on: levitin’s this is your brain on music

I’m pages away from the end but I think I have enough to make this review–and besides, I feel a need to exercise my brain muscle because it’s in a state of demi-atrophy.

I picked up This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of A Human Obsession because I love music.  Actually, I don’t think it’s the music so much that I love, I love what comes as a result of music.  Music is a means to an end.  Music is important because it’s often that it isn’t so much the end that defines the trip, but the route through which you get there.

Daniel Levitin is known for working with small-time acts such as Blue Öyster Cult, Stevie Wonder, Santana and The Grateful Dead.  Before endeavoring to become a person in academia, Levitin was a producer, consultant and sound engineer working the studios of California.  Now, a distinguished researcher working in Montreal’s McGill University, he studies cognitive psychology specializing in why music is the way it is.

Music is a means to an end.  It’s the gamut of ends that make music so colourful, so vibrant.  There are songs that when you close your eyes, you can find yourself in somewhere completely different.  Someone (thanks Maureen-I can’t link to your blog because you don’t have one ;p) introduced me to Jason Mraz’s latest album, for example.  When I close my eyes to the music in this album, I’m in a classic convertible driving, slowly, down the PCH, sun beaming down and I’m going nowhere.  Listening to Incubus’ Morning View, eyes closed, time regresses to when I was 16 and the biggest care I had was where I was going to skateboard (yes, I skated back then, not that well) next.  David Crowder*Band’s A Collision brings not something tangible that I can see, but puts me in a potpourri of emotions.  I love it when I hear some old school 80s song and am suddenly transported into a 1986 GM van, driving on a clear winter day to Stanley Park on a day out.

Levitin gives the basis for why this happens.  He lays out in a way that’s easy to understand why we are so drawn to music even though it presents no explicit benefit.  The book also explores why some people are gifted with musical ability and why some of us can’t hold a beat in a bucket or can’t distinguish why we can’t hum a tune if our life depended on it.

It reads like a conversation with a close friend about something that you both enjoy very much.  It condenses years and years of study and scholarly journal articles in a way that’s digestible and enjoyable.  It has deepend my appreciation for music, sharpening my ear to savour the pleasure underneath the superficial that music has to give.  For example, he goes over Jazz and the science and art behind it.  There are a lot of times where I’d be listening to some jazz but get lost; I didn’t know about standards.  Yeah, standards.  Also, as a result of his section on music theory and keys, I have a commentary on Brook Fraser’s Hosanna, which I’ll write about later.  It’s a beautiful song.  (Note: write commentary on this song.)

To close, what gives the book its effect is that you can tell where the author’s heart lies.  He eats, breathes and drinks music, and it comes across in his writing.  He passionately wants people to understand what he understands and bring to light the little nuances that make music move.

If you want some good light-reading, give Daniel Levitin’s This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession a try.