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This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You (2022)

par Susan Rogers, Ogi Ogas

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1655164,286 (4)18
"A legendary record producer-turned-brain scientist explains why you fall in love with music. This Is What It Sounds Like is a journey into the science and soul of music that reveals the secrets of why your favorite songs move you. But it's also a story of a musical trailblazer who began as a humble audio tech in Los Angeles to became Prince's chief engineer for Purple Rain, and then create other No. 1 hits (including Barenaked Ladies' "One Week") as one of the most successful female record producers of all time. Now an award-winning professor of cognitive neuroscience, Susan Rogers leads readers to musical self-awareness. She explains that we each possess a unique "listener profile" based on our brain's natural response to seven key dimensions of any song. Are you someone who prefers lyrics or melody? Do you like music "above the neck" (intellectually stimulating), or "below the neck" (instinctual and rhythmic)? Whether your taste is esoteric or mainstream, Rogers guides readers to recognize their musical personality, and offers language to describe one's own unique taste. Like most of us, Rogers is not a musician, but she shows that all of us can be musical-simply by being an active, passionate listener. While exploring the science of music and the brain, Rogers also takes us behind the scenes of record-making, using her insider's ear to illuminate the music of Prince, Frank Sinatra, Kanye West, Lana Del Rey, and many others. She shares records that changed her life, contrasts them with those that appeal to her coauthor and students, and encourages you to think about the records that define your own identity. Told in a lively and inclusive style, This Is What It Sounds Like will refresh your playlists, deepen your connection to your favorite artists, and change the way you listen to music"--… (plus d'informations)
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» Voir aussi les 18 mentions

5 sur 5
What about music do you, personally, enjoy? That's what Susan Rogers, former music producer turned neuroscientist, and Ogi Ogas, computational neuroscientist, investigate in this engaging book. Whether it be authenticity, realism, novelty, melody, lyrics, rhythm, or timbre, we each have a sweet spot when it comes to the music we love. Rogers and Ogas break each down for us, with a variety of examples on a book website that link to songs on streaming services, so that we can discover our personal listening profile.

I really enjoyed reading and listening through this and trying to work out my own listener profile as I went. The authors' love for music comes out in their descriptions. The records (individually recordings of songs) chosen as examples are distinctive and do a great job of illustrating each feature. And, when needed, more complex science about the brain and music is broken down in an understandable way for laypeople. This is narrative nonfiction with a wide appeal - after all, who doesn't like to listen to music? ( )
  bell7 | Apr 30, 2023 |
This is a really well put together book with invisible endnotes and a lot of musical examples. Both Susan’s and Ogi’s musical preferences are mentioned, although Susan does get more of the airtime because she’s the primary author and the former music producer. I liked that the authors took pains to stress that just because they chose certain songs as good *examples* of what they were talking about, that didn’t mean the songs themselves were good or that you should feel obliged to like them (especially the Shaggs’ song “I’m So Happy When You’re Near”, which is shall we say an acquired taste).

Like any good music book, this one comes with a playlist and the playlist is integral to the book. The discussions work best when you do actually stop and listen to the songs being discussed when you see them come up on the page. The book’s website provides handy links to Tidal, Spotify, IHeartRadio, and iTunes, although of course you can also use YouTube or even your own catalogue if you happen to have the songs in your collection. One of the most delightful moments for me was relistening to David Byrne’s “My Love Is You”, which makes excellent use of a tuba but I had never realized it was there, because I was so busy focusing on Byrne’s voice (and the lyrics, which include the classic “Sometimes dear, you tell me I’m an asshole / Sometimes you’re an asshole too”).

My favourite chapter was the one about rhythm, which talked about grooves. After reading it, I ended up listening to one of my all-time favourite songs (“Slippery People”, by Talking Heads, specifically the Stop Making Sense version), and paid close attention to where I moved and what beats I hit. I tended to move on the snare. Based on the discussion of the songs in the rhythm chapter, that suggested to me that I am inclined to groove on the downbeat.

