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 Mind blowing January 5, 2009
Cloned Dodo (Herts, UK)
I got this book as a birthday present and my first thoughts were: am I going to understand any of this? Isn't it just going to take away from the joy of listening if I know the reasons why I respond in certain ways - like revealing how a magic trick is done?
The answers to these questions came fast. Yes, I could understand all of it. Having little to no knowledge of science or biology, a lifelong obsession with playing guitar but with little theoretical knowledge, I assumed large parts of this book would go straight over my head. Not true. I haven't read a non-fiction book that was such a page-turner and constantly revelatory in I don't know how long. Daniel Levitin's down-to-earth, chatty prose belies the wealth of information that he gives the reader, and every five minutes I was sitting back and saying 'Wow!'.
My other reservation, about the 'magic' being diminished, was also unjustified, and in fact I found this book reigniting curiosity in the music I like and causing me to reevaluate the music I don't - was it some bad experience in my youth that caused me to loathe jazz, or is it simply that I wasn't exposed to the right stuff at the right time and my brain never made those all important schemas when it was malleable enough?
Some of the passages I found inspired me to write music in different ways, and think about the music I write in different ways, and as a (direct?) result, I have just finished composing a piece of music which I think is the best I have ever done.
Most of the more negative reviews I have read about this book seem to come from a reader's own musical tastes not being reflected by the writer - his own tastes seem to be mostly 70's rock and 50's jazz. I think these people missed the point. I certainly didn't know a lot of the music he was talking about (but if you're that interested, Daniel has put up all of the specific pieces referenced in the book on his website), but the points he made could be attributed to any style of music, and he is simply using the genres he is most familiar with to give the greatest insight. If you're looking for a book on how West Coast hip hop from 1994-1996 affects your brain, I think you'll be looking for a while.
Having now finished the book, and despite a number of other books sitting in my 'to read' pile, I've started reading it again. It's just that good.
 This Is Your Brain On Music August 20, 2008
Spider Monkey (UK)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
'This Is Your Brain On Music' looks at the neuroscience behind listening to and performing music. Although I've read many popular science books and am familiar with the style of writing, I found this to be quite a hard going book at first. The first couple of chapters look at the structure of music and are quite dry to plow though. If you know music theory this will cover familiar ground and if you don't I'm sorry to say that this is a laboured way of gaining that understanding. However after you get through these chapters this books really comes into it's own, with lots of fascinating experiments and facts it starts to pique your interest and you become more engrossed in the points being made. The chapter linking our auditory system to the cerebellum and the associated emotional linkages made for especially interesting reading. Overall this is a interesting read and if you can get past the first hundred pages you are in for some interesting ideas, presented in an engaging and informative way. 3 1/2 - 4 stars.
 This is Your Brain Losing Consciousness June 16, 2008
A. Strong (UK)
38 out of 50 found this review helpful
The first section of this book is a rough guide to the structure of music. If you know music, you won't need to read it. If you don't know music, I think it'll bore you. Then we get the brain stuff: here's a flat writer trying to be entertaining, dropping in references to Sting, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon and other, er, contemporary artists. There are some dull arguments - eg how are we able to categorise music so easily when pop bands like the Carpenters use distorted guitars and rock groups, like the Rolling Stones, employ a string section. Who cares?
It's also interesting who he doesn't mention: nothing on Kraftwerk, Stockhausen, very little on techno, dance music, electronica, DJ culture, blip-hop; nothing much on Indian music, next to nothing from Africa. In short he concentrates on rock dinosaurs of the seventies: Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and, of course, Sting.
Some of the writing verges on the banal, such as this: "It is also important to distinguish celebrity from expertise. The factors that contribute to celebrity could be different from, maybe wholly unrelated to, those that contribute to expertise."
There is very little in this book that opens up new vistas, or shines a light on a dark and dusty corner of music - it's all pretty obvious stuff.
Towards the end of the book we get a quick run through arguments for the importance of music in mate selection. Here's just one: "Far more women want to sleep with rock stars and athletes than marry them." Aside from being asinine (do more women want to sleep with Britney Spears than marry her?) hasn't Levitin been arguing he's talking about music, and not celebrity?
I read a great many pop science books. This has to be one of the worst. Levitin makes a fascinating subject achingly dull. His writing is trite, long-winded, dreary, boring and fatuous. And every time he mentioned Sting I wanted to throw the book across the room. I kept at it hoping it would get better. It doesn't.
