This is Your Brain on Music

Audiotopia: Music, Race and America

All You Need to Know About the Music Business

The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960′s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Essentials of Music Theory

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This is Your Brain on Music By Daniel J. Levitin

Music, Science, and the Brain are more closely related than you think. Daniel J. Levitin, James McGill Professor of Psychology and Music at McGill University, shows you why this is. In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin (The World in Six Songs and The Organized Mind) explores the connection between music, its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it, and the human brain. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, Levitin reveals: How composers produce some of the most pleasurable effects of listening to music by exploiting the way our brains make sense of the world Why we are so emotionally attached to the music we listened to as teenagers, whether it was Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. Dre That practice, rather than talent, is the driving force behind musical expertise How those insidious little jingles (called earworms) get stuck in our head Taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin poses that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. A Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist, This Is Your Brain on Music will attract readers of Oliver Sacks, as it is an unprecedented, eye-opening investigation into an obsession at the heart of human nature.

Levitin, Daniel J. This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. New York: Plume, 2007. Print.

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Audiotopia: Music, Race and America By Josh Kun

Ranging from Los Angeles to Havana to the Bronx to the U.S.-Mexico border and from klezmer to hip hop to Latin rock, this groundbreaking book injects popular music into contemporary debates over American identity. Josh Kun insists that America is not a single chorus of many voices folded into one, but rather various republics of sound that represent multiple stories of racial and ethnic difference. To this end he covers a range of music and listeners to evoke the ways that popular sounds have expanded our idea of American culture and American identity. Artists as diverse as The Weavers, Cafe Tacuba, Mickey Katz, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Bessie Smith, and Ozomatli reveal that the song of America is endlessly hybrid, heterogeneous, and enriching a source of comfort and strength for populations who have been taught that their lives do not matter. Kun melds studies of individual musicians with studies of painters such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and of writers such as Walt Whitman, James Baldwin, and Langston Hughes. There is no history of race in the Americas that is not a history of popular music, Kun claims. Inviting readers to listen closely and critically, “Audiotopia “forges a new understanding of sound that will stoke debates about music, race, identity, and culture for many years to come.”

Kun, Josh. Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America. Berkeley: U of California, 2005. Print.

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All You Need to Know About the Music Business

The past two decades have seen file-sharing technology and digital streaming services transform the music business from top to bottom, and the changes keep coming at breakneck speed. How are record labels adapting to the demand for instantly accessible, low-cost music while coping with piracy? And what does it all mean for aspiring and established artists today? Donald Passman, one of the most trusted music lawyers in the country, offers his sage advice for creating, selling, sharing, and protecting your music in the Information Age in this updated eighth edition of All You Need to Know About the Music Business. Called “the industry bible” by the Los Angeles Times, Passman’s comprehensive guide—which has sold hundreds of thousands of copies over the past twenty years—draws on his unparalleled experience and up-to-the-minute knowledge of industry trends. Executives and artists, experts and novices alike, will benefit from Passman’s detailed yet easy-to-understand explanations of the latest technology, legalities, and practices shaping the music business, such as: • Royalties for music transmitted via digital down- loads, streaming services, cloud lockers, and apps • Updated licensing regulations and industry agreements • The most recent recording and music publishing deals • The new challenges for performing rights societies He also gives guidance on the basics, such as how to: • Select and hire a winning team of advisors— personal and business managers, agents, and attorneys—and structure their commissions, percentages, and fees in a way that will protect you and maximize these relationships • Master the major and finer points of contract negotiations • Navigate the ins and outs of songwriting and music publishing • Maximize concert, touring, and merchandising agreements Anyone interested in making and marketing music—musicians, songwriters, agents, promoters, publishers, managers, and record company executives—needs this crucial text to keep up with the frenetic pace of technological and legal change. No one understands the music business better than Passman. Let him show you how to “make it” in one of the world’s most dynamic and challenging industries.

Passman, Donald S. All You Need to Know about the Music Business. New York: Free, 2012. Print.

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The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960′s Counterculture and the Avant-Garde

“Who knew, prior to this lovingly detailed account, that five musical discontents could construct what amounted to a cultural particle accelerator in a small San Franciscan house? This book allows readers a window onto the confluence of artistry, innovation, drugs, sexuality, poverty, resourcefulness and, most importantly, the sense of fun that permeated the air during those years.”–Richard Henderson, critic for “The Wire” magazine “As I devoured this vibrantly detailed history of the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s, I found myself wishing repeatedly that I’d been born a couple of decades earlier, so I could have been present for a string of historic events: the debut of the Don Buchla synthesizer, the premiere of Terry Riley’s “In C,” Ramon Sender’s “Tropical Fish Opera,” Pauline Oliveros’s multimedia concert at the Trips Festival. The heroes of the Center were in the business of realizing unimagined possibilities, and they did much to shape the legendary culture of San Francisco in the later sixties.”–Alex Ross “Hats off to David Bernstein for flooding a dark corner of recent musical history with new light, as warm as it is brilliant.”–Richard Taruskin, author of “The Oxford History of Western Music” “This high-voltage oral history takes us straight back to the West Coast epicenter of experimental music in the early 1960s, where synthesizers and tape loops met light shows and LSD, and Merry Pranksters hung with the masters of minimalism. Reading it is like visiting a foreign country and realizing you were born there.”–Fred Turner, author of “From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism”

Bernstein, David W. The San Francisco Tape Music Center: 1960s Counterculture and the Avant-garde. Berkeley: U of California, 2008. Print.

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A Visit from the Goon Squad

Bennie is an aging former punk rocker and record executive. Sasha is the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Here Jennifer Egan brilliantly reveals their pasts, along with the inner lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs. With music pulsing on every page, A Visit from the Goon Squad is a startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption.

Egan, Jennifer. A Visit from the Goon Squad. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. Print.

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Essentials of Music Theory

Alfred’s Essentials of Music Theory is designed for students of any age, whether listeners or performers, who want to have a better understanding of the language of music. In this all-in-one theory course, you will learn the essentials of music through concise lessons, practice your music reading and writing skills in the exercises, improve your listening skills with the available ear-training CDs (sold separately), and test your knowledge with a review that completes each unit.The Student Complete Book includes Books 1-3 in a spiral-bound format.

Surmani, Andrew, Karen Farnum. Surmani, and Morton Manus. Alfred’s Essentials of Music Theory: Lessons, Ear Training, Workbook. Van Nuys, CA: Alfred Pub., 1998. Print.

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