I encourage people to learn all they can about brain function and to apply the knowledge they gain on a daily basis. Because it is often easier to start from something than from nothing, I have prepared these practical application summaries related to the brain and music.

My goal is to stimulate thinking and observation, trigger increased awareness at an individual level, jumpstart applications for every day living, and provide options for behaviors. Although I have relied heavily on brain function research, a plethora of studies, and discussions with brain researchers and other experts, the summaries represent my own brain’s opinion.

Typically, conclusions from research projects and studies are presented in the form of generalizations that apply to nearly 70% of the population (to the first standard deviation on either side of the mean). There are always exceptions based on individuality. If some of your personal characteristics or typical behaviors don’t match a specific generalization, it doesn’t invalidate the research findings. It does exemplify individual uniqueness.

Your brain is the most complex structure in the universe with potentially as many interconnections as there are atoms in the universe. The way in which it works largely determines your quality of life including your level of health, accomplishments, and long-term success. As unique as your individual thumbprint, your brain creates your world, perceptions, beliefs, reactions, responses, and behaviors.

The brain, along with the body, makes up what is commonly referred to as the mind; that vast electrical-chemical-psychosomatic network that may be one of the last great frontiers for exploration. There is a subconscious mind and a conscious mind. This is really another way of saying that while you are paying attention to one idea or event in our conscious awareness, a great many other things are going on simultaneously outside your conscious awareness.

In all aspects of music perception, several portions of the brain come into play. In adulthood, the brain weights 3-4 pounds and contains 100 billion neurons, each of which functions as a sophisticated computer. Ounce for ounce, it is the 3rd most consumptive of energy in the body after the heart and lungs. Approximately 20% of the blood flow and oxygen go to the brain, and the brain consumes 22% of one’s total caloric intake.

Development

The human brain begins to develop very soon after conception. Studies by Dr. Tomatis of France have shown that a great deal of learning can take place during gestation. By the 5th month of gestation the fetus can recognize melodies it has heard before, can recognize voices, and experience emotions. Neonates (birth to 30 days) turn toward musical sounds. Following are examples correlated with age.

• 1 month – can distinguish between tones of different frequency
• 2 months – can replicate pitch and the melodic content of your mother’s (care provider’s) songs
• 6 months – can respond to changes in melodic content
• 6-12 months – the frontal lobes of the thinking brain begin to develop at about 6 months of age. By 12 months of age the frontal lobes are beginning to gain control over the subconscious drives of the emotional brain.
• 12-18 months – can exhibit a form of spontaneous singing (e.g., babbling), Wernicke’s area becomes active at about 18 months of age and then Broca’s Area kicks in.
• 24-36 months – can move the body to rhythms, but usually display little accuracy until age 6
• 3-4 years – begin duplicating the music of our own culture
• 7-8 years – begin to understand relative consonance and dissonance (sense of near and far keys)
• 10 years – can follow 2 parallel voices and can recognize cadences
• 12 years – begin to develop full harmonic comprehension (if we develop it)
• 10-12 years (adolescence) – begin to imprint a preferred musical style

Multiple Brain Layers

The human brain actually consists of several interconnecting brains, sometimes described with differing labels. Michael Gurian, author of Boys and Girls Learn Differently, refers to these brains as layers, as do some others. Each layer is known for distinct functions, though all functional systems constantly interact. These brain layers can be compared to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gears in a vehicle.

• Neocortex or 3rd gear  – composed of two cerebral hemispheres, this portion of the brain orchestrates conscious rational/logical thought including executive functions and the processing/expressing of emotions
• Mammalian Layer or 2nd gear  – composed of several small brain organs, this portion includes the pain/pleasure center, some memory functions, and the surfacing of emotional impulse
• Reptilian Layer or 1st gear  – composed of the brain stem and cerebellum, this portion houses instinctual responses, reflexes, and fight-or-flight reactions

Living life in its fullness requires the ability to integrate the functions of these brains smoothly, accurately, and efficiently. It also requires integration of the four natural divisions of the cerebrum (e.g., a lack of integration has been associated with Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID).

NOTE: Music is thought to enter the body through the hypothalamus, a portion of the emotional brain layer that receives stimuli related to emotions, sensations, and feelings. Music can bypass the thinking brain layer, the portion of the brain that involves reason, decision-making, and conscious thought. Human beings apparently do not decide or choose consciously the effects that music has on the brain and body. This occurs involuntarily.

