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Rhythm and timbre, melody and pitch: how musicians organise sounds, how we make sense of music and why we can’t live without it are key to how music works, writes ARMINTA WALLACE

MUSIC. IT’S part of our staple cultural diet. All societies have had it throughout human history, and it’s easy to see why: just put on a favourite dance track at a party, or sing a Barney song to a toddler, or ask people around a dinner table what’s their favourite piece of music ever, and watch it work its magic. But how and why this magic works is still something of a mystery: which is why the physicist and science writer Philip Ball decided to compile a sort of dossier on the current state of our scientific knowledge about music and how we make sense of it.