

·       Page 152: Like the major scale, the natural minor scale is one ancient modes called Aeoloan.

·       Page 153: The natural minor scale was found to be just right for the parts of melodies which were descending in pitch, so it is called the descending melodic minor scale.

·       Page 157: When we eventually get to the end of a phrase the music is likely to relax into a simple major or minor chord.

·       Page 163: in major keys, note 5 occurs most frequently and will be played about four time as of the as note 7, the least common member of the group. There are other relationships which hold true in most tunes.   

Page 179: 1. Major keys are a team of seven notes which are strongly related to their team leader.  The punctuation of phrases in major key music is generally clear and decisive

2.       Minor keys have a couple of different notes depending on weather or not the tune is going up or down in pitch.  The team of notes is not as strongly related as a major ket team and the musical experience not as decisive and clear cut – particularly at the end of phrases.  We have to associate sadness with this more complex interrelationship of notes

3.       Music changes from major key to major key to keep our levels of interest up, and the same is true from minor key to minor key.  Certain changes increase the brightness of the music for a short while, and others can diminish the brightness.  The effect does not last long because it is caused by the change itself.

 

·       Page 181: The tempo of a piece of music it the pulse rate – how often you tap your foot to it.  The meter is hoe often you would emphasize one of the foot taps. Rhythm is the pattern of long and short notes being use at a particular time.

·       Page 195: Some rock group songs keep the “one two three four” emphasis for the tune but deliberately emphasize beats two and four with the bass guitar and drums, a technique known as “back beat”

·       Page 214: The two most common types of classical music which involve an orchestra are the symphony ( hundred Instruments) and concerto ( few instruments)

·       Page 214: The only difference between a symphony and a concerto is that a concerto also involves a soloist who sits or stands at the front of the stage. 

·       Page 218: Most symphonies have four or five movements.

·       Page 219: Sonatas are almost always pieces for one or two instruments and are generally in three to four movements.

Out Of The Silent Planet

 Out Of The Silent Planet

By CS Lewis

 

Ransom gets kidnapped by two villains and taken in a spaceship to a near by planet called Malacandara.  In the first days on the planet the three are challenged by habitants.   There is a clash and Ransom finds himself freed from his captives to discover on his own the workings of the civilization which until his arrival didn’t know existed.  He initially befriends the Hrossa , people involved in in the initial clash.  Over the course of quick time Ransom begins to learn their language and the lay of the land.  He learns of the destination in his quest to meet the planet’s god Oyarsa, to learn of his fate on this new planet or a journey back to earth; and his new friends attempt to escort him there.  On his quest after leaving the company of Hrossa he comes across an new clan of people call Hanakra.  It turns out the Hanakra are just as helpful as Hrossa in escorting him to his final destination.  And finally, along the way Ransom becomes aware of yet a third clan on the planet call pfifltriggi.  These creatures were mainly responsible to all creatures the making of things on the planet. 

While there is animosity amongst all creatures they all lived in relative harmony.  This comes out in the end with Ransom and his earthing capturers are interviewed by the planet leader Oyarsa as they learn their destiny.  As it turns out Oyarsa make the earthlings well aware of the civilization on earth as he point to the sky where earth is, and its close.  The moral message that Lewis was attempting to achieve was If we could even effect in one percent of our readers a change-over from the conception of Space to the conception of Heaven, we should have made a beginning.

Notes 

·       Page 37: Space was the wrong name.  Of thinkers had been wiser when simply named the heavens – heavens which declared the glory the:

Happy climes that ly

Where day never shuts his eye

Up the broad fields of the sky

·       Page 47: He wondered how he could have ever thought of planets, even of Earth. As islands of life and reality floating in a deadly void.  Now, with a certainty which never after deserted him, he saw the planets-  the earth’s he called them in his thought – as mere holes of gaps in the living heaven …

·       Page 48: you cannot see things to you know roughly what they are.  His first impression was bright. Pale world – a water-colour world out of a child’s paint box

·       Page 60:  “Hullo Ransom,- he stopped puzzled.  No, it was only himself: he was Ransom.  Or was he?  Who was the man whm he had led to a hot stream and tucked up in bed. Telling him not to drink the strange water”  Obvioisy some new-comer who didn’t know the place as wel as he.  Bust whatever Ransom had told him, he was he was going to drink now.  And he lay down on the bank and plunged his face in the warm rushing liquid.  It was good to drink.  It had a strong mineral flavor, but it was very good. He drank again and found himself greatly refreshed and steadied.  All that about the other Ransom was nonsense.

·       Page 70:  The thought of parting from the Hrossa could not be seriously entertained; in its animality shocked him in a dozen ways, but his longing to learn the language, and, deeper still, the shy, ineluctable fascination for unlike, the sense that the key to prodigious adventure was being put in his hands – all this had really attached to it by bonds stronger than he knew.

·       Page 86:  Hyoi, if you had more and more young, would the Meledil broaden, the handiamit (land) and make enough plants for them all?