Musically, the reptilian layer contributes functions to accomplish a variety of musical activities, such as:

• Localization of sounds through linked input from both ears
• Observing relations within sounds (e.g., rising in volume or frequency)
• Testing for differences in sound (e.g., helps to identify individual sounds)
• Triggering automatic, ritualistic behaviors under stress (e.g., stressful practice, lesson, or performance situations)

Musically, the Mammalian layer:

• Plays a significant role in transferring information from short-term to long-term memory, and in searching the brain to collect pieces of information to reconstruct and recall a “memory”
• Interprets sound emotionally
• May have more connectors to the right cerebral hemisphere so be more aware emotionally
• May stimulate the rise of emotional impulses in response to musical activities (music most affects those individuals who already have a deep emotional existence)

Musically, functions in the neocortex:

• Decodes sounds into something that has meaning; plays a role in one’s perception of music and in its significance to the individual; appreciates the music cognitively, including symbolic interpretations that are very individualistic
• Enables one to set and achieve musical goals, including anticipating and planning musical activities
• May motivate people to create new music, or arrange existing music in a new way
• Allows one to create fantasies, to imagine, and to innovate using music; carries a sense of reflection and connection that can extend beyond the concrete material world into the abstract world
• Identifies emotions/feelings triggered by the music; manages (or does not manage) the emotional impulses triggered by the sounds
• Provides executive functions that direct one’s musical life

Left Hemisphere

Typically, the left hemisphere is concerned with modeling relations between events across time. In its role as a temporal sequencer, the left hemisphere specializes in not just the grammatical transformations of language, but also trains of analytical thinking, successions of complex physical movements, and the perception and generation of rhythmic patterns. It decodes rhythmic patterns more easily than does the right.

The left hemisphere seems particularly important for so-called fast acoustic processing, which would tell a listener whether, for example, a note was being bowed on a violin, or plucked on a guitar, struck on a keyboard, or blown on a woodwind.

Right Hemisphere

The right hemisphere favors relations between simultaneously occurring events. It is expert at modeling spatial relations, body position, and the relations among concurrent sounds, including musical chords. These right-brained skills focus on assembling pieces into an instantaneous whole. The right hemisphere takes over in slow acoustic processing, appreciating the notes following the initial attack note.

Analytical functions that subserve language and that are housed in the left hemisphere are utilized in performing and writing music. Studies show that professional musicians have acquired additional left-hemisphere skills for analyzing melody as compared to amateurs or nonmusicians. The right hemisphere of the brain is still active, but the left hemisphere is bolstered almost to the point of analytical dominance. Professional musicians also tend to have superior memory for melody recognition due to an increased mental library. They don’t do any better than nonmusician listeners, however, when presented with melodies from unfamiliar musical traditions.

Cognition

Has science identified a music center in the brain devoted strictly to music cognition? According to Dr. Mark Jude Tramo, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School, the answer is no. His studies have led him to believe that all neural structures that participate in the musical experience are players in other forms of cognition as well. For example, a region called the left planum temporale, which is critical for perfect pitch, is also involved in language processing. And though the right hemisphere of the brain traditionally has been considered the music hemisphere, recent neuroimaging studies from his and other laboratories reveal a more subtle interplay between the left and right halves of the brain in the course of a musical experience.

A study by researchers at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, has suggested that recalling that melody is accomplished through the rostromedial prefrontal cortex. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, which detects the part of the brain active in response to specific stimuli, they found that the ability to recognize music is contained in a centrally located area just behind the forehead. However, the brains of each of the subjects tracked the sounds in a slightly different way each time the music was played. This may be the reason the same music, in different times, may prompt different emotions.

Downshifting and Music

Metaphorically compare the three functional brain layers to a vehicle with an automatic transmission. When the going gets tough the transmission automatically moves to a lower gear to help you get through. A similar situation can occur in the brain. This helps to explain why children who experience chronic or severe short-term stress can regress and begin to exhibit survival behaviors related to the action brain. This phenomenon is not limited to children. It can happen to humans of any age.

