Critical Response Essay on This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin

1507 Words7 Pages
“When we love a piece of music, it reminds us of other music we have heard, and it activates memory traces of emotional times in our lives. Your brain on music is all about, as Francis Crick said, connections.” What is music? Many of us have distinctive definitions of this complex term because it plays a unique role in each of our lives. Daniel J. Levitin, the author of This Is Your Brain on Music, looks at music from a neuropsychological perspective. How music affects us is connected through our brains neurochemistry, our mental associations with the music, our culture, and our spirit, which are all mentioned in this scientific journey. Through this journey the writer perplexed me with scientific and musical vocabulary and redundant examples, but at the same time, I was fascinated with his description of the anatomy of the brain and why we enjoy the music we prefer listening to. I must admit that I had high expectations for this book because of my appreciation for music and what a significant role it plays in my life. However, when I began reading, I found the beginning of the book to be very abstruse. Knowing the definitions of pitch, timbre, meter and loudness, to name a few, do not help me enjoy music more than what I already do. Even though Levitin defined music as sound reverberations striking the hearing mechanisms of the ear, he goes too into detail when he further describes music. Levitin also stated that the expert language is too complicated and creates a separation between musicians and other people, which is not justified by the writer in my opinion. If the expert language is too enigmatic, then why go into descriptive definitions? I believe that the writer should have started the book by not defining the countless list of musical terms, but rather, he should have answered his question to the title of the first chapter: What is Music? Music is not

More about Critical Response Essay on This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin

Open Document