Overall I really liked this and would consider getting a copy if I came across it. But what I’d really love is the chance to spend an hour with Susan and get her input on my favourite songs and what my listener profile is. Even without that, though, I know I’m going to have fun going through my music collection again and seeing what makes it what it is. This is worth reading if you’re interested in music. ( )
  rabbitprincess | Mar 8, 2023 |
Susan Rogers, one of the authors of This is What it Sounds Like, is the sound engineer and record producer behind some of Prince’s biggest hits. So how did she come up with the book’s title? I’m embarrassed to say how long it took me to get it. What I didn’t get was the reason behind the subtitle, ‘What the Music You Love Says About You’, because it doesn’t do a very good job of describing the book. I think a better one would have been this quote, “...understand why you fall in love with a record...by understanding your listener profile". The listener profile it refers to is each person's unique response to seven key elements of music, such as melody, lyrics, timbre, authenticity, and more, that shapes their musical taste.
Since the website ThisisWhatitSoundsLike.com explains all of this far better than I can I’m not going to try. Also, I’m not going to spill the tea on which of the artists the author worked with recorded one song on every album in the buff. (Hint: it wasn’t Prince) ( )
  wandaly | Dec 19, 2022 |
I found this book very interesting- the main author was a recording engineer for years (working with such people and Prince and Bare Naked Ladies) and has many stories about how creating an album works. After being an engineer, she went back to college and became a neuroscientist, specializing in how music and sound works in people’s brains (Ogas, her co-author, is also a neuroscientist that works in sound). So she understands music and sound from multiple angles. She explains what seven different aspects of music are- lyrics, melody, rhythm, timbre, novelty, realism, and authenticity- and how they work. She talks about doing ‘record pulls’, where multiple people bring out their favorite music and share it, and how, if you like a certain musician, you’ll probably like musician “X”, also. It’s a really educational read.

But- there is always a but- at no point does it tell you what the music says about you. Well, I did learn that my complete lack of rhythm is genetic and there is nothing I can do about it, sadly. I was kind of expecting something that told you how empathetic you were or if you were forward thinking. So, I enjoyed the book- lots of anecdotes about working in the music industry and lots of neurology information- but the title is a little deceptive. Four and a half stars. ( )
  lauriebrown54 | Dec 11, 2022 |
Really interesting look at HOW and WHY music affects us the way it does, as well as a look at what a music producer does. ( )
  beaujoe | Nov 2, 2022 |
5 sur 5
You’re in the mood for music. You reach for your phone and scroll through the titles in your library, or maybe you select a vinyl album from your shelves. At this moment, do you ever think about what, exactly, you are doing? What do you hope will happen over the next few minutes as the record plays? What do you want?

The music we love is functional. In order to survive in the vast entertainment marketplace, a record – that is to say, any recorded music – must serve a need. Choosing one for enjoyment is not unlike choosing a meal from a menu or a shirt from a rack. When an item, a person, a social situation, or even an idea works out well for us, we’re apt to repeat it. Thus our tastes in the things we consume come to be the way they are through a combination of genetics, biology, and happenstance. The biologist D’Arcy Thompson summed it up when he wrote: “Everything is the way it is because it got that way.”

Your music-loving brain is shaped by the sounds of your environment. As infants we begin categorising pitch changes based on the way caregivers use their voices to calm, engage, warn or reprimand us. This gives us an ear and, eventually, a preference for melody. In childhood we learn implicitly how music represents our culture. Children tend to dislike unfamiliar music because they are just beginning to link it to a sense of social belonging. Adolescence is when our musical flag flies the highest. Self-identity may be the single most important issue that most of us wrestle with in our teens. Publicly associating ourselves with a musical artist or style lets us cling to a cultural life buoy while we figure out the best way to represent ourselves to the world.

For the vast majority of us, music was playing throughout our youth – sometimes in settings where music listening was the prime objective, such as at concerts, other times just hovering in the background. Occasionally these records happened to play while our minds and bodies experienced pleasant feelings: attraction, pride, amusement or a warm sense of communal belonging. The pattern of activity in your brain caused by a record playing at a happy moment could become, on a subliminal level, associated with the presence of feel-good neurotransmitters drifting through your veins. By hitching its wagon to the star of good feelings, a record can get an unconscious boost, nudging it higher in your estimation.

