I absolutely adore this book by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas. I have gifted the book numerous times to various family members and it has helped me to understand “the meaning”, “the how”, “the why”, and “the what” of my musical preferences. That being said, I also struggled a lot with this book because the author’s musical sweet spot was very far from my own and it was often difficult for me to imagine myself in her musical “shoes”. However, I felt this book caused me to question exactly why I liked certain songs more than others and to become more aware of my musical tastes and accept that other people often have very different tastes.
The book is very approachable to the non-music making reader and an easy read even though it often describes the “neuroscience of music”. The use of many stories illustrating the concepts used in the book is quite helpful in this regard. I also appreciated that the author “cut her teeth” as a female record producer working successfully in a male-dominated field of record producers and then became a cognitive neuroscientist. It is an incredible back story and she is obviously an impressive individual.
The book’s organization into chapters is a good guide, so I’ll follow the chapter format for the rest of my comments.
Overture
“The music that delivers the maximum gratification to you is determined by the seven influential dimensions of musical listening: authenticity, realism, novelty, melody, lyrics, rhythm, and timber.” (Rogers, Ogas p.9)
My biggest issue with this book was that I had trouble relating to her seven influential dimensions of musical listening. In particular, I had trouble with the authenticity and realism dimensions. I felt harmony, which was included in the melody category and complexity which was included in the authenticity category needed to be separate categories. As a pianist who is often playing melody and harmony with different hands, having harmony lumped in with the melody category was difficult to accept. In addition, I often listen for and appreciate musical complexity, so it didn’t seem a good fit to me to include complexity into authenticity. However, I do recognize that categories are useful even though the first two dimensions seem arbitrary to me as they don’t quite match how I listen to music.
One of the best things about this book is the listening examples that are prevalent throughout the book. Since music is an aural art, it is great to be able to listen in addition to reading the description of the ideas.
1. Authenticity – This Is What Expression Sounds Like
“Tommy calls naive music “music from the neck down.” These compositions and performances express emotions that seem to bypass the circuits that restrain our social behaviors, delivering music that sounds as though it comes straight from the heart, guts, or hips.” (Rogers, Ogas p. 23)
“The opposite of naive music is sometimes called “cerebral” music. Composers and performers of this kind of music express their feelings using deliberate principles and well-honed craftmanship. Johann Sebastian Bach is a good example.” (Rogers, Ogas p. 24)
I wish she could have chosen a different name for this category or explained it differently because a lot of classical music which I love seems to be lumped in the “above the neck” or cerebral side of authenticity which seems a weird differentiation of the meaning of “authenticity.” However, I like when she explains authenticity as “genuine emotional truth” and can recognize that “Bach expresses a feeling of transcendent exultation that exhilarates…” (Rogers, Ogas p. 25) It seems like authenticity extremes are “below the neck and above the neck (cerebral)”. Unfortunately, this entire concept seems difficult to explain clearly.
2. Realism – This Is What Music Looks Like
“The type of visualizations that naturally form inside your mind’s eye when you listen to music constitute another dimension of your listener profile: realism.” (Rogers, Ogas p. 36)
“Listeners who prefer realistic records usually enjoy imagining the actual musicians performing the song – or themselves performing the song.” (Rogers, Ogas p. 39)
“Contemporary producers use DAWs to fabricate tones, noises, melodies, and rhythms that don’t necessarily originate with people performing on instruments…..When you listen to these digital apparitions, it is more challenging to visualize them because you are unsure of what you are hearing. And when you can’t identify an object – as when viewing abstract art – your mind begins to explore highly inventive possibilities.” (Rogers, Ogas p. 53
So, this category of a listener profile has to do with whether you prefer real instrumental sounds as opposed to abstract, artificially created sounds. Rogers explains that artificially created sounds remind her of abstract art (as in paintings) as opposed to realistic art. I personally don’t have a strong opinion on this category as I never thought too much about it and like both realistic and abstract music…. and especially combinations of both. Once again, this seems like an arbitrary musical dimension to me, but it seems to have meaning for other people.
However, one aspect of this chapter really did bring home a concept that is near and dear to my heart and that is the “perfect performance”. I often explain to my piano students that we shouldn’t aim for perfection in performance as exhibited in piano recordings, but excellence in performance. Everyone should realize that recordings are “sanitized” and sometimes impossible to duplicate in live performances even for professionals. As the book mentions:
““With the speed and ease of digital editing, the practice of sanitizing recordings is no longer a pragmatic method for cleaning up objective mistakes but a creative philosophy that can motivate producers and engineers to correct subjectively perceived “flaws” in a musician’s performance…..As a result, the vast majority of today’s records are technically perfect…. but physically impossible to perform live. Or, at least, impossible to perform the way they sounded on the record.” “These days, my students often hear any “coloring outside the lines” as a sign of unacceptable sloppiness and a lack of effort. According to many young listeners, if it can be fixed, it should be.” (Rogers, Ogas p. 54)
3. Novelty – This Is What Risk-Taking Sounds Like
“When it comes to music, familiarity and novelty are subjective properties. What’s musically familiar to you might be unprecedented for me, and vice versa.” (Rogers, Ogas p. 65)
This category is very understandable and I found it instantly relatable even though I am not a risk taker in general life, just in my music. I absolutely love musical novelty and although I like pop music, I quickly tire of individual songs.
