EG Books

i didn't give the book 5 stars because i haven't finished it yet but this book is amazing! sooo insightful - and is written in such an intelligent and eloquent way - i will be reading more from this author. There were some pages that gave me a "whoa" moment. Interesting look into family dynamics. i started reading from the middle out and then started at the begining. I am NOT an art/artsy person so i tend to not recognize the power of art and art therapy but this book really opened my eyes to the way it leaps over the boundaries of communication. especially when communication is difficult for children or "victems".
i highly reccommend this book!!

When I was 10 I went to a Pops Concert conducted by Fiedler in San Francisco and stood in line for his autograph. I expected a Burl Ives warm-fuzzy guy. What I got was a no-nonsense, brusk, get-away-kid-you-bother-me guy. But, I still loved him and his work. It is this paradox that Fiedler's daughter writes about in her (auto)biography. But, her life is no less interesting than her father's. What you get out of this book is an insight into the life of a great artist, fueled by the conflict at home between and among his wife and children, and between his art and the orchestra personnel and administration that sometimes seemed indifferent to him. I found the book exceptional.

"Autism and Play" is a great book for anyone who thinks that play therapy is a key part for the success of children with autism.

The collection of articles in this book gives a fascinating overview of human musical cognition and how it is modeled computationally. It also addresses the effect of brain lesions or abnormalities on musical competence and abilities, and thus gives the reader a taste of the kind of research that is being done in current research circles in the cognitive neuroscience of music. It is readily apparent after reading the articles that much is known about musical cognition, but there are many questions yet to answer. Because of space constraints, only a few of the articles will be reviewed here.

When considering human musical ability and competence it is natural to ask whether it is the result of evolutionary adaptations or whether it is "accidental" or "evolutionary vestige." The article by David Huron discusses these questions in some detail, with emphasis on the ability of evolution to shape not only physiological attributes and functions, but also human attitudes, emotions, cognitive abilities, and so on. The author gives an overview of the `nonadaptive pleasure seeking' (NAPS) view of music, and also the view that music is indeed an evolutionary vestige. He concludes, interestingly, that the truth of NAPS would place music lovers at an evolutionary disadvantage. If music is an evolutionary vestige, it still is important to ask, says the author, what value it had in the past for human survival. He discusses various types of evidence for supporting an evolutionary origin for music, such as genetic, neurological, ethological, and archaeological. Noting that no genes have been discovered which are correlated with musical ability, the other types of evidence do add plausibility to his evolutionary hypothesis, he argues at length in the article. The ability of music to form social bonds he believes shows the greatest promise as a plausible evolutionary origin for music. Most interesting is his discussion of how music brings about social bonding, with the hormone oxytocin playing a major role in this regard.

The article by Stephen McAdams and Daniel Matzkin on the perception of musical similarity is interesting for its own sake but also from the standpoint of artificial intelligence. Measures of similarity and to what extent a given concept can be changed and still be judged or perceived to be in the same category are of great interest in artificial intelligence. The authors of this article argue that the empirical evidence in similarity perception limits the `transformation space' for given music material. In other words, one can only go so far in the transformation of the original musical material before it is judged as completely new. The authors discuss in detail the factors that contribute to these limitations. In this context, the authors discuss a very interesting experiment to test among other things whether professional musicians are able to hear similarity to a greater degree of transformation if the transformations respect certain syntactical rules. The authors conclude, and their conclusions adhere to what is expected based on listening experiences, that the space of possible variations of musical material that is perpetually similar to an original piece of music is very limited.

Neural networks naturally enter into any discussion on human cognition, and they do so here in the article by Barbara Tillman, Jamshed Bharucha, and Emmanuel Bigand, who use them to model music cognition. Simulation of mental processes is of immense importance in brain research and allows one to study the effect of various anatomical and physiological abnormalities on cognition. The authors mention these capabilities in their article, but their emphasis is on explaining how neural networks coupled with unsupervised learning, can be used to model music cognition. They also mention, but do not discuss in any detail, the use of self-organizing maps to simulate the neural plasticity that allows the capacity to extract regularities and to then become sensitive to musical structures and regularities.

