This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
Where to buy This Is Your Brain on Composition: The Science of a Human Obsession books online?
- ISBN13: 9780452288522
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin explores the tie between composition—its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we delight in it—and the human brain. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, Levitin reveals:
• How composers produce some of the most delightful effects of listening to composition by exploiting the way our brains make sense of the world
• Why we are so emotionally attached to the composition we listened to as teenagers, whether it was Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. Dre
• That practice, rather than talent, is the driving force behind musical expertise
• How persons insidious small jingles (called earworms) get stuck in our heads
And, taking on prominent thinkers who argue that composition is nothing more than an evolutionary manufacturing accident, Levitin argues that composition is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. This Is Your Brain on Composition is an unprecedented, eye-opening investigation into an obsession at the heart of human scenery.
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What happens when a name takes a wonderful thought and betrays it?
Narcissistic
Inaccurate
Distasteful
Remember that the majority prefers mediocrity and that’s why a book like this becomes well loved.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
This was a gift. The person who received thought it would be excellent reading.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
The book was used..a lot really..the take in was a small bit broken and it looks like somebody did throw water on the book..also it has some black spots on the pages..but at least I could read what’s written on it..
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
I have an IQ of 156, and have been involved in composition for over 30 years, as musician, performer, reviewer, promoter, photographer, judge, singer, and Karaoke. I was intrigued in the extreme by the book ’s description. I have to say I was disappointed. The leader is both very veteran and very educated, and knows a lot about the brain and about composition. At the end of the book I find I still don’t know. 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 composition itself.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Several reviewers with considerable practiced knowledge in the area have – it is honest to say – excoriated this book on this site. Levitin may be a clever experimentalist, and possibly a excellent composition producer. That did not qualify him to attempt a project of this scenery. The musical errors are elementary, and at times close to exasperating, as several reviewers have pointed out. For example, as alluded to in one of these reviews, p. 238 shows that Levitin has never really played with a real jazz ensemble; the “chorus” is indeed the whole form, not the “B” section. Or is it the ancient maxim in terrible jazz – “if you make a mistake, be sure to repeat it” that obtains here as in his playing?
Levitin’s work is an example of why cognitive science in progressing only slowly. On P. 180 the cat is out of the bag; “Crick’s own search had encouraged me to take my lack of experience as a licence to reflect about cognitive neuroscience differently than additional people” Reasonably. Regrettably, then, even when the discussion on the neuroscience of composition shows signs of competence (eg 227-228), I am disinclined to follow anything up.
One cannot enter an customary literary meadow – or two, in this case – with a gragbag of techniques and less than fully-baked thoughts and hope to get away with it. For persons who want a levelheaded grounding in a generative theory of composition, try Jackendoff and LerdahlA Generative Theory of Tonal Composition. Our own edited collection Language, Vision, and Composition: Selected Papers from the 8th International Workshop on the Cognitive Science of Natural Language Processing, Galway, Ireland 1999 (Advances in Consciousness Research)features writers at a much privileged stage of competence than Levitin
Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. 4u Meitheamh 2009
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5