Res Musicae: Essays in Honor of James W. Pruett Book

I found this on one of my shelves at my parents house. I really liked the science of this book, but one star off because it primarily appealed to my nerdy ability to read highly technical text. If it wasn't that I was a math geek in real life, I think this book might be a bit unapproachable. It covers across instruments and in that regard it may be a bit much for the usual person. However, the idea of what sounds are about combined with the technology demonstrations are really quite fantastic.

In voice class, you often describe sound as larger or wide like a frequency band. Nowadays we use Garage band and the like to be able to see resonance. To think of singing or playing an instrument in those terms is an excellent way to really know the feel of things deeply.

I like the section on the piano that describes the four elements of what you can do to manipulate sound. In general, you can only really manipulate tempo and duration. The voice can do so much more. If you think about what the piano does with just these two things as the player, it's super cool. And then throw in the sustain pedal and you've got a third dimension, albeit limited relative to a super free instrument like voice. However, just think how much is possible with those constraints and then apply it to voice. Very very cool stuff.

I also love the chapter on creative sound vs. creative image or other forms of creativity. Really made me think about how that plays into other areas of work. We are - as humans - creative beings. We make tools and we shape our reality entirely unconstrained. I'd never meaningfully considered that creativity might also be divided into subgroups each with very in-depth training methodologies, e.g. you train visual creativity by drawing, painting, tracing, imagining actively, you train interactive creativity, by acting, role playing, etc, you train auditory creativity by listening to music hearing differences. Fascinating.

What does it mean as we take the arts out of school and force a STEM approach to learning? It is too obvious that this will be an HR issue for the future.