This Is Your Brain On Music By Daniel Levitin Summary

In Psych of Music this semester, we were tasked with reading “This Is Your Brain On Music” by Daniel J. Levitin. The book was published by Penguin Group in 2006 and has a total of 276 pages. It is a non-fiction book that aims to teach readers simple concepts such as musical notation and musical terms, while introducing and navigating difficult scientific and philosophical concepts from neuropsychology. Levitin also emphasizes that even unskilled musicians can be just as skilled listeners as seasoned performers.

Levitin is an internationally distinguished neuroscientist with chairs at McGill University. Prior to his academic career, he mentions that he worked as a record producer, sound engineer and session musician. He also studied music at Berklee

From what I read in the book, his interest in music lies within popular music but also talks a bit about classical music as well. Even though these are his personal interests, Levitin relates his scientific results to all music universally.

A major theme in Levitin’s book, “This is your brain on music”, is the idea that an average person can be an avid listener of music. He goes on to explain that

Overall, I found this book to be informative, yet not greatly executed. I felt that Levitin bounced between being a scholar, a down-to-earth normal guy, to self-referential to try to be relevant to all readers. I felt as though this personality change in tone of writing actually discredited a lot of what he said. Personally it also made the read a little harder to comprehend because I felt as though different authors were compiling the information. I feel as if Levitin also tries to be too relevant with the times talking about the eagles or Mariah Carey (musicians he