This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“What is music? Where does it come from? Why do some sequences of sounds move us so, while others—such as dogs barking or cars screeching—make many people uncomfortable? For some of us, these questions occupy a large part of our life’s work.”

Levitin uses rhetorical questions to introduce some major areas of investigation for music theorists. The questions become progressively longer and more syntactically complex, slowly easing readers into potentially intimidating topics and encouraging them to engage with the questions and think about potential answers.

“It is a shame that many people are intimidated by the jargon musicians, music theorists, and cognitive scientists throw around. There is specialist vocabulary in every field of inquiry (try to make sense of a full blood-analysis report from your doctor). But in the case of music, music experts and scientists could do a better job of making their work accessible. That is something I tried to accomplish in this book.”

Levitin acknowledges jargon as one of the major roadblocks that keep the general public from engaging with specialist material. In doing so, he reassures readers that his work will be easier to understand and aligns himself not with his fellow academics but with his readers. This concern for accessibility is a major characteristic of the popular science genre and helps quell any intimidation that a reader might feel while encouraging them to continue engaging.

“Before getting into the brain basis of all this, I’d like to take this chapter to define the musical terms and quickly review some basic ideas in music theory, and illustrate them with musical examples. (Musicians may want to skip or skim this chapter.)

The author compensates for a potential difference in levels of background knowledge in his readers by prefacing his chapter on basic music theory with a caveat. Not only does he introduce the topic to prepare naive readers for new information, but he also adds an aside to the more knowledgeable musicians among his readers who might not find the section informative. This tactic helps ensure that readers who embark on Chapter 2 are neither out of their depth nor put off by boredom.