“The seroni know that sot of thing.  But why shod we have more young?”  Ransom found this difficult,  At last he said: “Is the begetting of young not a pleasure of the Horossa?”  A very great one, Hman.  This is what we call love”.  If a thing is a pleasure more ofteh than the number of young that can be fed.’  It took Hyoi a long time to get the point.  “you mean” he said ‘that he might do it not only in one or two year of his life but again?”  “yes”

·       Page 87: “a pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.  You are speak, Hman, as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another.  It is all one thing.  The seroni could say it is better than I say it now.  Not better than I say it in a poem.  What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem..  When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing.  Now it is growing something as we remember it.  But still we know very little about it. What it will be when remembering it as I lie down to die, what it takes in me all my days till then – that is its real meaning.  The other is only the beginning of it. You say you have poets in your world.  Do they not teach you this?

·       Page 89: "‘Oh, but that is so different. I long to kill this hnakra as he also longs to kill me. I hope that my ship will be the first and I first in my ship with my straight spear when the black jaws snap. And if he kills me, my people will mourn and my brothers will desire still more to kill him. But they will not wish that there were no hnéraki; nor do I. How can I make you understand, when you do not understand the poets? The hnakra is our enemy, but he is also our beloved. We feel in our hearts his joy as he looks down from the mountain of water in the north where he was born; we leap with him when he jumps the falls; and when winter comes, and the lake smokes higher than our heads, it is with his eyes that we see it and know that his roaming time is come. We hang images of him in our houses, and the sign of all the hrossa is a hnakra. In him the spirit of the valley lives; and our young play at being hnéraki as soon as they can splash in the shallows.’"

·       Page 92: perhaps, too. There was something in the air now breathed, on in society of the hrossa, which had begun to work a change on him.

·       Page 95: with such companions or with none – he must have a deed on his memory instead of one broken dream.  It was in obedience to something like conscience that he exclaimed.  "It would be a strange but not an inconceivable world; heroism and poetry at the bottom, cold scientific intellect above it, and overtopping all some dark superstition which scientific intellect, helpless against the revenge of the emotional depths it had ignored, had neither will nor power to remove."

·       Page 102:  "It would be a strange but not an inconceivable world; heroism and poetry at the bottom, cold scientific intellect above it, and overtopping all some dark superstition which scientific intellect, helpless against the revenge of the emotional depths it had ignored, had neither will nor power to remove."

·       Page 111:  "‘That is not the way to say it,’ it replied. ‘Body is movement. If it is at one speed, you smell something; if at another, you hear a sound; if at another, you see a sight; if at another, you neither see nor hear nor smell, nor know the body in any way. But mark this, Small One, that the two ends meet.’ ‘How do you mean?’ ‘If movement is faster, then that which moves is more nearly in two places at once.’ ‘That is true.’ ‘But if the movement were faster still – it is difficult, for you do not know many words – you see that if you made it faster and faster, in the end the moving thing would be in all places at once, Small One.’ ‘I think I see that.’ ‘Well, then, that is the thing at the top of all bodies – so fast that it is at rest, so truly body that it has ceased being body at all. But we will not talk of that. Start from where we are, Small One. The swiftest thing that touches our senses is light. We do not truly see light, we only see slower things lit by it, so that for us light is on the edge – the last thing we know before things become too swift for us. But the body of an eldil is a movement swift as light; you may say its body is made of light, but not of that which is light for the eldil. His “light” is a swifter movement which for us is nothing at all; and what we call light is for him a thing like water, a visible thing, a thing he can touch and bathe in – even a dark thing when not illumined by the swifter. And what we call firm things – flesh and earth – seem to him thinner, and harder to see, than our light, and more like clouds, and nearly nothing. To us the eldil is a thin, half-real body that can go through walls and rocks: to himself he goes through them because he is solid and firm and they are like cloud. And what is true light to him and fills the heaven, so that he will plunge into the rays of the sun to refresh himself from it, is to us the black nothing in the sky at night. These things are not strange, Small One, though they are beyond our senses. But it is strange that the eldila never visit Thulcandra.’"

·       Page 118: The remote horizon seemed but an arm’s length away.   The fissures and molding of distant slopes were clear as the background of a primitive picture made before men learned perspective.  …  He was on the very frontier of that heaven he had known in the space-ship, and rays that were air enveloped worlds cannot taste were once more upon his body.  He felt the old lift of his heart, the soaring solemnity, the sense, at onve sober and ecstatic, of life and power offered un asked and unmeasured abundance.

·       Page 122: They were astonished at what he had to tell them of human history – of war, slavery, prostitution.  It was because they have no Qyarsa, said one of his pupils.  “It is because one of them wants to ba a little Oyarsa hum self” said Augray.  “they cannot help it” said the old sorn.  “there must be rule, yet how can creatures rule themselves?

·       Page 135: "Even allowing for the strangeness of the subject from a Malacandrian point of view and for the stylization of their art, still, he thought, the creature might have made a better attempt at the human form than these stock-like dummies, almost as thick as they were tall, and sprouting about the head and neck into something that looked like fungus. He hedged. ‘I expect it is like me as I look to your people,’ he said. ‘It is not how they would draw me in my own world.’"

