this is your brain on music

I suspect that one of the reasons I’m a creative generalism enthusiast is that I wasn’t allowed to do the A levels I wanted to do at school – English, Music and Physics. The timetable didn’t allow for that combination of arts and sciences. I’ve always had this feeling (obviously untrue) that if I’d been allowed to do that I’d be Thomas Dolby by now.

This strange combination of interests probably makes me the core audience for This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel J Levitin but I suspect it’s more than just me that’ll like it. And I really liked it. Mr Levitin started life as a musician and then became a well-respected recording engineer and producer. Before chucking it all in and becoming an expert in neuroanatomy, cognition, perception and music. What a brilliant life. And he writes really well too. If you’re interested in the way the brain works, or how music works, or how people work you’ll like this book.

I’m never any good at writing proper book reviews so instead here are two little moments I attached sticky notes too. They don’t necessarily indicate what the book’s about but they were bits that snagged on my brain.

He mentions the British philosopher Alan Watts, author of the The Wisdom of Insecurity; “if you want to study a river you don't take out a bucketful of water and stare at it on the shore. A river is not its water, and by taking the water out of the river, you lose the essential quality of river, which is its motion, its activity, its flow.” I love that idea. And it explains a lot of my dissatisfaction with the way most industries do research.

And he also talks about spandrels, a term that evolutionary biology has borrowed from architecture.  A spandrel is apparently an accidental byproduct of a design decision – so if you design some arches to hold up a dome then the space between the arches is a spandrel. And, according to Steven Pinker, music is a spandrel. "Music is auditory cheesecake. It just happens to tickle several important parts of the brain in a highly pleasurable way, as cheesecake tickles the palate.” He thinks music is a byproduct of our evolutionarily adapted tastes for language, rhythm and stuff.  Levitin disagrees and thinks music is useful evolutionary behaviour (citing the fact that Mick Jagger has slept with thousands of women despite being hugely ugly.) I'm simplifying tremendously.

I’m not qualified to enter that debate. But I think spandrel is a very useful term and will be attempting to shoe-horn it into all sorts of conversations very soon.

Reading this and listening to Bill Drummond talk about No Music Day has made me think about my own relationship with music again. I started a blog explicitly to talk about music. Because I felt I should be talking about something that’s that important to me. But I almost never write anything in it. I think I don’t like writing about music. I certainly don’t like reading about it. I think music might be an unbloggable part of my life. It’s good to know that something is.

Comments

[bara]

thanks a lot, russel! bye

[neil]

Interesting. Are you aware of the new Channel 4 series 'How Music Works with Howard Goodall'? (It should really be called 'How Music Works, with Howard Goodall'.) Saturday 6.20. Haven't seen it yet but it sounds good.

I see you managed to avoid mentioning dancing about architecture. Good.

[Noel Franus]

I'm reading this right now as well. Unfortunately, most of it's read just before bedtime, which is to say that details slip away into dreamland, and I'm left with more of a general impression of the chapters than specifics.

Nonetheless, it's a brilliant life indeed. Letvin does a fantastic job of breaking down the science behind music in a way that's very accessible for a layperson like myself to understand.

Although I once enjoyed hearing and considering the intricacies and nuances of music, I never quite knew WHY I did. Or knew how to explore that sort of thing in a conversant way, really. Now I have at least a base-level understanding , a language or a lens for understanding more. And now music is fascinating in new ways.

Thanks for mentioning this...

[Stef Jones]

nothing to do with this post, but i found something 'the video wall' the other day and thought of you. it's at blinkx.com and is strangely compelling (that's not flattery; i mean blinkx )and thought as a research tool or to jazz up presentations? apologies if it's well trodden dead dog within the planning frat.

[Richard Buchanan]

Quote from a taxi driver in New york pretty much sums it up for me.

"a man who don't like music's, got a hole in the soul!"

[Erik Larsson]

Remember what Frank Zappa said:

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture" :)

Maybe that's why your writing on music is not taking off?

[grahamfurlong]

I had similar trouble trying to create a timetable that combined arts and science. In the end I was so annoyed that I had a chat with the lecturer. They finally gave in. But it meant that on a Tuesday and Thursday I had to leave one lecture slightly early and run like a wild man to make a design lecture. They should really sort that out. Variety is essential.

[Richard]

Thanks for "squandrel". Someone should start a squandrels blog. Actually, someone probably already has. I'll look...

[nuria]

I'm currently reading an excellent book on how the brain works... which has made me rethink all that I learned in my 5 years psychology degree!
John Batey: A user's guide to the brain

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0349112967/ref=sib_rdr_dp/203-2858786-7936701

Enjoy!

[Eric Kleptone]

Ha. Fascinating to find that I wasn't the only one deprived of my A-level choices due to timetabling troubles - Maths, Physics and Music in my case... Not that it made any difference I think, although sad to say my sight-reading is not what it could have been...

Great piece though, even if a spandrel sounds like a cross-breed dog :)

[grrrr]

ewww - mick jagger.
he hasn't aged well,
but he was an attractive teen.

[Paul]

I've almost finished "This Is Your Brain On Music" and find it fasinating. Mixing Science and Music you might expect a cold boreing calculated result, but Levitin's passion for both subjects makes a read that sings out with soul while quoteing Darwin and present breakthrough scientists.