John Powell, though, believes that knowledge can actually enhance a person’s experience with music. The problem is that understanding the building blocks of music involves discussing other, sometimes difficult topics, such as physics, neuroscience and even psychology. With How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond, Powell may have arrived at something that could be called music theory for the common man. Although he is actually explaining music theory and the science behind it, he does so in a very conversational tone with practical examples and analogies. Readers are not engulfed by academic tones but more in the manner of a one-on-one discussion of what music is — with even a few “I didn’t know that!” moments thrown in. (Famed songwriter Irving Berlin couldn’t write music so he paid musicians to watch his fingers on the piano and write down what he played.)

As such, How Music Works seems to address a gap in the music-related edification of the average reader or listener. It does not look at one or more particular styles of music like music appreciation books. At the same time, it is a broader, perhaps more fundamental look at music theory than books like Daniel Levitin’s This Is Your Brain on Music, which looks at how and why music works in the brain. It ends up as a great resource for those who want to gain a basic yet better understanding of something that is important in our lives.

Powell, who has taught both musical acoustics and physics in England, deserves credit for the manner in which he expresses and helps readers understand audio concepts through written words or material that could be easily lost in jargon or theory. For example, he calls the penultimate note in a scale the “almost there” note, almost perfectly capturing the feel and sense of the note when we hear a scale. Similarly, he frequently uses two tunes we all can hum (“Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow”) to help readers translate the written explanation into our own audio comprehension. (The book also includes a CD with examples from the book for those who desire more audio explanation or stimulation.) Most important, he does an excellent job of explaining fundamental yet crucial music elements.

How Music Works is not limited to the building blocks of music. Powell broadens the scope beyond music theory. For example, he explores how and why different instruments make the sounds they do and how they create what we consider musical notes or tones. He even looks at what type of instrument those interested in playing one might want to consider. Still, the focus is on the fundamental elements of music and how and why Western music developed and is created.

My major criticisms of the book may be largely personal. First, part of Powell’s conversational tone is frequent jocularity and humor. Some, though, may find too large a dose or that a large number are distracting or even sophomoric. For example, a discussion about why and how our ears function as they becomes a bit more banal with the aside that they “are also useful for supporting your sunglasses.” Then there’s occasional lines like, “I have no proof of this, but I think the decibel was invented in a bar, late one night, by a committee of drunken electrical engineers who wanted to take revenge on the world for their total lack of dancing partners.” Because humor is a question of taste, any nonfiction writer is going to run the risk his or her taste clashes with that of any number of readers.

The other criticism may reflect the personal psychic trauma of hours spent as a young piano student practicing with and attempting to memorize a device I felt embodied pure evil, “the circle of fifths.” As How Music Works explores scales and their history and variations, my eyes started glazing over and my brain shut down. It may simply be the damage caused by that experience is too great or that there is no easier or other way to explain scales and their relationships. Yet there were one or two other occasions in the book where I had a similar feeling and the length and detail of the scale discussion makes it even more noticeable.

Yet, odd as it may be, the section of the book giving rise to this criticism still reflects the value of Powell’s approach. His basic, core explanation of a scale boils down to a simple line of abbreviations for tones and semitones, two terms far easier to understand than they may sound here. Had my childhood piano teacher ever used that approach, I might actually have grasped what was behind and the importance of the circle of fifths. In fact, Powell earned my esteem in asking “why generations of unhappy children have been forced at knife-point to practice playing scales on their instruments when they could be having much more fun playing real pieces of music” and arguing the rationale for doing so is “feeble” compared to the damage it causes in kids abandoning music.

That may be the strength of How Music Works. It puts what can be difficult concepts in language and examples most anyone could understand. In so doing, Powell gives sustenance to a wide range of people who may be interested in the why and how of music, whether those with no background whatsoever to the many put off by the music pedagogy of their time.

John Powell, How Music Works

One thing, though, struck me perhaps more than almost any other celebrity/music memoir I’ve read: how abnormal a life becomes when most of it is spent in the spotlight.

It’s something I’ve wondered about in connection with the occasional goofy question about the five people you would invite to dinner if you had the chance. Although names like Dylan and Springsteen come to my mind, I’ve wondered if the years of attention, adulation and being surrounded by an entourage means they can’t really relate to people who lead a “normal” life. Certainly they can discuss politics, music or the weather with anyone that doesn’t fill our discussions with our friends and acquaintances. I can’t help but think, though, that Nor do we have plenty of we may encounter.

I don’t know about Dylan or Springsteen but there’s no doubt Richards has little in common with most of his fans. In fact, he freely describes an often self-indulgent and libertine lifestyle. Life treats his excesses as what they became for him — run of the mill. Of course, it helps to have plenty of fixers available to resolve or ease the problems they caused. And sure, some parents might be on the road for work when their infant child dies. But how many of them have no clue where or if the child is buried?

