Don't fear the professor
Last month the New York Times carried Clive Thompson's interesting article on the neuroscience of music perception: "Music of the hemispheres." Thompson has now posted the article here. The article profiles Professor Daniel Levitin and his resarch in the field. I've found myself thinking about the opening paragraphs of the article frequently over the past month:
"Listen to this," Daniel Levitin said. “What is it?” He hit a button on his computer keyboard and out came a half-second clip of music. It was just two notes blasted on a raspy electric guitar, but I could immediately identify it: the opening lick to the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar.”Professor Levitin discusses his research in the new book This Is Your Brain on Music. Thompson notes that Professor Levitin's academic research grew out of Professor Levitin's previous work in the business:Then he played another, even shorter snippet: a single chord struck once on piano. Again I could instantly figure out what it was: the first note in Elton John’s live version of “Benny and the Jets.”
Dr. Levitin beamed. “You hear only one note, and you already know who it is,” he said. “So what I want to know is: How we do this? Why are we so good at recognizing music?”
This is not merely some whoa-dude epiphany that a music fan might have while listening to a radio contest. Dr. Levitin has devoted his career to exploring this question. He is a cognitive psychologist who runs the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University in Montreal, perhaps the world’s leading lab in probing why music has such an intense effect on us.
Dr. Levitin is singular among music scientists for actually having come out of the music industry. Before getting his Ph.D. he spent 15 years as a record producer, working with artists ranging from the Blue Oyster Cult to Chris Isaak. While still in graduate school he helped Stevie Wonder assemble a best-of collection; in 1992 Dr. Levitin's sensitive ears detected that MCA Records had accidentally used third-generation backup tapes to produce seven Steely Dan CDs, and he embarrassed the label by disclosing it in Billboard magazine. He has earned nine gold and platinum albums, which he tucks in corners of his lab, office and basement at home. "They look a little scary when you put them all in one place, so I spread them around," he said.When I mentioned the New York Times article here last month, I promptly heard from Professor Levitin. This weekend I thought to follow up with a question about Blue Öyster Cult (don't forget the umlaut, copied by many but originated by BOC). I asked Professor Levitin if he had a hand in the classic BOC recording "Don't Fear the Reaper." Professor Levitin replied:
I didn't producer "Reaper," my mentor Sandy Pearlman did. I produced the album "Imaginos" and tracks that ended up on another album, I'm not sure which one. Working on "Imaginos" was great training -- we worked on that for several years with a budget that crept up towards $1 million. There is a lot of production on that record, lots of great sound effects and engineering."Imaginos" is an album that is a saga unto itself, now sadly out of print and costing a small fortune to acquire from dealers. For all intents and purposes it appears to have gone where -- to quote "Reaper" -- "Romeo and Juliet are together in eternity."
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