This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel Levitin (Review)
Dr. Daniel Levitin provides an interesting and helpful book that is accessible even for those without a music background. Of course, I offer this assessment as someone with twelve years of piano lessons and an additional four years of singing in a touring ensemble. Still, by giving the terminology basics at the beginning of his book, Levitin provides a solid foundation for the concepts in later chapters. The result is a book that will make you think about the music you love, the music you hate, and even the muzak you hear in elevators and waiting rooms.
Levitin is a cognitive psychologist whose career in research followed a 10-year career as a musician, recording engineer, and producer in the music industry. He merged his love of rock with the exploration of how our minds interact with music, and the result is a solid introduction to the science of music for a non-scientist.
Here are some of the observations I found particularly interesting from This is Your Brain on Music:
Miles Davis describes the importance of his music as the space between the notes—allowing time for the listener to anticipate what is to come. This is the hallmark of Davis and is most apparent his album, “Kind of Blue.” Levitin uses this illustration as he discusses the integrity and cohesiveness in music—the connectivity of a song even in the midst of improvisation.
Sound waves do not have pitch. The interpretation of the sound waves is entirely subjective. A tree falling in the woods makes no sound. The sound waves from the action are vibrating molecules, but it takes a brain to turn the sound waves into pitch. “‘Sound’ is a mental image created by the brain in response to vibrating molecules...there can be no pitch without a human or animal present.”
It is largely cultural that we hear major chords as triumphant sounds and minor chords as melancholy. The same pitches and relative nature of chords do not have the same response from culture to culture.
Scales have remained the same since the Greeks with the development of Equal-tempered scales during Bach’s era. Timbre—the sound quality of a musical note—is what has changed. For instance, a voice can sing Middle C, a piano can play Middle C, and a synthesizer can generate a Middle C. The timbre in each is quite different, as is the timbre of music as it has evolved across the generations.
A study on absolute pitch suggests that broad numbers of people could learn the names of notes we associate with pitch (learned tuning-fork notes as “Fred” or “Ethel”—non-musicians could pick out their notes among a set of three and sing their note). In a similar study, people were asked to sing their favorite song after being recruited for a memory study. People tended to sing songs at the correct pitch of the famous recording of the song from memory without a proper-note prompt. They sang at the right tempo, as well.
Levitin explored studies that suggest the cerebellum’s response to music is more than just movement and beat. His writing included a 2003 study that showed there seems to be connections to emotions from this primitive part of the brain. For instance, the people’s cerebellums respond to familiar and well-liked music but there is not a response to noises or disliked music.
The amygdala and neural transmitters form deep emotional connectors to the music we listen to in our teens, a time of great self-discovery.
Our schema for music—the system of understanding—is a set of expectations for how we hear the sounds. If the patterns are too simple, there is no intrigue or enjoyment. If the sounds are too complex or dissonant, there will similarly be no enjoyment. There need to be enough “rewards” for the mind to align with the listener’s schema. We need landmarks in the music to feel a sense of order. There is typically an inverted-U graph to explain complexity and enjoyment of music. The point for enjoyment varies from person to person. If a song is too easy, then the song is unenjoyable. It it’s too complex, then the song is also unenjoyable. A song must hit the curve of a U to be pleasing.
Please note that I consumed This is Your Brain through Audible.com, and I think it is a book better approached as an audible book. The text is more meaningful with the addition of musical examples, so keep this in mind if you consider the book. I marked this as four stars because there were instances when the science seemed less accessible than I think the target should have been, which led me to further research information that seemed important to effectively understand the concepts. That said, Dr. Levitin did a nice job of finding a sweet spot of presenting content for a broad audience that is accessible to non-musicians and non-scientists. The result is a book I would certainly recommend for those who love music and those who enjoy knowing the why behind how humans are wired.
