Nothing but Noise

"Every musicologist should read this book, and it is required reading for those dealing with the cognition of music. Essential. * CHOICE * In this book Zachary Wallmark confronts head on an aspect of musical practice that is at once elusive and essential: the enduring mystery of timbre. In Wallmark's hands, however, this mystery does not so much endure as become an entry point for exploring the bases of musical expression. Through a splendid blend of empirical research and humanistic inquiry, set out in lucid and approachable prose, he explains how timbre matters as well as why it matters. This is a foundational study that should be read by anyone who has wondered about why music matters, and by everyone who cares about how music shapes our social interactions. * Lawrence Zbikowski, Addie Clark Harding Professor of Music and the Humanities at the University of Chicago * With this book, Zachary Wallmark has made an ambitious contribution to the famously elusive study of musical timbre...Wallmark succeeds admirably in avoiding the shortcomings of both the scientific desire to study sound in isolation from the messiness of human subjectivity and the humanistic reduction of musical experience to the arbitrary play of cultural difference. His book is perhaps best viewed as an attempt not so much to bridge the 'two cultures' as to harmonize their best qualities. * Thomas Patteson, Journal of the American Musicological Society * [Zachary Wallmark's] recent book Nothing but Noise Timbre and Musical Meaning at the Edge represents a rich and ambitious project aimed at defining a systematic analytical framework for the study of timbre and its meanings...by bringing together the deceptively opposing viewpoints of the humanities and of what are commonly and loosely referred to as the ""exact"" sciences. Wallmark offers both a comprehensive view of the timbre processing chain and a reflection leading to ethical implications that suggest a renewed attention to the role endowed by the timbral parameter. * Matthieu Galliker, Revue musicale OICRM *"