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This Is Your Brain On Music
Cover of This Is Your Brain On Music
This Is Your Brain On Music
Understanding a Human Obsession
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Ever wondered why you can identify your favourite song from hearing only the first two notes? Or why you can't get that annoying jingle out of your head? Daniel Levitin's breathtaking - and wholly accessible - book, now published as an ebook, explains why.

This is the first book to offer a comprehensive explanation of how humans experience music and to unravel the mystery of our perennial love affair with it. Using musical examples from Bach to the Beatles, Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution, shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience.

Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. In This Is Your Brain On Music Levitin offers nothing less than a new way to understand it, and its role in human life.

Ever wondered why you can identify your favourite song from hearing only the first two notes? Or why you can't get that annoying jingle out of your head? Daniel Levitin's breathtaking - and wholly accessible - book, now published as an ebook, explains why.

This is the first book to offer a comprehensive explanation of how humans experience music and to unravel the mystery of our perennial love affair with it. Using musical examples from Bach to the Beatles, Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution, shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience.

Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. In This Is Your Brain On Music Levitin offers nothing less than a new way to understand it, and its role in human life.

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About the Author-
  • Daniel Levitin runs the Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition, and Expertise at McGill University, where he holds the James McGill Chair in Psychology. Before becoming a neuroscientist, he was a session musician, sound engineer and record producer. He has written extensively for scientific journals and music trade magazines. He lives in Montreal, Canada. He is the author of This Is Your Brain On Music: Understanding a Human Obsession (2007).
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    Starred review from May 15, 2006
    Think of a song that resonates deep down in your being. Now imagine sitting down with someone who was there when the song was recorded and can tell you how that series of sounds was committed to tape, and who can also explain why that particular combination of rhythms, timbres and pitches has lodged in your memory, making your pulse race and your heart swell every time you hear it. Remarkably, Levitin does all this and more, interrogating the basic nature of hearing and of music making (this is likely the only book whose jacket sports blurbs from both Oliver Sacks and Stevie Wonder), without losing an affectionate appreciation for the songs he's reducing to neural impulses. Levitin is the ideal guide to this material: he enjoyed a successful career as a rock musician and studio producer before turning to cognitive neuroscience, earning a Ph.D. and becoming a top researcher into how our brains interpret music. Though the book starts off a little dryly (the first chapter is a crash course in music theory), Levitin's snappy prose and relaxed style quickly win one over and will leave readers thinking about the contents of their iPods in an entirely new way.

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    Atlantic Books
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  • Copyright Protection (DRM) required by the Publisher may be applied to this title to limit or prohibit printing or copying. File sharing or redistribution is prohibited. Your rights to access this material expire at the end of the lending period. Please see Important Notice about Copyrighted Materials for terms applicable to this content.

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This Is Your Brain On Music
This Is Your Brain On Music
Understanding a Human Obsession
Daniel J. Levitin
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