This is Your Brain on Music: Understanding a Human Obsession

A comprehensive explanation.

Wonderful

This book leaves you feeling rather dissatisfied. Despite being based on extensive research and neurological insight it doesn’t really provide any useful answers on any material musical issue. This is especially true if you’re a musician or an instrumentalist, as I am. It was really the main reason I picked it up in the first place so one does feel a little disappointed. For the most part, it analyses how humans produce, listen to, appreciate and remember music; which parts of our brain our involved (scientific understanding of which is still quite rudimentary); and why different people have different abilities and interests. A few amusing facts here and there but for the most part, it is academic knowledge. Matters are somewhat muddied by the author’s extensive monologues on the music and artists he himself has grown up to (nice to know but not very useful in a general study of music) and his somewhat debatable definition of music itself. Singing words in musical tones does not convert lyrics (a literary art) into music (an aural art), nor does dancing (a performing art). True, singing and dancing do add to the overall richness of an experience but they are nevertheless, external “additions” to music and howsoever artistic they may be in themselves, are not elements of music itself. I still gave the book a 4 star rating (instinctively, I would have given 3) as I do appreciate its rich intellectual basis. And, by the way, the bibliography is really cool. The author actually gives a short 2-3 line background on each of his sources which is such a great way to facilitate further reading for the interested reader.

Very Good.

Great read for musicians and others as well. But the pages have started to come out. Really bad quality