This Is What It Sounds Like: A Legendary Producer Turned Neuroscientist on Finding Yourself Through Music by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas is a book dripping with stories, data, science and music history. I thought it was wonderful. It was engaging on every level and I read the whole thing with pen in hand.
The authors’ credentials are plentiful: record producer for Prince, doctorate degrees, literary awards, science and music awards… but you the whole time you’re reading you can tell – these folks love music. Which is something I can read about all day long.
The premise of the book is simple: all of us have unique “listener profile” defined by your brain’s handling of seven key dimensions that music has: Authenticity, Realism, Novelty, Lyrics, Rhythm, Timbre and Melody. Each one of those characteristics gets its own chapter explaining how your personal physiology, childhood, adulthood, language, etc. affects how your brain translates music into toe tapping, goose bumps, tears, smiles, screams, frowns and head bopping. It was fascinating and I’ve loved playing some of my favorite tunes recently and trying to pay attention to what Rogers and Ogas outline. It certainly has not made my actual tunes more enjoyable or anything, but the experience has been fun trying to figure out when I’m listening “with my head” versus when I’m listening “with my heart”.
One of the best parts is their exploration of the evolution and growth of modern music. There are lots of examples given in the book. Some tunes are great and some are really… really… not… but they’re all fun to listen to. The book has some URLs but most of the content and songs are listed on their website pointing to various playlists and services so you can listen to the songs (organized by chapter) being discussed and weigh their impact.
This Is What It Sounds Like is full of percents and statistics. Some of my favorite are along the lines of when people here a song, a certain number of them visualize the musicians playing, some folks’ brains start up a movie in their head trying to storyboard the lyrics, some folks have memories triggered and if you’re of the right age you’re probably picturing the music video. Anyway, the authors have stats and some experiments to back things up all along the way.
The book is certainly full of opinionated takes which are fun to argue with (but debates I think I’d lose if were really face-to-face with someone who worked with Prince for so many years).
I think the book scratches the same itch when a foodie reads stories about the founding of famous restaurants and recipes or a cinephile reads how Alfred Hitchcock decided to frame certain shots. This Is What It Sounds Like will just make listening to music a little richer. And the book makes for great cocktail party conversation.
I give it 4 out of 5 stars. It was very fun.
