The key ideas

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

Daniel J. Levitin, 2006

Why does one song give you chills while another passes you by? Daniel Levitin spent years in recording studios, then became a neuroscientist and went looking for the answer in the brain. He explains what music is made of, why it moves us and why the songs of our youth stay with us for so long.

Who it is for

For anyone who gets chills from a favourite song and wonders where they come from. And for anyone who has long believed they have no ear for music.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? The short answer is no: sound is a picture the brain creates in response to vibrating molecules.

What the book is about

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around, does it make a sound? Daniel Levitin's answer is no. In the forest, the air trembles, and the sound appears only in the head of someone who is listening. That is where his main question begins: what does the brain do when music plays inside it?

Levitin spent many years in recording studios: playing, recording, producing other people's albums. One question would not let him go: why do some records give you chills while others pass you by? Later he went back to school and became a neuroscientist. In this book he takes music apart, shows how the brain puts it back together and explains why that gives us pleasure. Ahead of you: a part of the brain few people think of when they hear the word “music”, and the answer to why the songs you heard at fifteen sound better than all the rest.

Idea 1. Sound is born in the head, not in the air

A falling tree makes the air vibrate, and a wave reaches the ear. But sound, Levitin says, is a picture the brain builds in response to those vibrations. A device can measure the wave, but only a living creature can hear it.

Take something simple. Pitch is how low or high a note seems. Behind it lies frequency, meaning how many times per second the air vibrates. A device measures frequency, while we feel pitch. If you double the frequency, the note gets higher, yet the brain hears it as almost the same note. The distance between two such notes is an octave.

Another building block of music is called timbre. It is the colour of a sound, the thing that lets us tell a trumpet from a violin even when they play the same note. Overtones are quiet, higher frequencies that sound along with the main one. Each instrument has its own mix of them, like a fingerprint.

What this means for you: music is made not of notes on paper but of what the listening brain does with them.

A dad and his little daughter sing “Happy Birthday” at the birthday table. His voice is an octave lower, but nobody thinks they are singing different songs. The brain hears one melody in two voices.

The air only trembles. The brain creates the melody, the pitch and the colour of a sound, which is why music sits where physics meets perception.

Read in Livria

About the author

Daniel Levitin is a neuroscientist and cognitive psychologist, a professor at McGill University in Montreal. Before science, he worked as a musician, a sound engineer and a record producer.

All books by this author: Daniel J. Levitin

Terms from the book

  • Dopamine
  • Amygdala
  • Nucleus accumbens
  • Ericsson
  • Darwin
  • Mozart
  • Pinker
  • Rhythm
  • Pitch: How low or high a sound seems. It is the listener's sensation, and behind it lies the frequency of the vibration.
  • Frequency: How many times per second a sound source, and the air around it, vibrates. The higher the frequency, the higher the sound seems.
  • Octave: The distance between two notes where one frequency is exactly double the other. To the ear, such notes sound very alike, almost like one note.
  • Timbre: The colour of a sound, which lets us tell one instrument or voice from another even when they play at the same pitch.
  • Overtones: Quieter, higher frequencies that sound along with the main one. Each instrument has its own mix of them, and that mix creates its timbre.
  • Tempo: The speed of music: how quickly the beats of its pulse follow one another.
  • Cerebellum: A part of the brain at the back of the head. It is linked to coordination and to the timing of movement, and according to the research Levitin cites, it also takes part in how we perceive music.
  • Schema: A set of expectations built up in your head from the many songs you have heard: which note might come next and where a phrase will end. A term from psychology that Levitin uses.
  • Menon: Vinod Menon, a neuroscientist at Stanford University. Together with Levitin, he studied how the brain responds to music.
  • Brain scanner: A machine that takes images of the brain. A functional scanner shows which areas are working harder at a given moment.

All terms

Similar books