Mesmerising music, life’s symphony

By Lionel Wijesiri

“Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.”
- Victor Hugo

A symphony orchestra consists of a large number of musicians

Throughout history, music of some kind had been used or expressed. Dating back over 67,000 years, the flute is considered by most scholars to be the oldest musical instrument.

In its purest form, music is a universal language that people of any culture can relate to. Even if you don’t understand the words, you can appreciate and capture the spirit of the beat. This is why music has the platform it does today, as well as the adoration and allure.

Instruments play a major role in the art of music. On principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument. Today, there are thousands of instruments used to produce melodies and sound. This is due in part to the conversion of cultures that have influenced the design of instruments throughout history. So, what began on the shores of West Africa as a tree stump and a hand is now known as drums throughout the world.

Sound perception

The importance of music especially in today’s humdrum life cannot be overstated. Today, man is surrounded by innumerable worries and listening to music soothes his nerves. Music acts as a stimulant and soothes the nerves. It is a fine art and groups of all ages get attracted to its sweet sound. A person gifted with aesthetic capabilities finds music the food for his soul.

Music is a very significant part of our life. We literally live on music. We often choose music according to our mood. We choose high beat trance songs when we are all pumped up, or soothing songs when we are low. We feel the music syncing down with our mood and let it make us feel what we want to feel. Little do we know, how music can affect our mood and thinking, let alone our intelligence!

Psycho-acoustics is a study of sound perception. It is one of the major studies of the effects of music on the human mind. It basically describes how music format, starting from frequency and waveform to genre of music, affects our mood, intelligence and even health. For example, anyone can notice that violin tunes always feel close to the heart. It’s because the frequency of the violin is close to the resonance of our heart beat.

Psycho-acoustics branches out to many segments such as cognitive neuro-science and one of its most interesting parts is the Mozart effect. This is a proven theory of music’s influence over intelligence. The term generated from an experiment that proved listening to Mozart symphonies and melodies has a positive effect on human intelligence. If a child had been listening to Mozart from early childhood, he/she has more positive growth of intelligence than others.

A set of research results that indicates that listening to Mozart’s music may induce a short-term improvement on the performance of certain kinds of mental tasks known as “spatial-temporal reasoning and short-term memory capacity”. Popularised versions of the hypothesis suggest that “listening to Mozart makes you smarter”. Another set of experiments on lab rats shows that rats exposed to Mozart music improve their maze learning.

The April 2001 edition of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine assessed the possible health benefits of the music of Mozart. John Jenkins played Sonata K.448 to patients with epilepsy and found a decrease in epileptic form activity. This created an impact on the whole music scene and changed the view of considering music as just a source of entertainment.

In fact, a growing branch in medicine called music therapy has been rapidly gaining in popularity in recent years. This therapy claims to speed up the recovery process of patients, whether for physical therapy or post-operative recuperation. Listening to relaxing or stimulating music has the capacity to accelerate the process of recovery for most patients though, this effect is largely dependent on the patient’s response to it - henceforth, this kind of therapy is not the primary means for recovery, but merely supplementary.

Apart from music’s health benefits, music also enhances creativity. It has the possibility to be a muse that allows people to get their creative juices flowing. Since music is administered to both the left and right side of the brain, it can help spark inspiration that might just be proving to be a little elusive. To most artistes, listening to music can help achieve a certain creativity or ingenuity that they would not be able to do simply on their own.

Listening to music takes you out of this world

Music also has an effect in a person’s performance, since it can change moods and give more motivation to the listener. Studies show that music does not automatically increase positive attitude, for it will ultimately depend on the manner by which the music is played. It may, however, reduce the strain of an activity. As a general rule, it is important that the listener plays music he is familiar and comfortable with, in a volume that is not too loud so as not to distract the listener.

Tips

There are many other variables that contribute to the effects of music, but there is certainty in the fact that music has an effect on humans and therefore, an effect on task performances. Generally however, the effect of music has usually been more on the positive side than the negative. So pop on your earphones, listen, and observe your performance levels increase!

To really enjoy good music of any genre and harness these relaxing effects, we must really listen to it.

Here are a few tips:

*Try closing your eyes and imagine colours or try to picture the music with your current life setting for an appropriate situation. Use your emotional interpretation to intuit what the composer tried to express, try connecting with the composer’s reality. You’ll be astonished to find out how music alone can form pictures in your head without the use of any words.

*All music, with a few exceptions, is based on repetition, variation and new melodies. Even if you can’t enjoy the music, you can always try to see how those principles are applied. Doing this might help the music “click”.

*Use headphones if you’re with people who you don’t want to disturb, or at night. Just don’t use them when driving!

*Listen emotionally. That is, let your feelings and moods change as the sounds you hear change. Do not listen to music too loud. It can be tempting to do so, and indeed often challenging not to, but it can and eventually will damage your hearing.

Music, like any other art form, comes with quality; all music is not subjected to meet the same standards. You may not be able to listen at first. Do not give up! In time, you will begin to hear a pulse (rhythm), melody and harmony.

When you listen to music with a high level of understanding, you can’t help but be actively engaged in the process and its outcome. You can’t help but marvel at the true genius of the master composers. And you can’t help but grow as a sensitive human being.