Music And Cog. Sci. Grad. Students....(was RE:Music and Life)

Tim G. Wagner (v134lskm@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu)
Tue, 10 Oct 1995 02:15:07 -0400


>Still... as I was sorting through email this morning, a friend walked
>into my office with a book that I had loaned him called LANGUAGE, MUSIC
>AND MIND by a woman named Diana Raffman. As my friend pointed out, the
>title is a bit misleading. The book isn't as general and accessible as
>it sounds. It's an extensive analysis of ineffable (verbally
>inexpressible) musical knowledge. For anyone who is interested in this
>topic seriously, there is quite a literature. Ray Jackendoff's research
>group (at MIT, I think) has done a lot of work on this and there are some
>other books on related topics like:
>
>A GENERATIVE THEORY OF TONAL MUSIC by Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff
>(Ray Jackendoff is both a linguistics philosopher and a clarinet player)
>
>WAYS OF THE HAND: THE ORGANIZATION OF IMPROVISED CONDUCT by David Sudnow
>which is a very cool sounding book about what is happening cognitively
>when the author learns how to improvise jazz on the piano.
>
>The line of thinking that I'm familiar with isn't all that focussed on
>the cultural aspect of music - these researchers assume some universals
>of psychological experience.
>
>That's two academic musical comments in one month. Enough. I'm just
>out of news bits. Hey Gordon, the new Step Jazz is great. I think the
>band was happy to see the good review of Karl's record. And Robert got
>a grin at the comment Barry made about the mixing - he thinks it's good
>when reviewers can be objective about local music. I don't know what
>Andy had to say about that...
>
>-Teresa

Teresa-

On the Cog. Sci. and Jazz tip, you should check out Paul Berliner's
Thinking In Jazz. It's a hefty volume but it is well written. It gets
really into the technical side of things in terms of theory (music) but it
really gets you in the head of the Jazz Musician. I read it back to back
with the Sudnow book (which I think I'm probably going to read a second
time) and it kind of gave a complete picture. Someone should teach a course
about Jazz and cognitive processes, it would be damn interesting.

On the Aj side of things, when are the Greyboy Allstars coming to the east
coast? When I was in SD, I caught them (even without Karl Denson) and
thought they were Amazing.

La-er-

Tim FrOM Buffalo

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