In situations of threat, trauma, crisis, or any type of fear (e.g., death of a family member, severe illness/hospitalization, excessive adapting) the brain tends to downshift and access responses/reactions that are perceived to be safer. Frequent or prolonged downshifting of the brain may accelerate the aging process. When downshifted you may:

• React more automatically (reflexively, instinctually) and be resistant to change
• Follow old learned beliefs and behaviors regardless of information available in the present
• Experience a reduced ability to take environmental and internal cues into consideration
• Be less able to engage in complex intellectual tasks, especially those requiring creativity and the ability to engage in open-ended thinking and questioning
• Become somewhat phobic (e.g., specific stimuli can trigger inappropriate or exaggerated responses)
• Be prevented from learning and / or generating solutions for new problems
• Fail to see interconnectedness or interrelations
• Experience altered immune system function and brain chemistry
• Accelerate the aging process, especially if downshifting is prolonged or becomes chronic

Learn to recognize symptoms of downshifting quickly and when it occurs, get back up to 3rd gear as quickly as possible. A brain that has downshifted may exhibit diminished capability temporarily for some of the functions related to music that reside in the thinking brain layer. This can interfere with creativity, innovation, decision-making, composition, arranging, performing, learning, and management of stress/emotions/feelings, to name just a few

Knowing this you can try to minimize stress whenever possible during musical lessons, in practice sessions, as well as performance situations. For example, try to avoid the use of why questions that tend to be perceived as stressful and that can trigger downshifting. Instead, try asking:

• If you exhibit this behavior what do you think might happen?
• If you make this choice what are the possible consequences?
• What do you want to have happen in this situation?

Increased activity showed in the left temporal lobe, involved with processing the form of music (e.g., chord structure, recognizing signs that represent sounds, time signatures, measures). The left frontal lobe showed increased activity in which the musical experience was being analyzed. And there was increased activity in the right frontal lobe as the musician mentally pictured instruments he identified by their sound.

Testing modalities such as PET Scans and MRI/fMRI have shown the general distribution of selected functions within a given brain. Brain scans are expensive and utilized primarily for research and for diagnosis of injury/disease. This makes it somewhat difficult to generalize about the location of musical capacities within any given brain. There appears to be a wide variation among individuals, especially since each brain is as unique as the person’s thumbprint. The precise location of a function within a cerebral division may depend on one’s innate giftedness, the age of the individual when the study of music was initiated, and other factors, such as:

• The type of stage props related to music that were available in the environment
• Type of training and/or education (e.g., formal, informal), experience and level of competence
• Whether an individual composes or arranges music or simply prefers to listen to it
• Whether one is proficient in sight-reading or playing by ear
• Whether one plays an instrument that involves primarily hands and feet (e.g., organ, piano, drums, marimba, vibes, harp) or lips, fingers, and lungs (e.g. clarinet, trumpet, flute, trombone)

Your perception of music, as well as the way in which you approach its study, performance, and appreciation is impacted by nature and nurture, along with your thoughts, choices, experiences, beliefs, maturity, and acquired wisdom. Nature refers to your innate giftedness. Nurture refers to the environmental actions, expectations, and socialization that have shaped nature. Musical perception is not relegated to the hearing, only.

In a 2001 study, researchers from the University of Washington found that people who were hearing impaired had brain activity in the auditory cortex, suggesting their brains rewire themselves to process sound vibrations. According to Dean Shibata, these individuals enjoyed music and were able to sense melody and rhythm, often holding a balloon in their fingers to amplify the vibrations. “It’s not clear what they can perceive, but it’s clear that they enjoy it,” Shibata explained.

1. To Develop the Brain

• Fine analysis of pitches and chords
• Rhythm and dynamics

There was increased activity in the right posterior lobes but also in the Left posterior lobes where the building blocks of music are analyzed (chord structure, meter, etc.). Increased activity showed in the Frontal Right lobe where the subject said he was mentally picturing a sheet of music along with the instruments being played, and also in the Frontal Left lobe that helps to coordinate the analytical perception of music.

Music Moment…

2. To Enhance Learning or Performance of Other Tasks

3. To Retard the Onset of Symptoms of Aging

4. To Positively Impact One’s Health

• Speed up or slow down the heart rate, lower blood pressure and basal metabolic rate
• Alter the brain’s electrical rhythms
• Speed up or slow down heart rate (it will synchronize with music)
• Influence the release of specific hormones, rate of breathing, blood chemistry, and stomach contractions (e.g., slow digestion)
• Increase the production of endorphins and immune globulin “A”
• Trigger emotional states, elevate both soul and psyche
• Reduce fear, stress, and pain perception
• Increase feelings of self-worth and perception of control during hospitalization
• Produce an effect very similar to hypnosis (e.g., exposure to a heavy, repetitive, rhythmic beat)
• Promote faster weight gain and earlier hospital discharge for premature infants (e.g., Brahms’s Lullaby was used effectively)
• Increase relaxation and comfort levels
• Reduce blood pressure, fear, stress, and pain perception
• Increase a sense of self-worth and control during hospitalization

5. To Manage Stress

6. To Give and Receive Pleasure

Music Moment…

Music Moment…

The following observations reflect input from conversations with a variety of musicians, including composer/performer David H. Hegarty, MS and PhD studies.

