This is your brain on music: understanding a human obsession

Description

Publisher: Atlantic Books (July 1, 2011). Print Length: 340 pages.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 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.Contents What Is Music? From Pitch to Timbre Foot Tapping. Discerning Rhythm, Loudness, and Harmony Behind the Curtain. Music and the Mind Machine Anticipation. What We Expect from Liszt (and Ludacris) You Know My Name, Look Up the Number. How We Categorize Music After Dessert, Crick Was Still Four Seats Away from Me. Music, Emotion, and the Reptilian Brain What Makes a Musician? Expertise Dissected My Favorite Things. Why Do We Like the Music We Like? The Music Instinct. Evolution’s #1 Hit