My Brain on Music

Currently, I am reading "This is Your Brain on Music" by Daniel J. Levitin.  It is a slow progress (I'm lucky to get ten pages in one sitting) but it's extremely interesting.  I haven't even reached the meat of it yet, but what I have encountered has really taught me some bizarre things about music and how we think.

Levitin was talking about the range of sounds that we can hear and he brought up the point of how limited our hearing is in relation to the entire sound spectrum.  At this point in my reading, I got sidetracked and started to think Imagine what things would be like outside of our human selves.  I mean, think about it.  There would be so many more sounds that we could hear, so many more colors visible, not to mention sound w

aves and thing of that nature.  It's all very fascinating to think about.

Back to the book - it is a very scientifically based book, thus making it a challenging read if you're not paying attention, and Levitin goes into depth in the beginning to do a basic explanation of the concepts of sound, such as pitch, volume, harmonics, rhythm, etc.  Even these basic principles (which he points out have all been invented by our brains) have been interesting to read about.  Later in the book, he gets into topics such as why we are attracted to certain types of music, why jingles get stuck in our heads, why we emotionally attach to music when we listen as teenagers.

I'm excited for the adventure that is in front of me.

photo courtesy of flickr.com