Fascinating scientific facts about how and why we listen to music, why we prefer one genre to another. It's an eye and ear opener for both; practicing musicians and non musicians alike.

This is a terrific book and very easy to recommend. It will also appeal to a wide variety of readers from the simply curious to the professional musician. People who read it will come out with a new understanding of music and the mechanics of how it effects them. Recommended without question.

This book is a great look at the various aspects of music and how the brain processes, remembers, and creates them. The book moves systematically through aspects like pitch, rhythm, etc. The author is very knowledgeable about both music and neurology, and very articulate in explaining some difficult concepts. For a person who knows a fair bit about music, some of the information about the fundamentals of music (definitions of terms, etc.) will be unnecessary, but I can see why these details were included--this book would be of as much interest to a non-musician as it would be to a musician. Definitely worth reading!

A very interesting explanation on what makes music sooo attractive to the vast majority of us... the first two chapters are in my opinion, heavy to read (I had to go back several times to try and get the idea); actually, in this regard I found the first statements of the author a little bit contradictory, since as he somehow explains, science (technical facts) should be explained "easily"... well, it wasn't in my opinion for the most of the beginning. After that, the book gets much lighter, much friendlier and "simple" to understand.

The way -Daniel Levitin explains- how our brain rather than "concentrate" certain functions or types of information in particular parts of our brains (as it was thought), rather "distributes" them in several to be first accumulated and then processed between all of those (and others) I found new and fascinating. Also, the property that our brains have to adapt and learn new things (tricks!) is overwhelming too... (There's hope then!), contrary to the ancient believe that as we grow old, new knowledges are difficult to learn (assimilate). Then he explains how these and other characteristics add to make music sooo enjoyable... (it is possible to live without TV, but not without a radio!).

Good book. I'm glad I ordered it!