Music, Education, and Technology

Daniel Levitin, author of “This is Your Brain on Music” has a new book entitled “The World in Six Songs.” In it, he says there are just six types of song in all music throughout the ages, and they help tell a story of music and human evolution.

Those six types are:

- Friendship/Social bonding
- Joy
- Comfort
- Knowledge
- Religion
- Love

To hear more about his findings, including some interesting studies on the body’s chemical reaction to music, listen to this ON POINT interview on NPR online. In it, Daniel Levitin shares findings about music and the brain.

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A little late to the table, but I am happy to report that I just read “This is Your Brain on Music” by Dr. Daniel Levitin. Indeed, it was time well spent!

Dr. Daniel Levitin’s book is a wonderful tapestry of history, culture, science, psychology, all woven together under the theme of music and how our brain responds to and processes it!

Unfortunately, for the musically trained, a good portion of the book is devoted to explanations of basic musical elements including pitch, harmony, rhythm, and more. The reason Dr. Levitin took this approach is clear: the book was written for the lay person who does not have a working knowledge of such musical elements. That said, musicians should be prepared to skip large passages of the book devoted to such explanations.

The scientific elements were also made accessible to the scientifically untrained. I am a newbie in this realm and found Dr. Levitin’s explanations and analogies to be extremely pragmatic and clear.

Highly recommended.