This is Your Brain on Music Ch.1( What is Music?)

1. What is pitch and where does it come from?

1.1. Pitch is related to the frequency or rate of vibration of a string, column of air, or other physical source

1.2. it is the quality that primarily distinguishes the sound of pressing one piano key versus another

1.3. -rate at which a string oscillates

2. Rising pitch =question

3. Straight or slightly falling pitch=accusation

4. Unit of measure is Hertz (Hz)

5. Vibrating air molecules reach our ear drum and cause our ear drums to wiggle. Our brain receives this information and has to work with our inner ear to determine what caused the eardrum to have that way.

6. The rate at which a string vibrates is affected by its size and how tightly it's strung, not by how hard it was struck

7. Pitch and frequency are closely related

8. Pitch refers to the mental representation an organism has of the fundamental frequency of a sound

9. Sound waves impure on the eardrums and pinnae, setting of a chain of mechanical and neurological events, the end product of which is an internal mental image we call pitch.

10. General range of human pitch is 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz

11. The author is examining how the fundamental music interact with our brains, minds, thoughts and spirits.

12. Basic Elements of Music

12.1. Loudness, pitch, contour, duration (rhythm), tempo, timbre, spatial location, reverberation

12.2. Pitch- perception of sound wave

12.3. Rhythm- duration of a series of notes

12.4. tempo- overall speed or pace of a piece of music

12.5. contour- overall shape of a melody

12.6. timbre- distinguishes one interment from another

12.7. loudness- how much energy an instrument creates

12.8. reverberation- perception of how distant the source is from in combo. with how large the room is

13. Higher Level Concepts

13.1. Meter, harmony, melody

13.2. meter- (created by our brain) how tones are grouped with one another across time

13.3. key- (exists only in our minds) hierarchy of importance that exists between tones

13.4. melody- main theme of a musical piece

13.5. harmony- relationships between the pitches of different tones and with tonal context that these pitches set up (lead to our expectations of what will come next)

14. Loudness

14.1. - the distance the string covers with each oscillation back and forth

15. Pitch is one of the primary means by which musical emotion is conveyed

16. Melody is an abstract prototype that is derived from specific combinations key, tempo, instrumentation and so on.