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.