This chapter contains a wonderful “Novelty-Popularity” bell curve graph which is well-explained. At the end of the chapter, I especially liked how she explains the static musical playlists of middle-aged people: “Thrill-seeking behavior tends to decline with age. For many listeners, the exciting new music we discovered when we were young becomes the reliable playlist we stick with in middle age.” (Rogers, Ogas p. 83)
4. Melody – This Is What Music Feels Like
As mentioned previously, I’m not fond of including harmony in the melody category. It just seems wrong to me. However, since the book defines melody simply as a “sequence of musical pitches”. (Rogers, Ogas p. 96), I suppose that is the definition of harmony as well.
What is more interesting to me is that this chapter has a brief discussion about the debate as to whether language or music evolved first. I have always been appalled by Steven Pinker’s assertion that “As far as biological cause and effect are concerned, music is useless…music could vanish from our species and the rest of our lifestyle would be virtually unchanged. Music appears to be a pure pleasure technology, a cocktail of recreational drugs that we ingest through the ear to stimulate a mass of pleasure circuits at once.” (Pinker p. 528) I’ve also read that music is considered a “spandrel” or useless bi-product that evolved accidently because no one can figure out why listening and creating music helps with natural selection.
Rogers and Ogas say, “An ongoing question in evolutionary neuroscience is: Which came first, music or language? The available evidence seems to point toward their coevolution, the development of one supporting the development of the other. Many species are known to express and elicit emotions through their melodic calls, leading theorists to coin the term “musilanguage” for early human vocalizations that communicated both information and feelings.” (Rogers, Ogas p. 102) I find this idea of coevolution way more palatable because I couldn’t imagine my life without music and feel that music helps define us as humans.
Another interesting tidbit in this chapter describes how audio signals are processed in the brain and the existence of parallel processing networks for language and melody.
5. Lyrics – This Is What Identity Sounds Like
“A few other species trill out a melody or keep time with a rhythm, but only Homo Sapiens can beget words, and words have always been a uniquely enthralling means of expressing the heart’s yearnings.” (Rogers, Ogas p. 117) “Most of us have a natural preference: we may instinctively focus on the lyrics sung by the vocalists, or we may ignore the words entirely to better savor the melody.” (Rogers, Ogas p. 119-120)
This was a very fun chapter and helped me think again about how we perceive music. I am definitely not a lyrics person. I rarely listen to lyrics and always concentrate on the overall sound. This chapter helped me understand why people tend toward lyrics or not when listening to music.
6. Rhythm – This Is What Music Moves Like
“The varied ways that different listeners perceive the rhythm on a record illustrate this chapter’s most important lesson: your own experience of rhythm is almost entirely subjective.” (Rogers, Ogas p. 144)
This idea of rhythm being a psychological property with no “right” answer is pretty foreign to my musical experience. Usually as music teachers we help our students understand how to fit music within very particular rhythmic frameworks. It is an interesting assertion that different listeners (and performers) might vary timings and accents based on their particular musical understandings. It makes me think that as I continue to teach standard rhythmic frameworks to my students, I need to also be aware that not everyone experiences rhythm the same way.
7. Timbre – This Is What Music Conjures
“Pronounced “TAM-ber,” it is the most enigmatic dimension of music. Timbre refers to the unique voice of the instrument: the acoustic qualities that let us distinguish a guitar from a trombone, and a trombone from a tuba.” (Rogers, Ogas p. 168)
As a pianists, we are most familiar with timbre in terms of how each acoustic piano differs from another in terms of their sound quality. I have always found it very fun to play on many different makes and styles of acoustic pianos because they all sound so very different from one another.
8. Form And Function – This Is What It Sounds Like To A Record Producer
This chapter focuses on how recordings are made by collaborative efforts by songwriters, artists, and producers and how the recordings are tailored for their perceived audience.
9. Falling In Love – The Music of You
This is the penultimate chapter of the book where people can finally decide on their personal listener profile using a scale that looks like a bit like music equalizer. However, I think my musical tastes change quite a bit during the day based on my mood, so my profile probably changes quite a bit within my personal range.
I love her quote in this chapter: “Never be a music snob. Your taste in music is every bit as valid as mine. It is the limitless diversity of listener profiles that fuels the infinitely rich art form we love.” (Rogers, Ogas p. 228)
Coda
Overall, this book helped me understand people (including my piano students) who love lyrics (not me), gesture with air guitars (not me), hate new age (mostly not me), and constantly listen to the same music for their entire life (also not me). It is a thought provoking book and was very fun to read and consider.
References:
Rogers, Susan and Ogi Ogas, “This Is What It Sounds Like.” W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2022
Pinker, Steven, “How the Mind Works.” W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1997
Piano Lessons for Adults 