Music as Biology: What We Like to Hear and Why

Good course, and a very interesting overview of the human auditory system, the significance of the harmonic series, and a biological perspective on what attracts us to music and how we have developed a musical language. The instructor is very narrative in his lecture style, so I found it helpful to follow along with the transcriptions - he tends to talk on about a point, and it is easy to miss the main point in all of his clarification. I was not a fan of the quizzes; I found them to be confusing in verbiage, often focusing on obscure points within the lectures, or using terminology not addressed in the lectures at all. I also think the course would benefit by the inclusion of a Music Theorist to explain the musical concepts, as the Instructor is a Neuroscientist, and misspoke on music theory a few times; it also would have broken up the uniformity of mostly one speaker throughout a 6-week course. But overall, I thought that this course was very good, and covered some very interesting material, and that the Instructor was very knowledgeable on a variety of topics, and very engaging. He did a great job explaining difficult concepts until you GOT it, even without a scientific background.

This course will give you a biological background of music - why do we like certain tones and scales, and how does it relate to our social and genetic background. The underlying idea is that music we like is similar to human vocalization patterns, and you'll get a nice idea of how we process different scales, which physical attributes are the most important ones, and how do animals do as well. Instructor gives clear lectures, and slides are useful, along with additional reading. Do note that this is a neuroscience course, not a musical theory course, but there will be some musical theory demonstrations, and additional material is available for your perusal as reading or video that demonstrate the musical-theory concepts used. All in all, an interesting and a quite different course.