Much Better Sundays

This is Your Brain on Music is one of several books to come out in recent years to explore the science of music. Daniel Levitin is a former record producer turned neuroscientist, interested in how music works, how your brain makes sense of it. I’ve come away from the book with a new appreciation for just how clever a contraption the ear is.

The book starts off with an explanation of musical theory, which is quite useful for people like me who know less terminology and more just what they like; Levitin recommends that actual musicians just skim or skip the section. He doesn’t provide quite as thorough a foundation on the science, just enough for the lay reader to follow. It can get a bit dry, but it’s accessible.

The central part of the book is the most interesting – exploring how the brain interprets the sounds it hears, how it perceives some of these as ‘music’, along with more specific things like how different timbres are produced (which I’ve always wondered). This is the nitty-gritty heart of the book, the part that proves science doesn’t take away from the wonder of things.

The end of the book is weaker; one of the least successful chapters in Your Brain is the second-to-last, where Levitin attempts to explain people’s different musical preferences. Is it something to do with the music they’re exposed to as children? While I can see that as being true in my case – I have pretty much the same taste in music as my mother – the genres my mother likes hadn’t been invented when she was a girl.

So, it’s something to do with the complexity of the music? Well, I can buy that, but it doesn’t really tell you anything. You don’t have to be a neuroscientist to figure out people like different levels of complexity of their music.* There’s no theories presented as to why. The complexity of the music they were exposed to as children? Well, how does children’s music fit into this? I might get ‘Skini Marinki Dinki Dink’ stuck in my head, but I can’t really say I enjoy it.

The kind of music you listened to as a teenager then. You’re always most nostalgic for music from when you were 11-14. Apparently. I can hardly see myself getting misty-eyed over Eminem.

The explanations Levitin offers are obvious ones, and not satisfying. The book could’ve done as well without the attempt. It felt like the chapter was tagged on because it’s something people are interested in, but it failed to present an interesting discussion.

The last chapter was more satisying, though still a brief once over – theories on the evolutionary history of music. You could read an entire book on this topic (I recommend The Singing Neanderthal for its unusual but convincing thesis on the subject) but I feel like the point of the chapter was more to shoot down Stephen Pinker for calling music “evolutionary cheesecake”. I’m all for shooting down Stephen Pinker, and Levitin does it well, but the topic really deserved more.

Despite these failings, the book overall is worth the read, filled with all sorts of cool tidbits. It makes me want to drop my geology degree and run off to study cognitive neuroscience instead. It’s an interesting subject, and This is Your Brain on Music a good introduction.

*The topic actually came up on my last geology fieldtrip. We were in the van, listening, I think, to Neil Young. My friend sitting next to me was very impressed, and congratulated our driver on good taste. It’s the sort of music people like because it’s simple, she said, because they can sing along.

Maybe this is why we don’t seem to be friends anymore.