I hated this book. I hated it it because it took two weeks of my life away. Finally, to the blurbs: "Endlessly stimulating" writes Oliver Sacks - he should know better; "You'll never hear music in the same way again" says Classic FM magazine.
"Music seems to have a wilful, almost evasive quality, defying simple explanation, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know. Daniel Levitin's book is an eloquent and poetic exploration of this paradox." And guess which pretentious old rock arse gave Levitin's book this high praise?
With a song in our heads December 3, 2007
Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)
57 out of 62 found this review helpful
When a rock musician, a sound engineer and a neuroscientist combine their talents to explain how we think about music, it promises to be interesting. When those three individuals are present in one man who also writes well, the result is compelling. With a strong scientific foundation - no little of that from his own work - from which to build, coupled with his production experience, Levitin has launched a new phase in the understanding of how the mind deals with the outside world. In the manner of colours we think we see, sounds are simply vibrations of air until our brain identifies and translates them for us. Without descending into arcane terms for either the brain or music, he skilfully guides us through the process of "music appreciation" - and why we do.
Musicians enter our lives more intimately than almost anybody else. They can inspire us, influence our lives in innumerable ways, and they are available at any time - virtually at our command. We welcome their presence even when we haven't consciously sought them out. Music is always a personal relationship, sometimes very intense, generating emotions perhaps hidden or suppressed. How can the movement of air molecules generate such reactions in us?
In answering that question, Levitin takes the reader on describes the path sound takes from its entry into the ear. Nerve impulses from sound have a number of paths open to them. Widely dispersed areas of the brain process the signals, further triggering a variety of reactions. Much new information about sounds and the brain's reaction to them has come to light in recent years. When the sound is music, the brain actually goes through mathematical calculations to register timbre, pitch and other musical elements. Familiar music activates responses in the brain's temporal lobes, working with the hippocampus to retrieve memories and formulate new, integrated ones. Areas in the brain, particularly the cerebellum, display increased activity when listening to music, far less so when hearing simple or incoherent noise. Recent studies also point out the influence of the cerebellum in emotional response, a find challenging long-held views of that part of the brain's role. Music's generation of feelings is non-specific - we don't necessarily associate it with those around us. When we do take neighbours into account, it generally enhances the feelings - so long as those folks aren't interrupting our listening.
Lest the reader think all this neuroscience is lofty, obscure and "soul destroying" analysis, take heart. Levitin introduces his book with a discussion of "what music can teach us about the brain, what the brain can teach us about music - and what both can teach us about ourselves". The range of music he uses as examples is clear indication of the breadth of his interests and research. At one point, he visits John Pierce, the founder of "psycho-acoustics" who sought the six tunes best exemplifying rock and roll. The choices are illustrative, but Pierce proved more interested in how sound was manipulated by the performers than in the songs. Although the limits of the research preclude detailed analysis of classical pieces, Levitin examines Bach's flute cantatas to explain how variations in sounds stimulate emotional reactions. Mahler's music brought innovation to the symphonic format in ways that made his compositions particularly effective in evoking listener response.
Providing a wealth of information, this book is a treasure. You needn't be a musician or a critic to gain from it. Any listener, and all of us are that irrespective of our "taste" in music, will be impressed by what is going on in our minds when hearing music we adore or which repels us. In fact, even "new" music which may not attract us on first hearing it, can become another trigger for positive emotional response. Read this book and listen to it again. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Music to my eyes... November 10, 2007
Othon Leon
31 out of 34 found this review helpful
A very interesting explanation on what makes music sooo attractive to the vast majority of us... the first two chapters are in my opinion, heavy to read (I had to go back several times to try and get the idea); actually, in this regard I found the first statements of the author a little bit contradictory, since as he somehow explains, science (technical facts) should be explained "easily"... well, it wasn't in my opinion for the most of the beginning. After that, the book gets much lighter, much friendlier and "simple" to understand.
The way -Daniel Levitin explains- how our brain rather than "concentrate" certain functions or types of information in particular parts of our brains (as it was thought), rather "distributes" them in several to be first accumulated and then processed between all of those (and others) I found new and fascinating. Also, the property that our brains have to adapt and learn new things (tricks!) is overwhelming too... (There's hope then!), contrary to the ancient believe that as we grow old, new knowledges are difficult to learn (assimilate). Then he explains how these and other characteristics add to make music sooo enjoyable... (it is possible to live without TV, but not without a radio!).
Good book. I'm glad I ordered it!
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