- Course Introduction
- Introduction to Music as Biology
- Sound Signals, Sound Stimuli, and the Human Auditory System
- An overview of the organization of the human auditory system, and how sound signals are transformed into sound stimuli.
- The Perception of Sound Stimuli
- An introduction to the sound qualities we perceive, and how and why these qualities differ from the information in sound signals.
- Vocalization and Vocal Tones
- A discussion of the nature of vocal sound signals, their biological importance and their role in understanding music.
- Defining Music and Exploring Why We Like It
- The tonal phenomena that need to be explained in any theory of music, and different approaches that have been take to provide answers.
- Musical Scales
- Why a small number of basic scales are used in music worldwide, and how a biological framework explains this and related puzzles.
- Music, Emotion, and Cultural Differences
- How emotion is conveyed by vocal similarity in music across cultures, and how the speech of a culture and its music are related. A summing up of the major points in the course follows.
- Additional Resources
- Additional demonstrations and commentaries by Ruby Froom on some of the musical issues considered in the course, as well as a glossary of terms and bibliography for references.
