In this ground-breaking synthesis of art and science, Diana Deutsch, one of the world's leading experts on the psychology of music, shows how illusions of music and speech--many of which she herself discovered--have fundamentally altered thinking about the brain. These astonishing illusions show that people can differ strikingly in how they hear musical patterns--differences that reflect variations in brain organization as well as influences of language on music perception. Drawing on a wide variety of fields, including psychology, music theory, linguistics, and neuroscience, Deutsch examines questions such as: When an orchestra performs a symphony, what is the "real" music? Is it in the mind of the composer, or the conductor, or different members of the audience? Deutsch also explores extremes of musical ability, and other surprising responses to music and speech. Why is perfect pitch so rare? Why do some people hallucinate music or speech? Why do we hear phantom words and phrases? Why are we subject to stuck tunes, or "earworms"? Why do we hear a spoken phrase as sung just because it is presented repeatedly? In evaluating these questions, she also shows how music and speech are intertwined, and argues that they stem from an early form of communication that had elements of both. Many of the illusions described in the book are so striking and paradoxical that you need to hear them to believe them. The book enables you to listen to the sounds that are described while reading about them.
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This book covers a wide swath of mate-rial, and it holds together well. The specificity of the early chapters feed into the large concepts of the later chapters. Deutsch has succeeded in creating a book that is accessible to the non-expert but has enough detail that even the most accomplished audiophile and neuro-acoustician will leave satisfied and enlightened. * Evelyn Way, Maxxon Corporation, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society * Musical Illusions and Phantom Words offers a fascinating retrospective on the history and science of auditory and musical illusions, written from the unique perspective of one of the fieldas founding pioneers. Deutschas volume on music and auditory illusions ranks among the classics in music cognition and perception. We believe this seminal work will continue to enrich our understanding of music cognition and sound perception for decades to come. * Parker Tichko and Psyche Loui, Perception * Deutsch's book is an elegant and eloquent lesson that our perception of music, like all perception, is no passive conduit. It is an endless pas de deux between expectation and experience, and the brain actively creates the things it hearsaThis book, almost perfect in its way, rises to its great theme * Jason Warren, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, Brain: A Journal of Neurology * From her early pioneering work to the present day, Diana's fascinating work and observations on music have captured our imagination and inspired generations of researchers. In this remarkably accessible and deeply engaging book, she expounds upon some of her most intriguing work on the varieties of illusions that arise in music and language, and what they tell us about the mind. This is a world where distinct melodies are heard in the two ears, even though only one was presented, where musicians suddenly experience auditory hallucinations of their own music, and where speech is mysteriously transformed into song. Captivating and profound, Diana Deutsch's book will be delight not only to researchers, but to anyone who is curious about the human mind. * William Forde Thompson, author of Music, Thought and Feeling: Understanding the Psychology of Music * This is a remarkable book by an unassailable grand master of sound perception and auditory illusions. The text is very clear and very lively. Finally a book on sound perception has the sounds right on the pages! Point your phone, hear the sounds, it's that easy. Not only the sounds, but explanations from the author in her own voice. I settled in and felt like I was having a conversation with her. Deutsch is a keen and careful scholar, yet manages to make the pages incredibly entertaining. When one reads this book, one realizes that Prof. Deutsch didn't "get lucky" when she discovered her well known illusions. There is a program, guided by deep knowledge and intuition. She shares both with us in this wonderful book." * Eric J. Heller, Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Chemistry, and Professor of Physics, Harvard University, author of Why You Hear What You Hear * In this delightful volume Diana Deutsch, a living legend in the field of music psychology, invites us into her laboratory. There, with the help of web-based audio files, we can listen in as she tricks our hearing into revealing some of the inner workings of the human auditory system. Dozens of these musical illusions help us to understand the complexity and marvelous sophistication of how we uncover patterns and meanings in the sounds that we hear." * Robert O. Gjerdingen, Professor of Music, Northwestern University, author of Music in the Galant Style * Diana Deutsch is a true pioneer. In this finely written and yet seriously scientific book, she tells the story of how she discovered phantasms that to our ears are as miraculous as a Fata Morgana is to our eyes. Read and wonder!" * Stefan Klein, Professor of Critical Studies, University of the Arts, Berlin, author of The Science of Happiness * Dr. Deutsch has been one of the world's leading researchers of the psychology of music for over four decades. This book is the culmination of her stellar career of intriguing observations gleaned from her innovative investigative techniques. Her contributions to the field are on par with Oliver Sacks, Roger Shepard, and Jean-Claude Risset. Dr. Deutsch's rigorous yet charming style makes Musical Illusions and Phantom Words equal parts illuminating and fun." * Michael A. Levine, composer * It is a great pleasure to have Diana Deutsch's pioneering work on auditory illusions, and her landmark explorations of the influence of language on music perception brought together in the summation of a stellar career that has profoundly influenced the field of music psychology and cognition. The underlying thread throughout the book is the extraordinary complexity of the auditory system and the wide range of individual differences among listeners." * Jonathan Berger, Denning Family Provostial Professor in Music, Stanford University * Diana Deutsch's pioneering work on auditory illusions opened up a crack through which music and speech perception could be understood in new ways. This engaging volume, laced with anecdotes and firsthand accounts, should pique anyone's curiosity about how the mind hears." * Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, Professor, Princeton University * The Yanny-Laurel meme and other audio illusions actually say quite a bit about the perception of music and speech and the organization of the human brain. Diana Deutsch, the world's foremost expert on these fascinating "perceptual anomalies," makes compelling arguments for a variety of issues, such as that music and speech originated from a protolanguage; that our past experience unconsciously affects what we hear; that music theory can now be put to experimental tests. She has shown that absolute pitch, once thought to be completely hereditary and extremely rare, is not at all unusual among musicians in China, where a tone language is spoken. Anyone who has been mesmerized by Necker cubes and Escher prints will find this book engrossing and entertaining-it is a mind-expanding, ear-opening tour de force." * Philip Yam, Science Editor and former Online Managing Editor for Scientific American Magazine *
Diana Deutsch is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. A leading researcher on the psychology of music, she is noted for her discovery of musical illusions, and her work on perfect pitch. Deutsch is editor of the book The Psychology of Music, and creator of the compact discs Musical Illusions and Paradoxes, and Phantom Words and Other Curiosities. Among many other honors, she was awarded the Gold Medal Award by the Audio Engineering Society.
List of Modules (QR codes)
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Music, Speech, and Handedness
Chapter 2: Some Musical Illusions are Discovered
Chapter 3: The Perceptual Organization of Streams of Sound
Chapter 4: Strange Loops and Circular Tones
Chapter 5: The Tritone Paradox: An Influence of Speech on How Music is Perceived
Chapter 6: The Mystery of Absolute Pitch: A Rare Ability That Involves both Nature and Nurture
Chapter 7: Phantom Words: Our Knowledge, Beliefs and Expectations Create Illusions of Speech
Chapter 8: Catchy Music and Earworms
Chapter 9: Hallucinations of Music and Speech
Chapter 10: The Speech-To-Song Illusion: Crossing the Borderline between Speech and Song
Chapter 11: Speech and Music Intertwined: Clues to Their Origins
Notes
References
Index
