♪Music

Performance is degraded mostly by self-interference, and the remedy is directed attention rather than more effort.

Connects music theory to auditory neuroscience, explaining why expectation and its violation produce musical pleasure.

The standard explanation of where the money actually goes, written by a lawyer for the side of the table that usually loses.

Every Beatles recording analysed in order, which turns a familiar catalogue into a case study in how fast a craft can develop.

Twentieth-century classical music explained through the politics it was written inside, which is what makes the difficult works legible.

Assumes an untreated room and cheap monitors, and is consequently the most useful production book for the situation most people are actually in.

The standard ethnomusicology survey, which treats each tradition on its own terms rather than as a variation on Western practice.

Improvisation is not spontaneous invention but the fluent recombination of material learned over years — documented from the players themselves.

The species counterpoint method that trained Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, still the standard route into voice leading.

The standard text on writing for instruments as they actually behave, including the ranges where a part becomes unplayable.