This is Your Brain on Music

Music listening, performance, and composition engage nearly every area of the brain that we have so far identified, and involve nearly every neural subsystem.

The Sesotho verb for singing (ho bina), as in many of the world’s languages, also means to dance; there is no distinction, since it is assumed that singing involves bodily movement.

memory is not particularly accurate

Like Einstein, Newton was a very poor student, and his teachers often complained of his inattentiveness. Ultimately, Newton was kicked out of school.)

Heinrich Hertz, the German theoretical physicist who was the first to transmit radio waves (a dyed-in-the-wool theoretician, when asked what practical use radio waves might have, he reportedly shrugged, “None”)

The official definition of the Acoustical Society of America is that timbre is everything about a sound that is not loudness or pitch. So much for scientific precision!

Knowing precisely when to hit the next note, and allowing the listener time to anticipate it, is a hallmark of Davis’s genius. This is particularly apparent in his album Kind of Blue.

higher-order concepts such as meter, key, melody, and harmony.

In the Beach Boys’ song “Barbara Ann,” the first seven notes are all sung on the same pitch

the “Alphabet Song” (the same as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”)