hi welcome to watchmojo.com i’m your
host Layla I’m joining dr. Daniel
leviton author of international
best-selling book this is your brain on
music the science of human obsession
what is it about everything that we
perceive about music that makes us
expert listeners music as we listen to
it as children creates templates in our
brains and figure out what notes are
likely to follow what and where the
music is going to go and by the age of
five most children know when a chord is
out of sequence or a note is out of tune
that’s why I say we’re all expert
listeners I could play a little sequence
like this and if I go you know that’s
wrong and any five-year-old would know
that was wrong what role does theory of
mind play in our appreciation of music
theory of mine refers to our ability and
it’s a uniquely human ability to realize
that other people have thoughts that may
not be our own it is crucial to our
appreciation of music we have to
understand that the composer and the
performer have some feelings that
they’re trying to express and we’re
sensitive to that in what ways are
humans specifically adapted for music
humans and music share and evolutionary
history what I mean by that is that
music and humans co-evolved over tens of
thousands of years and our brains became
adapted for music and music became
adapted to our changing brains did you
want to take us back to your childhood
when you started tinkering with
recording machines and starting to play
instruments I started playing the piano
when I was four because I used to lie
underneath the piano as my mom played it
I would lie underneath and on my back
and be enveloped by the sound then I
took up the clarinet when I was eight in
the saxophone when I was nine and I’ve
been playing music ever since when I was
17 and I went to college for a year and
then I dropped out after my loudspeakers
caught fire in my dorm room I started
playing in a succession of different
rock bands and the one that was really
really good broke up because of drug
addiction within the band and then I
couldn’t see starting over with a new
band so I started producing other bands
in the studio after a while things
started to take off who have been
of the most wonderful people you worked
with artists well you of course Leila
it’s interesting because different
artists work in different ways so some
are more personal and some are more
business some are more intimate summer
more standoffish I think a memorable
experience was working with Stevie
Wonder because I found him to be a very
generous and warm person he’s just the
man you would want him to be he’s smart
and he’s funny and he’s spontaneous but
he also manages to balance being a
spiritual person with being an emotional
one and being an intellectual and being
physical and those four are in perfect
balance at all times and then I believe
that you sort of worried that learning
too much about musical theory might take
away from the magic of it how has it
perhaps done the opposite I have a
greater appreciation for how complicated
it is to write a good piece of music and
how complicated is the chain of events
from a musician making noise to your
eardrum wiggling in and out to your
brain being able to take it all in and
understand it with that appreciation I
find I don’t analyze music more but I
appreciate it more well thank you very
much for your time dr. Leavitt really
appreciate it
host Layla I’m joining dr. Daniel
leviton author of international
best-selling book this is your brain on
music the science of human obsession
what is it about everything that we
perceive about music that makes us
expert listeners music as we listen to
it as children creates templates in our
brains and figure out what notes are
likely to follow what and where the
music is going to go and by the age of
five most children know when a chord is
out of sequence or a note is out of tune
that’s why I say we’re all expert
listeners I could play a little sequence
like this and if I go you know that’s
wrong and any five-year-old would know
that was wrong what role does theory of
mind play in our appreciation of music
theory of mine refers to our ability and
it’s a uniquely human ability to realize
that other people have thoughts that may
not be our own it is crucial to our
appreciation of music we have to
understand that the composer and the
performer have some feelings that
they’re trying to express and we’re
sensitive to that in what ways are
humans specifically adapted for music
humans and music share and evolutionary
history what I mean by that is that
music and humans co-evolved over tens of
thousands of years and our brains became
adapted for music and music became
adapted to our changing brains did you
want to take us back to your childhood
when you started tinkering with
recording machines and starting to play
instruments I started playing the piano
when I was four because I used to lie
underneath the piano as my mom played it
I would lie underneath and on my back
and be enveloped by the sound then I
took up the clarinet when I was eight in
the saxophone when I was nine and I’ve
been playing music ever since when I was
17 and I went to college for a year and
then I dropped out after my loudspeakers
caught fire in my dorm room I started
playing in a succession of different
rock bands and the one that was really
really good broke up because of drug
addiction within the band and then I
couldn’t see starting over with a new
band so I started producing other bands
in the studio after a while things
started to take off who have been
of the most wonderful people you worked
with artists well you of course Leila
it’s interesting because different
artists work in different ways so some
are more personal and some are more
business some are more intimate summer
more standoffish I think a memorable
experience was working with Stevie
Wonder because I found him to be a very
generous and warm person he’s just the
man you would want him to be he’s smart
and he’s funny and he’s spontaneous but
he also manages to balance being a
spiritual person with being an emotional
one and being an intellectual and being
physical and those four are in perfect
balance at all times and then I believe
that you sort of worried that learning
too much about musical theory might take
away from the magic of it how has it
perhaps done the opposite I have a
greater appreciation for how complicated
it is to write a good piece of music and
how complicated is the chain of events
from a musician making noise to your
eardrum wiggling in and out to your
brain being able to take it all in and
understand it with that appreciation I
find I don’t analyze music more but I
appreciate it more well thank you very
much for your time dr. Leavitt really
appreciate it
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