{"id":6023,"date":"2023-04-16T00:15:31","date_gmt":"2023-04-15T22:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/?p=6023"},"modified":"2023-04-16T01:45:21","modified_gmt":"2023-04-15T23:45:21","slug":"on-headphones-i-this-is-your-brain-on-music-daniel-levitin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/16\/on-headphones-i-this-is-your-brain-on-music-daniel-levitin\/","title":{"rendered":"on headphones I | This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin"},"content":{"rendered":"

The opening sentences of Daniel Levitin’s book This is Your Brain on Music: Understanding a Human Obsession.<\/p>\n

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”<\/p>\n

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In the summer of 1969, when I was eleven, I bought a stereo system at the local hi-fi shop. It cost all of the hundred dollars I had earned weeding neighbors\u2019 gardens that spring at seventy-five cents an hour. I spent long afternoons in my room, listening to records: Cream, the Rolling Stones, Chicago, Simon and Garfunkel, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, George Shearing, and the saxophonist Boots Randolph. I didn\u2019t listen particularly loud, at least not compared to my college days when I actually set my loudspeakers on fire by cranking up the volume too high, but the noise was evidently too much for my parents. My mother is a novelist; she wrote every day in the den just down the hall and played the piano for an hour every night before dinner. My father was a businessman; he worked eighty-hour weeks, forty of those hours in his office at home on evenings and weekends. Being the businessman that he was, my father made me a proposition: He would buy me a pair of headphones if I would promise to use them when he was home. Those headphones forever changed the way I listened to music.<\/p>\n

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The new artists that I was listening to were all exploring stereo mixing for the first time. Because the speakers that came with my hundreddollar all-in-one stereo system weren\u2019t very good, I had never before heard the depth that I could hear in the headphones\u2014the placement of instruments both in the left-right field and in the front-back (reverberant) space. To me, records were no longer just about the songs anymore, but about the sound. Headphones opened up a world of sonic colors, a palette of nuances and details that went far beyond the chords and melody, the lyrics, or a particular singer\u2019s voice. The swampy Deep South ambience of \u201cGreen River\u201d by Creedence, or the pastoral, open-space beauty of the Beatles\u2019 \u201cMother Nature\u2019s Son\u201d; the oboes in Beethoven\u2019s Sixth (conducted by Karajan), faint and drenched in the atmosphere of a large wood-and-stone church; the sound was an enveloping experience. Headphones also made the music more personal for me; it was suddenly coming from inside my head, not out there in the world. This personal connection is ultimately what drove me to become a recording engineer and producer.<\/p>\n

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Many years later, Paul Simon told me that the sound is always what he was after too. \u201cThe way that I listen to my own records is for the sound of them; not the chords or the lyrics\u2014my first impression is of the overall sound.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

“<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The opening sentences of Daniel Levitin’s book This is Your Brain on Music: Understanding a Human Obsession. ” In the summer of 1969, when I was eleven, I bought a stereo system at the local hi-fi shop. It cost all of the hundred dollars I had earned weeding neighbors\u2019 gardens that spring at seventy-five cents … Continue reading on headphones I | This is Your Brain on Music, Daniel Levitin<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[757,716],"tags":[771],"class_list":["post-6023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-quote","tag-daniel-levitin"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9WYIs-1z9","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7420,"url":"https:\/\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/03\/focus-24-pavements\/","url_meta":{"origin":6023,"position":0},"title":"focus | 24 | pavements","author":"yalpertem","date":"3 November 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"the sound of silent or noisy pavements artist(s) song name album, etc. year Dobrawa Czocher Forgive Dreamscapes 2023 Kerim K\u00f6nig, Mayuko Miyata, Scoring Berlin, Bernhard W\u00fcnsch Ikigai Grounded 2024 Flavio Le Fosse, KOLONI, Slack American Prometheus American Prometheus 2023 Texture Droite Full Speed on the Wrong Lane Vibrant Pixel 2020\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "music-playlist"","block_context":{"text":"music-playlist","link":"https:\/\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/category\/music\/music-playlist\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/focus-24-pavements-v3.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/focus-24-pavements-v3.png?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/focus-24-pavements-v3.png?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/focus-24-pavements-v3.png?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/focus-24-pavements-v3.png?resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6922,"url":"https:\/\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/14\/focus-17-in-blossom\/","url_meta":{"origin":6023,"position":1},"title":"focus | 17 | in blossom","author":"yalpertem","date":"14 June 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Ried-Brig | Niklas Paschburg | 2025 Hiddensee | Daniel Selke, Sebastian Selke, Ceeys | 2019 Breath Hold | Fellini F\u00e9lin | 2017 Memory Lane | Can Bora Tanzer | 2024 Hypnotic Dub Tool | Nuage | 2025 Natural Striptease - Mira (Berlin) & Christopher Schwarzw\u00e4lder Remix | Britta Arnold, Unders,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "music-playlist"","block_context":{"text":"music-playlist","link":"https:\/\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/category\/music\/music-playlist\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/focus-17-in-blossom.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/focus-17-in-blossom.png?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/focus-17-in-blossom.png?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/focus-17-in-blossom.png?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6000,"url":"https:\/\/yalpertem.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/13\/music-a-subversive-history-ted-gioia-quote-from-the-epilogue\/","url_meta":{"origin":6023,"position":2},"title":"Music: A Subversive History, Ted Gioia | quote from the epilogue","author":"yalpertem","date":"13 April 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"I hadn't read books specifically on music before, maybe one or two loosely-knit ones. 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