The Biology of Musical Performance and Performance-Related Injury

The Biology of Musical Performance and Performance-Related Injury PDF

Author: Alan H. D. Watson

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2009-01-26

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0810863758

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Music performance requires a high degree of physical skill, yet until recently, musical training has paid little attention to the considerable demands made on the mind and body. The Biology of Musical Performance and Performance-Related Injury presents singers and instrumentalists with accurate information on the physical processes that underlie their craft. The book provides a concise overview of the biological principles associated with performance technique while assuming no prior scientific knowledge, making it accessible to both musicians and to health professionals who treat performance-related medical conditions. Author Alan H. D. Watson explains the concepts and techniques of music performance, discussing themes such as posture and the back; movements of the arm and hand and associated problems; breathing in singers and wind players; the embouchure and respiratory tract in wind playing; the larynx and vocal tract in singers; the brain and its role in skill acquisition and aural processing; and stress and its management. Watson offers performers and teachers the tools they need to create a rational approach to the development and communication of technique. He also provides insight into the origins of performance-related injury, helping to reduce the risk of such problems by encouraging a technique that is sustainable in the long term. Each chapter includes several illustrations and an extensive bibliography for further reading. To support the text, a CD-Rom is included, featuring original diagrams that clearly illustrate the relevant aspects of body structure and function, explaining and illuminating key concepts through an extensive set of animations, sound files, and videos.

How Musical is Man?

How Musical is Man? PDF

Author: John Blacking

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 1973

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 9780295953380

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This important study in ethnomusicology is an attempt by the author -- a musician who has become a social anthropologist -- to compare his experiences of music-making in different cultures. He is here presenting new information resulting from his research into African music, especially among the Venda. Venda music, he discovered is in its way no less complex in structure than European music. Literacy and the invention of nation may generate extended musical structures, but they express differences of degree, and not the difference in kind that is implied by the distinction between 'art' and 'folk' music. Many, if not all, of music's essential processes may be found in the constitution of the human body and in patterns of interaction of human bodies in society. Thus all music is structurally, as well as functionally, 'folk' music in the sense that music cannot be transmitted of have meaning without associations between people. If John Blacking's guess about the biological and social origins of music is correct, or even only partly correct, it would generate new ideas about the nature of musicality, the role of music in education and its general role in societies which (like the Venda in the context of their traditional economy) will have more leisure time as automation increases.

The Music of Life

The Music of Life PDF

Author: Denis Noble

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2008-02-14

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 0191578800

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What is Life? Decades of research have resulted in the full mapping of the human genome - three billion pairs of code whose functions are only now being understood. The gene's eye view of life, advocated by evolutionary biology, sees living bodies as mere vehicles for the replication of the genetic codes. But for a physiologist, working with the living organism, the view is a very different one. Denis Noble is a world renowned physiologist, and sets out an alternative view to the question - one that becomes deeply significant in terms of the living, breathing organism. The genome is not life itself. Noble argues that far from genes building organisms, they should be seen as prisoners of the organism. The view of life presented in this little, modern, post-genome project reflection on the nature of life, is that of the systems biologist: to understand what life is, we must view it at a variety of different levels, all interacting with each other in a complex web. It is that emergent web, full of feedback between levels, from the gene to the wider environment, that is life. It is a kind of music. Including stories from Noble's own research experience, his work on the heartbeat, musical metaphors, and elements of linguistics and Chinese culture, this very personal and at times deeply lyrical book sets out the systems biology view of life.

Music as Biology

Music as Biology PDF

Author: Dale Purves

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-02-01

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 0674972961

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Why do human beings find some tone combinations consonant and others dissonant? Why do we make music using only a small number of scales out the billions that are possible? Dale Purves shows that rethinking music theory in biological terms offers a new approach to centuries-long debates about the organization and impact of music.

Forever Young

Forever Young PDF

Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Special Committee on Aging

Publisher:

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13:

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The Biology of Musical Performance and Performance-related Injury

The Biology of Musical Performance and Performance-related Injury PDF

Author: Alan H. D. Watson

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 393

ISBN-13: 0810863588

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The Biology of Musical Performance and Performance-Related Injury presents accurate information on the biological principles and physical processes that underlie the craft of musical performance. It explains concepts and techniques without assuming prior scientific knowledge, providing relevance to both musicians and health professionals who treat performance-related medical conditions. It offers performers and teachers the tools they need to create a rational approach to the development and communication of technique, and provides an insight into the origins of performance-related injury, helping to reduce the risk of such problems by encouraging a technique that is sustainable in the long term.

Sounding Bodies

Sounding Bodies PDF

Author: Peter Pesic

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-10-11

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 0262367718

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The unfolding influence of music and sound on the fundamental structure of the biomedical sciences, from ancient times to the present. Beginning in ancient Greece, Peter Pesic writes, music and sound significantly affected the development of the biomedical sciences. Physicians used rhythmical ratios to interpret the pulse, which inspired later efforts to record the pulse in musical notation. After 1700, biology and medicine took a “sonic turn,” viewing the body as a musical instrument, the rhythms and vibrations of which could guide therapeutic insight. In Sounding Bodies, Pesic traces the unfolding influence of music and sound on the fundamental structure of the biomedical sciences. Pesic explains that music and sound provided the life sciences important tools for hearing, understanding, and influencing the rhythms of life. As medicine sought to go beyond the visible manifestations of illness, sound offered ways to access the hidden interiority of body and mind. Sonic interventions addressed the search for a new typology of mental illness, and practitioners used musical instruments to induce hypnotic states meant to cure both psychic and physical ailments. The study of bat echolocation led to the manifold clinical applications of ultrasound; such sonic devices as telephones and tuning forks were used to explore the functioning of the nerves. Sounding Bodies follows Pesic’s Music and the Making of Modern Science and Polyphonic Minds to complete a trilogy on the influence of music on the sciences. Enhanced digital editions of Sounding Bodies offer playable music and sound examples.