David Rothenberg in The Globe and Mail:
Will science ever be able to figure music out? Those chords, tunes and beats that touch us so — can biology explain why we care so much about them? Can neuroscience tell us just what goes on in the brain when we can’t get a song out of our heads?
Daniel Levitin has the ideal résumé to answer this question. Once producer or engineer for famous pop records by Steely Dan, Blue Oyster Cult, Jonathan Richman and Chris Isaak, he is now Bell Professor of the Psychology of Electronic Communication and director of the Levitin Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise, at McGill University. He’s one of few people to have had such illustrious careers in the industry and the academy, so he brings a rare mixture of street and lab cred together in this accessible and fascinating book on the cutting edge of music psychology.
More here.