This Is What It Sounds Like: A Legendary Producer Turned Neuroscientist on Finding Yourself Through Music
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4.3 • 8 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
One of the Next Big Idea Club's Favorite Nonfiction Books
A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2022
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, rose to become Prince’s chief engineer for Purple Rain, and then created 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Be it records or romantic partners, we fall in love with the ones who make us feel like our best and truest self," writes music producer and neuroscientist Rogers in this pitch-perfect deep dive into the power of music. Determined to ascertain how and why music resonates so strongly with its listeners, Rogers—the chief engineer for Prince's Purple Rain—breaks down the emotional and scientific importance of lyrics, melody, rhythm, and timbre. In brainy yet breezy prose, she explores how a song's melody can actually be more impactful than its lyrics; how audiences crave to hear lyrics they can relate to; and why making music with others facilitates a sense of belonging: "Communal music making bypasses the need to express your musical self as an individual, letting you fuse your identity with something larger than yourself." Most resonant is Rogers's fascinating foray into the ways the mind and music connect; because "our auditory circuitry has more varied and direct connections to our emotion circuitry than does our visual circuity," she writes, "music activates our mind wandering network—and our personal self—more easily and fully than any other art form." Combining erudite analysis with plenty of soul, this will have music lovers rapt.
Customer Reviews
blew me away!
this was assigned reading for a core credit that i finally got around to finishing and man am i glad that i finished it. rogers’ approachable explanations and personal anecdotes in this book makes this not only an educational and thought-provoking read, but also a deeply personal and intimate read. im learning so much about the world around me, the people around me, and myself through music, and this book has played a big part in that! fellow fans of introspection, or just any music lovers with some free-time…give it a shot!
Don’t Bother
A tedious read by a pseudo academic who writes like she continually had an open thesaurus beside her to help her with the big words. Her go-to defense of her more controversial positions is that other music professionals agree with her. What becomes rather apparent is that these more pedigreed professionals determined her opinion so that she could say “me too!” Her arguments to support her more controversial opinions are so weak that you wonder if she genuinely understands the meaning or true creative substance of what she’s defending. Ultimately she’s trying to make herself sound interesting or unconventional in the hopes of creating some sort of artistic credibility but her Emperor’s New Clothes defense of her ideas that rely on the opinions of others falls flat. But, if you’re looking for a contrived, manufactured account of art and creativity this is the book for you.