THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC: THE SCIENCE OF A HUMAN OBSESSION (2007). Okay. The science here was way over my head, but this guy, Daniel J. Levitin, started out wanting to be a rock star, and he did learn to play some guitar and was part of a band. He tells us he saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan when he was six, and that was enough to make him want to play guitar. It took him a while to convince his parents, buy he finally did. And the first real song he taught himself to play was Led Zep's "Stairway to Heaven." But then when his group broke up, he became interested in producing and worked with recording engineers, and began wondering why some artists became "experts," while others didn't and were soon forgotten. And how come when you happen to hear the disco classic, "YMCA," other disco hits like "The Hustle" or "I Love the Nightlife" start playing in your head? Well, he's done studies, and it has something to do with the amygdala part of the brain. He also talks about backbeat, using "That'll Be the Day" to illustrate, which made me remember a former colleague from my college teaching days who wrote his American Studies dissertation on Buddy Holly and his unique use of the "glottal stop" in his vocal phrasing. No, really! Levitin also talks about how some of us who might never become expert performers, CAN become expert "listeners," who can immediately identify the sounds of say, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Eric Clapton, Floyd Cramer or Chet Atkins. That just as some actors and film stars are photogenic, some musicians are "phonogenic."

There's no question this guy knows music, and ALL kinds, from pop/rock to jazz to classical. He's also a trained neuroscientist, and there's plenty in here about the various parts of the cortex, cerebellum and that aforementioned amygdala and more. I will unashamedly admit that I skipped over most of that stuff. I love music. Science not so much. But I did kinda enjoy all the music, songs and artists referenced throughout this book. Those parts I'll recommend.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )

A fun, informative, and provocative read from Dan Levitin, rock musician, producer, and neuroscientist.

Please follow the link to my Substack
https://open.substack.com/pub/thecuriouspolymath/p/book-review-this-is-your-brai... ( )

I tried so hard to get through this one because the premise was so interesting. But the music theory was just too complex for me to understand anything.

On page 60 of this book the author writes "On Paula Abdul's Straight Up there is so much going on, it is difficult to describe it in words" Yet, he spends the rest of the page doing just that . It's a tactic Levitin uses throughout the book, and it just doesn't work. You simply can not appreciate a song by reading about it. Music is something that must be heard to be enjoyed. Levitin raises some interesting arguments and I believe that as a lecture, with audio, this might be a interesting presentation. As a book, it just doesn't cut it. ( )

Pop Science, meet Pop Music. Pop Music, Pop Science.
It’s fun to hear how precisely specialists deploy concepts like pitch, timbre and rhythm in trying to explain how music works, and how intricately laboratory experiments can simulate/stimulate brain activity, but the brain is not the mind, and even (or especially) cognitive neuroscientists won't crack the ineffability of music. The chapter on the origins of music shows just how speculative and tentative the science is. What would Junior Kimbrough say?