The article by John Brust discusses the effect of neurological disorders on musical function. The author discusses `musicogenic seizures', which are triggered by the hearing of music. Interestingly, these seizures can be triggered in some people by merely listening to their own voice. In some individuals, sound can also produce the perception of colors. This is called `synesthesia' by the author, but he does not discuss it in any great length. Apparently synesthesia is poorly understood, but has been noted to happen very frequently in individuals using hallucinogenic drugs. Also discussed is `amusia" which is an acquired impairments of musical processing.

The next article by Isabelle Peretz continues the discussion on amusia, but the emphasis is on what it reveals about brain specialization for music. The author holds that music has neuroanatomical specialization, in that there is a collection of neural networks that are dedicated to the processing of music. The author discusses various patients who had accidents causing brain damage in certain areas of the brain but were still able to retain musical skill. This occurred even when the damage occurred in the part of the brain responsible for language abilities. Even more surprising is that the auditory recognition of music is supported by cognitive processes that are not used at all in speech recognition or in environmental sound recognition. The author also discusses musical savants and the phenomenon of tone deafness. In terms of neural networks, the author asserts that brain specialization for music involves the encoding of pitch along musical scales and the ability to impute a regular beat to incoming events. She believes though that further research is needed to show that neural networks that are domain specific for music are the result of evolutionary adaptation.

The book covers a broad range of topics relevant to choral conducting and choral music, an excellent introduction for someone new to the topic, and mostly practical advice (especially in the rehearsal techniques section).

When it gets onto the 'planning and management' sections, I'm frequently reminded that this is a book from the US (for example, discussion of Junior High School choral groups and glee clubs (which is not a concept I know anything about!), but this is a minor comment as the information is still valid for UK conducting experiences.

At the end of each chapter there is a suggested bibliography for further research - very helpful if you want to explore a topic further.

Now it would just be nice if this book were easily available in the UK!

I never knew anything about my ballet teacher's past nor the history of the Dr Zipper concerts in my grammer school. While no mention of me and my stellar performance as a carrot in Trudl's recital was made, the book was interesting and engaging.

This book has reproducible visual exercises. Some of these exercises require more writing than drawing, while others are more focused on actual drawing. I use this book for a group with adolescents. Several of the exercises would probably work better for adults. Also please note that the author is British and some of the exercises (such as the advertisement exercise) refer to British terms. Despite these drawbacks, I would still recommend this book to someone looking for a way to incorporate visual expercises into their group or individual therapy sessions.

This is a comprehensive book that outlines the capabilities of Microsoft Entourage (an MS Office subcomponent) in an easy to understand and highly illustrated guide. Special emphisis has been placed on teaching the student how to master all of the power of Entourage from the email and newsgroup options, to linking and PDA interface. This book is a must for the beginner seeking to understand Entourage's increased capabilities over the old MS Outlook email program, as well as the expert seeking to maximize the power of Entourage and Office.

This book contains a variety of games which can be used by both typically developing and handicapped learners. The games are motivating and fun, and could easily be used in a physicsal education class to make sure every one is fully included. I have a son with a visual impairment and bought the book to give to the gym teacher where he attends school. I am very happy with the book.

This is a really nice book for someone starting out working with the elderly in a creative arts therapy field. The book is a quick, short and easy read, and demonstrates the benefits of art, music and movement therapies and gerontology. As an art therapist, I think the art therapy section was accurate, but not very detailed or in depth. A lay person or beginner may not be able to fully grasp the philosophy or benefits of art therapy, but there are many other books out there for that. Nevertheless, it's a great read for a "taste" of several creative arts therapies and how they benefit and can be used with this population.