A Reader's Notes on
Facts and Concepts from
Daniel J. Levitin's
This is Your Brain on Music
annotated with various web links
[notes by Stuart Allen - but why?]
There is no affiliation between Levitin and the author of these notes. No text from the book appears in these notes -
buy the book!
Ordinary text here represents facts and concepts presented in the book, as understood by this reader.
Other text in brackets [like this] comprises comments by this reader,
and should not be construed as representing Levitin's claims or opinions expressed in the book.
Page references to the book and links to illustrative or elaborative off-site web pages are
placed at pertinent points in the note text.
Notes are grouped by the chapters they are mainly about;
links to notes are added for a chapter as they are completed.
| Book Chapter | Book Pages |
| Introduction | [1-12] |
| 1 | What is Music?
From Pitch to Timbre | [13-55] |
| 2 | Foot Tapping
Discerning Rythm, Loudness, and Harmony | [57-82] |
| 3 | Behind the Curtain
Music and the Mind Machine | [83-110] |
| 4 | Anticipation
What We Expect from Liszt (and Ludacris) | [111-131] |
| 5 | You Know My Name, Look Up the Number
How We Categorize Music | [133-167] |
| 6 | After Dessert, Crick Was Still Four Seats Away from Me
Music, Emotion, and the Reptilian Brain | [169-192] |
| 7 | What Makes a Musician?
Expertise Dissected | [193-221] |
| 8 | My Favorite Things
Why Do We Like the Music We Like? | [223-246] |
| 9 | The Music Instinct
Evolution's #1 Hit | [247-267] |
| App. A | This Is Your Brain on Music | [269-271] |
| App. B | Chords and Harmony | [274-276] |
[nnn] refers to page nnn of the book (paperback, Plume, 2006).
links to pages on the Dolmetsch Music Theory and History site.
links to pages at the Georgia State University Hyperphysics site.
links to pages on Connexions (at Rice U, Houston).
links to pages on Wikipedia.
links to pages on Chris Darwin's site at University of Sussex.
links to pages on the site for the CCRMA, Stanford U..
links to pages of an html transcription of an important 1885 article by Alexander Ellis.
links to pages on the Acoustical Society of America site.
links to pages on the
Canadian Hard of Hearing Association site.
links to pages on the
Encyclopaedia Britannica site.
links to pages on the
Noyce Guitars site.
links to pages on the
Music Folk site.
links to pages on the site of the
University of Colorado, Boulder.
links to pages on the site of the
Villanova University.
links to pages on the site for the Proceedings of the Nat'l Academy of Sciences (USA).
links to pages of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (UK).
links to pages of the site for the Institute for Music & Brain Science (Boston).
links to pages on the site of KTH, ie, the Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden).
links to pages on the Psychology Press site.
links to pages on the site of the Venetian Institute of Molecular Medicine.
links to pages on the
Brain Connection site.
links to pages of James H. Cook's
Organ History site (BSC).
links to pages of the Crumhorn Labs site.
links to Edward Stauff's Encylopedia of Organ Stops.
links to pages of Vibrö.
links to pages of Automotive.com.
links to pages on the ScienceBlogs site.
links to pages of the Journal of Neuroscience.
links to pages on YouTube.
links to pages on
last.fm.
links into the site of the
BBC.
links into the site of the Exploratorium (museum in San Francisco).
links to CBC Radio One broadcasts that featured Levitin, many from the defunct program Freestyle.
links to the site of the Neuron, a 6-episode CBC radio show about music.
This border around an icon indicates the text or video may be rather long.
This symbol is suffixed to icons for PDF links.
links to articles you must pay publishers to read (usually the abstract is free).
links to articles not from publishers' sites, usually in pdf format.
Visit the book website, especially
the musical examples,
and the website of Levitin's lab at McGill.
