An old friend of mine has been around the folk scene in Seattle for years. He's not really a performer. He doesn't play an instrument, and although he will occasionally chime in with a song or two, these are rare occasions. He's a poet and writer by trade, and recently he's been into brain research. He ran across a book that he figured would be of interest to his musician friends such me and bought a stack of them to give to the bunch of us! Thank you, Richard!!!

I'm about a quarter of the way into it now, and it's bloody fascinating! I think it would be of interest to anyone who listens to music, and of serious interest to anyone who makes music.

This Is Your Brain on Music : The Science of a Human Obsession, by Daniel J. Levitin. Info and reviews HERE.

Levitin is not some ivory-tower music professor. He was a rock musician, a sound engineer, and a record producer before he got into neuroscience. Early in the book, he gives you the basics of music theory, clearly and concisely, without getting bogged down in a lot of technical jargon (relatively painless way of learning the essential ideas). Throughout the book, he names pieces of music—some classic, but more often, rock and pop songs—as examples of what he's talking about. There is the occasional dry spot where he, of necessity, has to get a bit technical, but they only last for a paragraph or two. For the most part, it's an easy read and it breezes along like a novel.

I've had a couple of years of music theory classes in college, and I've also take a course in the physics of music, so I already knew a lot of this, but the neuroscience of music is an area that I knew was there, but never actually explored. What sneaky things do composers and arrangers do and why do they do them? And why do people respond to music the way they do? Why do you respond the way you do?

Fascinating! Highly recommended! Thanks again, Richard!

Don Firth