I’m not knocking Keith Richards. It would be impossible not to be affected when two-thirds of your life or more is spent living in the spotlight and with the lifestyle, temptations and opportunities success afforded him. As the book details Richards’ life after The Rolling Stones were on the road to stardom, there is little doubt that the benefits include a life of privilege with which the average person could never identify. To believe those privileges don’t permanently color a person’s attitudes and persona is to ignore reality.

Keith Richards, Life

Perhaps because I’m that old, I view the albums Santana released from 1970 through 1974 as among the best of the band’s and Carlos Santana’s own lengthy career. In fact, some of the lesser known albums from that period, particularly Caravanserai and Borboletta are among my favorites. Yet when you look at career fluctuations, Santana seems to have cycles of 10-12 years. The band’s latest release, Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics of All Time, may be marking the end of one of those cycles, one it appears he may have used up as the latest vehicle to success.

Santana landed seven albums in the top 10 between 1969 and 1981. In the rest of the 1980s and 1990s, though, the band and the guitarist gradually disappeared from the charts with an accompanying decline in sales. Fans like me would pick up occasional LPs that tended to reflect his Latin-influenced version of jazz-rock fusion. That changed dramatically in 1999, when Santana hooked up again with Clive Davis, who originally signed the band to Columbia Records, and released Supernatural. The album featured contemporary vocalists performing with Santana on a variety of songs written by him and the artists. The album not only reached number one, it was the first to win a Grammy. In fact, not only did Supernatural win Record of the Year, it received a record-tying eight Grammy Awards. Santana used a similar formula on his ensuing two releases by again inviting contemporary vocalists as guest artists.

He and Davis invoke that formula again with Guitar Heaven but while the vocalists are largely contemporary, the songs are not. These are classics to many older listeners. Eight of the 12 cuts come from the period in which Santana had great popular success, 1967 to 1972. The oldest is Willie Dixon’s 1961 “I Ain’t Superstitious” (with Jonny Lang on lead vocals but, interestingly, apparently not playing guitar on the track). The other songs come from 1979 (Van Halen’s “Dance The Night Away”), 1980 (AC/DC’s “Back In Black”) and 1983 (Def Leppard’s “Photograph”).

While the songs are familiar to listeners, Guitar Heaven opens in a somewhat interesting fashion. If a listener were blindfolded, it is unlikely they would identify the band as Santana on the first cut, Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.” With Chris Cornell on vocals, only a slightly more musical yet esoteric approach to the song’s break distinguishes it from the original or another cover version. In fact, it is not until about halfway through the second cut, the Rolling Stones’ “Can’t Your Hear Me Knocking,” that a listener would really catch the percussive rhythm that marks Santana bands and the signature Carlos Santana guitar licks. While Scott Weiland’s vocals are well done and the tune is largely true to form, it is only it is bathed in the distinctive Santana sound that it really grabs a person’s attention.

The percussion, the Latinesque feel and Santana’s guitar runs are present on much of the rest of the album and, for example, give “Sunshine Of Your Love” a different style. “Sunshine” also features Rob Thomas, the vocalist on the Grammy Award-winning single, “Smooth,” from Supernatural. “Sunshine” and, more particularly, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” are the tunes that most seem to differ feel from the originals. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” opens with Yo-Yo Ma on cello and a harpsichord-sounding keyboard. The first part of the song leans more toward acoustic and India.Arie’s vocals imbue it with a more with a more serious and soulful tone than most other versions.

An effort is made to transform “Back In Black” but laying Nas’ rap vocals on top of a heavy rock guitar style. Yet with both it and “Photograph” (with American Idol‘s Chris Daughtry on vocals), the band never seems to generate any ownership interest. In fact, that may be the ultimate failing of Guitar Heaven. These are songs guitarists, particularly great ones, can invest themselves in. While Santana’s guitar work is top-notch, too much of the album sounds like he is indulging in having guest vocalists join him on classics that are distinguished from the originals, if at all, by the band’s Latin intonations and the guitarist’s stylings. Thus, by the time we get to Papa Roach’s lead vocalist doing “Bang A Gong” or Joe Cocker singing “Little Wing” the allure has worn thin. It is really only wanting to hear the guitar solos, few of which are extended ones, that maintains much interest. (Although it is a wonderful touch to have Ray Manzarek play organ on “Riders On The Storm,” something which gives it greater undertones of the original.)

For those who like to hear contemporary singers with Santana, Guitar Heaven may provide them with some classic rock guitar “standards.” Longtime Santana fans like myself certainly are comfortably familiar with the songs and appreciate Santana’s inimitable guitar style. We, though, don’t need a different singer on each cut to make us appreciate that style or the band’s overall sound. More important, fans in either camp may prefer to hear the Santana style in original music rather than a collection of covers.

“Back In Black”