This Is Your Brain on Music

I highly recommend the audiobook version of this book. While there is much to be gained by reading any book, hearing examples in the audiobook really adds to what a reader/listener can learn.

As someone who has studied a bit of music theory and plays the clarinet (in a mediocre fashion in a summer village band), I found this book to be a nice refresher.

Beyond music theory, there are a number of interesting psychological studies relating to how the brain processes music are referenced in the latter half of the book.

The evopsych chapter was where the book went a bit weird for me. I shudder to think about certain evopsych dudes' worldview: if the ability to produce music in cis men came about because it is beneficial for attracting a mate, what do these evopsych dudes think about musicality in everyone else? (This is only one evopsych argument re: music, and it is not the only one; it's just the most annoying one IMO.)

Overall, I feel like I have a good understanding of what the state of neuroscience of music was like when this book was published.

Long overdue, therefore not full of surprises, but very solid and still endlessly interesting. He starts with a 101 on music and sounds (pitch, timbre, tempo ..) and then tells us why our brain prefers certain harmonies and melodies over others. Why the church banned the ‘chord of evil' from music (Tritone), why our neuronal feedback loops get hooked on rhythms, and why Pinker was wrong in calling music “auditory cheesecake”. It don't think there has been or will be a book that had me singing out loud that often.