·       Page 137: “Then you must make every bent work/  How wold a maker understand working in suns’ blood unless he went into the home of the suns’ blood himself and knew one kind from another and lived with it for days out of the light of the sky till it was in his blood and his heart, as if he thought it and ate it and spat it?”

·       Page 146:  "‘For the first question, Oyarsa, I have come here because I was brought. Of the others, one cares for nothing but the suns’ blood, because in our world he can exchange it for many pleasures and powers. But the other means evil to you. I think he would destroy all your people to make room for our people; and then he would do the same with other worlds again. He wants our race to last for always, I think, and he hopes they will leap from world to world… always going to a new sun when an old one dies… or something like that.’ ‘Is he wounded in his brain?’ ‘I do not know. Perhaps I do not describe his thoughts right. He is more learned than I.’ ‘Does he think he could go to the great worlds? Does he think Maleldil wants a race to live for ever?’ ‘He does not know there is any Maleldil. But what is certain, Oyarsa, is that he means evil to your world. Our kind must not be allowed to come here again. If you can prevent it only by killing all three of us, I am content.’ ‘If you were my own people I would kill them now, Ransom, and you soon; for they are bent beyond hope, and you, when you have grown a little braver, will be ready to go to Maleldil. But my authority is over my own world. It is a terrible thing to kill someone else’s hnau. It will not be necessary.’ ‘They are strong, Oyarsa, and they can throw death many miles and can blow killing airs at their enemies.’ ‘The least of my servants could touch their ship before it reached Malacandra, while it was in the heaven, and make it a body of different movements – for you, no body at all. Be sure that no one of your race will come into my world again unless I call him. But enough of this. Now tell me of Thulcandra. Tell me all. We know nothing since the day when the Bent One sank out of heaven into the air of your world, wounded in the very light of his light. But why have you become afraid again?’ ‘I am afraid of the lengths of time, Oyarsa… or perhaps I do not understand. Did you not say this happened before there was life on Thulcandra?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you, Oyarsa? You have lived… and that picture on the stone where the cold is killing them on the harandra? Is that a picture of something that was before my world began?’ ‘I see you are hnau after all,’ said the voice. ‘Doubtless no stone that faced the air then would be a stone now. The picture has begun to crumble away and been copied again more times than there are eldila in the air above us. But it was copied right. In that way you are seeing a picture that was finished when your world was still half-made. But do not think of these things. My people have a law never to speak much of sizes or numbers to you others, not even to sorns. You do not understand, and it makes you do reverence to nothings and pass by what is really great. Rather tell me what Maleldil has done in Thulcandra.’ ‘According to our traditions – -’ Ransom was beginning, when an unexpected disturbance broke in upon the solemn stillness of the assembly. A large party, almost a procession, was approaching the grove from the direction of the ferry. It consisted entirely, so far as he could see, of hrossa, and they appeared to be carrying something."

·       Page 149:  The voice of Oyarsa spoke for the fist time to the two men

“why have yu killed my hnau?” it said

Weston and Devine looked anxiously about them to identify the speaker>

‘God” exclaimed Devine in English. “ don’t tell me they’ve got a loud speaker”

“Ventriloquism” replied West in a husky whisper.  “Quite common among savages”

·       Page 181:  If we could even effect in one percent of our readers a change-over from the conception of Space to the conception of Heaven, we should have made a beginning.       

·       

The Anunnaki of Nibiru

 

The Anunnaki of Nibiru

By  Gerald Clark

 

There is a planet named Nibiru outside the orbit of Pluto, now a non-planet, that is home for an advanced civilization called Anunnaki.  Nibiru has an elliptical orbit around our sun and come close to earth every 3,500  years.  The Anunnaki were already accomplished astronauts by the time of their passing of earth thousands of years ago.  They landed on earth in search of a commodity to help them achieve eternal life, gold.  They found it in the south of Africa.  They started mining it themselves and came to realize that the work was killing them on a planet that had 365 days per orbit thus shortening an Anunnaki life span.  So they conscripted ancient primitive man as their slaves to do the mining for them.  In figuring out how to master them they used advanced technology for communication. 

To complement the technical footing the author adds history through of Sumerian people using Cuneiform clay tablets found in Mesopotamia.  As the story goes The Anunnaki bred with the humans.  Enki and Enli , brothers akin to Cain and Able battled each other for power.  This story is colored in with biblical and Jewish story giving credit to man’s accounting and concurrence corroborating with the Sumerian cuneiform tablets.

This book spends an inordinate amount of energy explaining the technology to set the reader up for the final theory.  Anunnaki DNA exists in our human race today and is evident in our world leaders who are still being influenced by Anunnaki.  Imagine your spine as an antenna and the chakras receptors of messages from the Cosmos  (Anunnaki) as we are comfortable believing. 

The book is in serious need for an editor which diminishes to some degree the author’s credibility.  Yet he asks a lot questions and provides a lot material for the reader to explore.  Given this dynamic the book is at least entertaining and great fodder for a casual speculative party conversation.

Take a listen;  ·       The FULL STORY of The Anunnaki – Every Spiritualist Must KNOW This - YouTube