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BookPrices.net - This Is Your Brain on Music: Understanding a Human Obsession
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Our Price: $47.09
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Manufacturer: Atlantic Books
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9781843547150
ISBN: 1843547155
Label: Atlantic Books
Manufacturer: Atlantic Books
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2007-09-13
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Studio: Atlantic Books
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: This is my brain on meltdown
Comment: I have an IQ of 156, and have been involved in music for over 30 years, as musician, performer, reviewer, promoter, photographer, judge, vocalist, and Karaoke. I was intrigued in the extreme by the book 's description. I have to say I was disappointed. The author is both very experienced and very educated, and knows a lot about the brain and about music. At the end of the book I find I still don't understand. Why does a foot tap to a piper or fiddler? There is no drummer, rhythm instrument, etc. Why does a minor chord make us feel wistful? I still don't know. In my opinion the book lacks wit, heart and soul. Many of the qualities we get from music itself.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and Inspiring
Comment: Brilliant and inspiring. It gives a great understanding of music and how we perceive it. It is written in a very accessible language for those of us music enthusiasts with no knowledge of neuroscience.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Literary Cheesecake for Your Musical Soul
Comment: This book is so highly reviewed I doubt the utility of typing one of my own but here goes.
I think Andrew Palmer (see his review, 1-star) said it best in one thought. He "found it to read like an extended Wikipedia entry". The errors and glosses in Levitin's book are too numerous for me to list here - read the 1-star entries and no doubt most of them can be had, if you really must know without reading the book yourself. For my own review of the book condensed into a single thought - it seems to me that the only research Dr. Levitin did for this book was to look back through his extensive personal experience and jot down his thoughts in some semblance of order. Ironically the truth of this critique is printed right on the back cover of the book: "Dr. Levitin is an unusually deft interpreter full of striking scientific trivia". Put emphasis on the word trivia, maybe a dig for so much name-dropping and then you'll have the heart of this book.
Since I am taking the time for a review I will discuss three classes of faults not specifically mentioned in the other reviews I read. The three classes are -> Editing Errors, Goofy Statements & Logical Errors.
On page 15 Dr. Levitin says, "Pitch is a purely psychological construct...". Then on page 29, "Pitch is so important that the brain represents it directly..." and goes on to elaborate, "This direct mapping of pitch is so important, it bears repeating... if I put electrodes in your auditory cortex and play a pure tone in your ears at 440 Hz, there are neurons in your auditory cortex that will fire at precisely that frequency, causing the electrode to emit electrical activity at 440 Hz - for pitch, what goes into the ear comes out of the brain!" (exclamation in original) So is pitch a psychological construct or isn't it? Clearly it's not but then what was he talking about on page 15?
The book has its share of fatuous statements: On page 128, while discussing the synesthetic experience of babies, "Babies may see the number five as red, taste cheddar-cheeses in D-flat, and smell roses in triangles." I'll let that pass without direct comment - if it is not plainly silly to you my explanation will likely not reach you anyway.
On page 243, Dr. Levitin is hesitant to listen to music composed by the notorious anti-Semite Wagner, "I feel reluctant to give into the seduction of music created by so disturbed a mind and so dangerous (or impenetrably hard) a heart as his, for fear I might develop some of the same ugly thoughts". Give me a break! Has it ever occurred to Dr. Levitin that Wagner's music might have been the only sane part of his life? And besides, if mind control were really that easy we would all be Nazis already.
Dr. Levitin fails logic/coherency most obviously (and repeatedly) when promoting evolutionary adaptation in regards to music and/or to overturn Dr. Steven Pinker's oft quoted assertion that `music is auditory cheesecake'.
On page 248, he defines evolutionary spandrels by example: "Birds evolved feathers to keep warm, but they coopted the feathers for another purpose - flying. This [meaning feathers] is a spandrel. Many spandrels are put to such good use it is hard to know after the fact whether they were adaptations or not". For those not acquainted with evolutionary theory this might seem like a huh? criticism but my point is this: To say a spandrel is so well utilized that it has occluded its adaptive history is to admit that it is not a spandrel. Spandrels, by definition, show up as adaptive leftovers coopted into another use.
Dancing to music is a sign of sexual-fitness display for attracting mates and thus preferentially leaving progeny (page 253-4). Really? One would think that the fact that the man can't hunt would be enough of a clue not to mate with him. Or perhaps some dancers only get the girls who are too stupid to realize that they can't hunt? That would explain allot of human history, right up to today! Hmmm. . . maybe Dr. Levitin is on to something?
Dr. David Huron (musicologist at Ohio state, page 265) also does not like Dr. Pinker's "auditory cheesecake" argument. Cheesecake is not healthy and unhealthy things are non-adaptive in evolutionary terms. Dr. Levitin quotes Dr. Huron, `Heroin users tend to neglect their health and are known to have high mortality rates. Furthermore, heroin users make poor parents; they tend to neglect their offspring'.
Here we see the logical fallacy of False Analogy. Heroin use is not like music in the sense that Drs. Huron and Levitin think. You see, neither Dr. Huron nor Dr. Levitin have read Dr. Pinker's criticism carefully enough to be able to counter it with logical consistency. Music, states Dr. Pinker, is a by-product of a very useful trait called language. Heroin, like music, is pleasurable in it's own right but it suffers from not being able to piggy-back on something more useful and as such the unhealthy qualities of heroin use quickly consume the fun part. As a stand-alone pleasure heroin - like eating only cheesecake - will quickly kill you.
Aside from factual errors - alluded to here and mentioned ad nauseam in the other reviews - I found this book interesting and easy to read. And for the general public I think 3-stars is a good compromise. Especially since, if you look closely at the extensive bibliographic notes (on pages 277-306), you will find more than enough depth and details to set off in full pursuit of the science of music.
BTW - From what I can tell, his follow up book, The World in Six Songs, is trying to feed off the mojo created by this one. I think I will pass on the warmed over mojo.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Offensive
Comment: What happens when someone takes a wonderful idea and betrays it?
Narcissistic
Inaccurate
Distasteful
Remember that the majority prefers mediocrity and that's why a book like this becomes popular.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Music & Your Brain
Comment: and I mean EVERYTHING. The title pretty much says it all.
The book delves into studies done by the author and others on how the different aspects of music affect the various parts of the brain, and how the brain interprets the different qualities of music.
It is fairly complicated due to music's many components - from rhythm to timbre - and musical terminology. But the good news is the reader does get enough information without getting trapped in the scientific data.
This would be much better as an audio book, due to the countless references to various songs and beats.
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