This Is Your Brain on Music - Daniel J. Levitin

This Is Your Brain on Music

By Daniel J. Levitin

  • Release Date: 2006-08-03
  • Genre: Science & Nature
3.5 Score: 3.5 (From 126 Ratings)

Description

In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the connection between music—its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it—and the human brain.

Taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin poses that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, he reveals:

• How composers produce some of the most pleasurable effects of listening to music by exploiting the way our brains make sense of the world
• Why we are so emotionally attached to the music we listened to as teenagers, whether it was Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. Dre
• That practice, rather than talent, is the driving force behind musical expertise
• How those insidious little jingles (called earworms) get stuck in our head

A Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist, This Is Your Brain on Music will attract readers of Oliver Sacks and David Byrne, as it is an unprecedented, eye-opening investigation into an obsession at the heart of human nature.

Reviews

  • Almost, but not really

    2
    By sheriji
    Statements such as: "“The simplest way to establish a key, then, is to play the tonic of the key many times, play it loud, and play it long" demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of how we actually understand music. In fact, the simplest way to establish a key is to play the the unstable interval (B-F in C Major), which cries out to be resolved to C-E, and establishes "the key of" C Major much better than a repetition of a single pitch. Unfortunately, the author's lack of understanding of music audiation causes the rest of what he has to say to be cast under a shadow of dubious suspicion.

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