Using music to facilitate healing can create a lifelong connection between the artist and the listener
Some early musical encounters may have been more focused. Music may have given you the words to make sense of a bad day at school, or equipped you with the right attitude to face the day ahead. We bond with those who comfort us when we’re hurting. Using music to facilitate healing can create a lifelong connection between the artist and the listener.

For more than two decades I worked as a record producer and recording engineer, helping musicians bring their creative ideas into a physical form. I worked with a variety of artists from the very famous (Prince, the Jacksons, David Byrne) to the less well known but highly talented (Geggy Tah, Nil Lara, Jeff Black). Some of my happiest times were spent in the late, quiet hours when all of the work was done. Making records is hard work, yet we were often too tired and wired to call it a night. Musicians and crew would wind the day down in conversation and, most often, the topic would turn to music. Mind-blowing concerts, virtuoso performers, ingenious records and innovative sound designs were mentally sketched for each other. In these moments we stopped being record makers and became who we were when we began our careers: music listeners.

Being with musicians, sharing thoughts on how music functions and how it fulfils our needs, gave me confidence in my own undeveloped musicianship. Despite being untrained in any musical skill, I could always hold my own in conversations about how music worked. Records are made in the real world, but they function in the mental world of the listener. By being in touch with my own “listener profile”– the melodies, rhythms, lyrics, sounds, performances and musical styles that resonated the most strongly with me – I developed an ear that I could use in collaboration with those who wrote, played and sang.

During those late-night hangs, filling each other’s heads with visions of sessions and concerts, it didn’t matter what genre of music we liked. The running theme in these conversations was musical love.

Yet our record-making labours were conducted in the shadow of that love, not in its warmth. Will listeners “get” this cryptic lyric? Is this the right harmony for the subtext we want? What will make someone turn up the volume when this groove plays? The infinite variety of listener profiles ensures that no one will ever make a record that pleases every listener, any more than a chef will create a dish that everyone will eat. There are too many variables to be able to predict with absolute certainty that the majority of listeners will connect with a given record. Even the most accomplished musical minds can flounder at this task. Two of Prince’s biggest selling songs are Nothing Compares 2 U, which was sung by Sinéad O’Connor, and Kiss, which he initially gave to another band. At the time we recorded them Prince hadn’t realised that they could be hits.

We can’t always explain our musical taste to others. Some listeners are boastful while others are bashful when describing the music they reach for the most. Neither of these feelings is justified. As with our romantic partners, no one’s musical loves are perfect. The only thing that matters is that a record is perfect for you.
ajouté par kleh | modifierThe Guardian, Susan Rogers (Nov 18, 2022)
 

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"A legendary record producer-turned-brain scientist explains why you fall in love with music. This Is What It Sounds Like is a journey into the science and soul of music that reveals the secrets of why your favorite songs move you. But it's also a story of a musical trailblazer who began as a humble audio tech in Los Angeles to became Prince's chief engineer for Purple Rain, and then create other No. 1 hits (including Barenaked Ladies' "One Week") as one of the most successful female record producers of all time. Now an award-winning professor of cognitive neuroscience, Susan Rogers leads readers to musical self-awareness. She explains that we each possess a unique "listener profile" based on our brain's natural response to seven key dimensions of any song. Are you someone who prefers lyrics or melody? Do you like music "above the neck" (intellectually stimulating), or "below the neck" (instinctual and rhythmic)? Whether your taste is esoteric or mainstream, Rogers guides readers to recognize their musical personality, and offers language to describe one's own unique taste. Like most of us, Rogers is not a musician, but she shows that all of us can be musical-simply by being an active, passionate listener. While exploring the science of music and the brain, Rogers also takes us behind the scenes of record-making, using her insider's ear to illuminate the music of Prince, Frank Sinatra, Kanye West, Lana Del Rey, and many others. She shares records that changed her life, contrasts them with those that appeal to her coauthor and students, and encourages you to think about the records that define your own identity. Told in a lively and inclusive style, This Is What It Sounds Like will refresh your playlists, deepen your connection to your favorite artists, and change the way you listen to music"--

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