Mind the Music
Artur C. Jaschke
Non-fiction
Publication: 30 January 2024
ISBN: 9789083206097
Music has a way of minding our brains, and Mind the Music explores the effects that it has on our cognition, emotion, and behaviour. As well as into the fabric of our culture, music is woven into the fabric of our humanity – but where does it come from, and how does it help us to learn?
Intuition and improvisation turn out to be critical to understanding our own embodied cognition. We have hunches in a way that computers do not. But as technology takes over what were once human tasks, there is a temptation and even tendency to enjoy our creature comforts while neglecting our natural faculties. So how do we re-learn the ability to improvise, to help us find our place in the nexus of human and machine?
Mind the Music is a reminder that it is important to keep your brain active, and an argument for the glory of intuitive choices. It dares you to improvise and dance to the music of the mind.
About the Author
Artur C. Jaschke received his bachelor's degree in music (double bass and drums) from Dartington College of Arts, UK, and the University of Otago, New Zealand. During this time, he already developed a strong interest in musical cognition and the neurology of music, he obtained his Master's degree at the University of Amsterdam, in Musicology and Music Cognition (thesis title: Controlled Freedom: Cognitive Economy versus Hierarchical Organization in Jazz Improvisation) and his PhD from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in clinical Neuropsychology with a specialization in Clinical Neuromusicology (title: Is Music a Luxury?).
He is currently a Lecturer in music-based therapies and interventions at the department of music therapy at the ArtEZ University of the Arts in Enschede, specialized in the interrelationship of music, technology and brain maturation in clinical and non-clinical populations, as well as clinical Research Fellow Ecologies in clinical Neuromusicology at the Neonatal Intensive Care department of the University Medical Center Groningen and the Cambridge Institute for Music Therapy Research in England.
