Wired For Sound: Music And The Human Experience

In the past few years everyone's been all over the brain. And why not, there's much still-being-charted territory. Consequently the growing body of knowledge about how music works so deeply into us bipods has led to an excitable burst of explaining and theorizing.

Tapping into that zeitgeist is a new series brought to you by the award winning team who produced The Wire (the radio show, not tales of McNulty et al). The new series is called The Nerve: Music And The Human Experience, and it begins tomorrow on Inside The Music Saturday Edition (12:00 p.m., 1:00 AT, 1:30 NT), presented by Nightstream host, Jowi Taylor. (It's also heard on Radio 1 on Sunday night at 8 p.m., in fact each of its six episodes will air Saturdays on R2 and Sundays on R1.)

Episode one is called Wired for Sound (Music & the Brain). In it you'll hear about the creation of sound as it travels through the air to the outer ear, cochlea, etc. But it's not just about the mechanics of sound -- it's also an exploration of how and why hearing evolved, and how the human ear is designed to react to certain sounds.

So you can hear about why the brain translates some sounds as music and others as noise, what the relationship is between anticipation and satisfaction in music, and how rhythm, harmony, melody and timbre play in that dance with the brain.

This episode features the voices of Daniel Levitin and Bruce Cockburn, among others. Levitin's (fairly unusual) combination of deep scientific and musical background (and engaging personality) has meant he's become something of the populist of music/brain stuff.

No doubt you will have seen his latest book, The World In Six Songs, face out at bookstores everywhere -- and while I haven't read it yet myself his previous book, This Is Your Brain On Music was highly entertaining. (The NYTimes gave the new one a mixed review last week, but that shouldn't stop anyone from reading. Some of my best books are mixed reviews.) Anyway, that's also Dr. Levitin pictured here in this post -- he's an engaging interview, and just one more reason to tune into The Nerve.