*Dr. Susan Rogers, Ogi Ogas* # Progressive Summary This book is written in an engaging style. The author has great anecdotes from her life. At 20, when she was at a Led Zeppelin concert at the Forum arena in Los Angeles, she vowed that she would return as a sound engineer for the best musicians in the world. 8 years later, she went back as a sound engineer for Prince. She became one of the few successful women music producers in the 80s and 90s. She was gifted the premise of the book by Miles Davis, when they were in Prince's house in Minnesota one evening. Miles Davis told her, enigmatically, that "Some of the best musicians I know aren't musicians." Years later, after studying psychology, she realized the truth of this statement, and that listening to music was just as much a creative act. Her discovery is that a listener completes a song according to their personal music profile, which is shaped by 7 dimensions: - authenticity - realism - novelty - melody - lyrics - rhythm - timbre Each chapter of the book is designed like a record pull, drawing our attention to how we connect with music. # Definitions record pull - when a group of friends play music for one another; ideally, you would play songs that are meaningful for you, and that might not be so well known to the others # Chapter Summaries ## Chapter 1 - Authenticity Record pull - Shaggs, "I'm So Happy When You're Near" > You can hear authenticity in early-twentieth-century recordings that were made before performers worried about record deals and music videos. You hear it in the performance of a musician who thinks no one is listening. You see it in the finger paintings of a child and taste it in the cookies at a local bake sale. When the act of creation itself is the end goal, rather than adulation or monetary gain, the quality of the outcome may not be assured—but the intention can often be more readily felt. > Our most private dreams and fantasies—the fears, hopes, and longings nestled deep in our psychic core—are all bound together in a newly discovered neural network in the brain, one associated with our sense of self. The discovery of this unknown brain structure unveiled an even bigger surprise: it turns out that one of the best ways to activate this personalized “self network” is by listening to music that resonates with the sweet spots on your listener profile. > > The music you respond to most powerfully can reveal those parts of yourself that are the most “you”—those places your mind unerringly returns to when it is daydreaming or fantasizing. Thus, by learning about the qualities of music that match up best with your listener profile, you will not only become a better listener, you’ll become better acquainted with your innermost nature. > Be it records or romantic partners, we fall in love with the ones who make us feel like our best and truest self. ## Realism # Quotes > Listening to music—attending to what works and doesn’t work in a song, feeling its rhythms and melodies as if they were as much a part of your body as your fingers and hips—is an indispensable component of what music is. Practically speaking, without a listener, music does not exist. > The dimensions of your listener profile serve as distinctive routes through which your body and brain can fall in love with a piece of music. Each dimension contains a personal, neural “sweet spot” where music can provide you with your deepest experience of musical joy. # References