This book was a disappointment. The way most of the topics are treated is this: First there's an elementary introduction, material you already know if you remember anything from your high school biology course. Then the author starts browsing through higher level psychology and neurophysiology studies, but he does this in a superficial manner that doesn't give you much real understanding. Most of Prof. Levitin's discussions of experiments are long narratives of different findings, ending with little critical insight into their significance or accuracy.
There is a lot of name dropping. "I chatted with this famous scientist," "I was invited to this high-level conference," "I had a long dinner with this famous musician," etc. Some of these stories are interesting, but you start to get the feeling that more often than not they are put there to impress you.
There are some downright inaccuracies concerning music. Prof. Levitin states that A-flat is the same as G-sharp. That's only true on a well-tempered instrument like a piano or a guitar. They aren't the same notes on instruments that can play in just tuning, like a violin or, often, a voice. He says there are no marches in 3/4 time. Bagpipe bands frequently play marches in 3/4, even 9/8 time. He also makes the common mistake of thinking that the names for modal scales--dorian, lydian, etc.--were invented by the ancient Greeks, because they sound Greek. Actually they come from medieval monastic music. So, as I read this book I thought, if he is making so many mistakes that I can easily spot, how many is he making that I don't see?
The questions of how we play music, how we listen to it, understand and react to it are fascinating. The neural mechanisms that are employed by us to do these seemingly everyday tasks are incredibly complicated. It's clear that no one understands more than a small part of the answers, but I hoped to learn much more than I did from this book.
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