Red= someone else’s idea
Green= my own idea
“Music soothes the savage
beast.”
This is the first thing that caught my attention in
this article. This author was obviously quoting a well known saying, but this
was the first time I saw this quote in my research. Many of the articles I have
read so far have been talking about similar things, but just telling them in a
different way. Music is affecting our mood in many different ways. It can be
used to turn our mood upside down from happy to sad, it can put us into a whole
separate mood itself, or can be getting our blood flowing and pumped up. If you are dancing to
music, it usually is upbeat rhythms that get us going. There are so many different kinds of music, selective for
a specific group of people. Artists tend to write songs aiming to their
audience of people who share a connection somehow. If the artists write a lot
of love songs, maybe the audience is people that have problems with love, or
even don’t have love problems. The way music affects
us all depends on what kind of music we like, and then what activity we listen
to the music with. The article says that if you want to feel a sense of power,
maybe listen to classical music, or maybe you want to unwind after a long day
at work; then maybe lullabies would work for you. Music can play games with us.
What we don’t
realize, is that music is used to do some of our everyday things. Music was
used back in the Bible times to be sung to kings to soothe stress, music is
used at sporting events to get the crowd pumped up, it is used in shopping
stores to entice customers to buy things, and I mean the list could go on. Music is an amazing thing, it is able to control our minds
into doing things without us even thinking. That probably sounds crazy, but it
is not what I mean. Through our years at school, teachers would teach us songs
to memorize things like the ABC’s, or the multiplication table. It gets drilled
into our heads and we won’t ever forget them. That
may not be related to how it affects our mood, but I’m trying to show you how
powerful music really is. Studies taken place
were proving that grunge music listened to by teens caused more stress,
hostility, and sadness even if they enjoy the songs. Classical music, oldies,
pop and soft rock were proven to cause happiness, relaxation, and just over all
calmness for that person. Did you ever go into a doctors or dentists office and
they have soft calm sounding music playing? Well that is because this sort of
music forces the person to just relax and listen to that music before they go
into that surgery or procedure. The article goes on saying about an analysis of
5 studies done, that music helps people that may have extreme depression
problems. Even better, it helps with patients that may be feeling down and
depressed that has cancer, or serious burn injuries. Music is obviously a huge
part in many different fields of work that make the jobs easier for the
specialists.
Many people fail to see
music as therapy. Music is definitely something that can completely change,
worsen, or better someone’s mood with a simple song with the right words. The mind connects to the music and just flickers a switch
for that persons mood to just feel like one with that song. The certain type of
music that affects you the most will trigger an emotion that relates you to
that song or type of music. Music can also
be a part of a memory that connects you to a mood you were in when you first
heard this song. For some people, this might be a song that you heard when you
met someone you really like, and whenever you hear this song your mood will
switch over to that happy or even sad moment in your life. This is all what
music can do, it can take your mind on a trip with just some words and
instruments playing; it’s quite marvelous when you think about it.
This is getting to
the nerdy side of my topic, but this is a very important part. This article
talked about the actual part of the brain that music affects when you listen to
it. These parts of the brain are just scratching the surface for what all the
brain actually does with music once it is put into our heads, but this is a
good start. In the center of the brain, the
amygdale is a part where music is affected through the emotional part of
things, as does the Nucleus accumbens. The prefrontal cortex, the motor cortex,
the sensory cortex, the auditory cortex, and the visual cortex are all parts
that are separately affected by music in different ways. Just a few other parts
affected by music once it enters the brain are the hippocampus, the cerebellum,
and the corpus callosum. Studies have shown that medium noise levels actually
cause you to think more clearly, and process a more abstract way of thinking. Through
some tests done on young adults, they found that your music choice can be a determination
of your personality. Couples were introduced to each other and went through a
top ten of their favorite songs. They found that similar song favorites were
connected to similar personalities. I find
this true in scenarios in my life when I meet someone that has a similar personality
as me, and it usually means we share the same like for the same types of music.