Prioritizing Division Left Frontal Lobe

• Set goals for studying or listening to music
• Break goals down into manageable steps
• Prioritize activities needed to achieve goals
• Do first things first
• Utilize willpower to achieve musical goals
• Abstract meaning from music
• Analyze music for theory, compositional components, purpose, message, and functionality
• Assign labels for music and musical signs
• Direct the basal left to store and recall signs
• Tend to prefer powerful, majestic, structured, or mathematical music (e.g., Bach)
• Want to be in charge of lessons, music selections, and performance
• Performs music with control

Envisioning Division Right Frontal Lobe

• Interested in the big picture musically
• Envision change (e.g., free harmonizations)
• Create something new (e.g., composition)
• Enjoy variety (e.g., improvisational jazz)
• Innovate to avoid routine and boredom
• Risk breaking the rules (e.g., dissonance)
• Contribute spontaneity and surprise
• Tend toward unusual and/or dramatic performance
• May perform better than expected based on previous practice sessions
• May skip sequential details in exchange for concentrating on the overall performance
• Dislike routine practice, following precise, directions, and can become quickly bored
• May become totally absorbed and lose all track of time when practicing, if interested
• Tend to enjoy new, innovative, unusual music (e.g., jazz, baroque, dissonance)
• Performs with abandon (can get carried away)
• May move and swing body with music

Maintaining Division Left Posterior Lobes

• Learns the building blocks of music (e.g., chord structure, time/key signatures, notes, rests, ornamentation, scales, arpeggios)
• Recalls musical labels
• Hears and reads words and translates them into something that has meaning
• Follows the rules of music (e.g., writing, transposing, composing, harmonizing)
• Memorizes music precisely and can easily play from memory
• Pays attention to details (e.g., counting, key signatures, accidentals, mm guidelines)
• Sight reads (e.g., recognize and interpret signs that represent sounds)
• Conforms to lesson and practice schedules
• Tends to need written music in order to play
• Likes familiar music (e.g., traditional, martial)
• Performs music with restraint and attention to detail/directions

Harmonizing Division Right Posterior Lobes

• Likes to talk about the music with others
• Wants to please (e.g., teacher, audience) and is very sensitive to actual/perceived criticism
• Tends to get discouraged when the music doesn’t sound right or when makes mistakes
• Reads the body language of others (e.g., teacher, other musicians, audience)
• Is sensitive to emotions contained in the music
• Understands symbols in relation to musical expression e.g., patriotic songs, love songs
• Plays musical instruments by ear
• Tends to prefer music that:
  • Tells a story (e.g., country, folk, blues)
  • Is rhythmical (e.g., waltzes, toe-tapping)
  • Has a melody line and harmonious sounds
• Plays with rhythm (e.g., syncopation)
• May move body to the music (e.g., dance) or tap toes in time with the rhythm
• Performs music with emotion and feeling

According to Plato, the kind of music to which humans are exposed to during growing-up years determines the balance of their souls. Aristotle evidently agreed saying, “If one listens to the wrong kind of music he will become the wrong kind of person; but conversely, if he listens to the right kind of music he will tend to become the right kind of person.”

If specific types of music have a beneficial effect to the mind and body, it stands to reason that effects from other types of music may be less desirable. There are many positive aspects to music and huge benefits that can accrue from its study. That’s the good news. On the bad news side, studies have shown that some types of music can result in deleterious effects to the mind and body.

Sound vibrations acting upon and through the nervous system give shocks in rhythmical sequence to the muscles, which cause them to contract and set arms and hands, legs and feet in motion. On account of their automatic muscular reaction, many people make some movement when hearing music; for them to remain motionless would require conscious muscular restraint.

Carol Torres reports that an artificial neurosis can ensue from consistent exposure to deleterious music, which can influence the autonomic nervous system and disregulate some of the body’s rhythms. One research project, conducted by a neurologist and a physicist, divided 36 mice into 3 groups (A, B, and C) and subjected them to music as follows:

The decibel levels of music played for Groups B and C were the same, and all three groups had identical laboratory conditions except for the music differences. At the end of two months, the study was concluded and the brains from four mice in each group were dissected. Researchers found that the neurons (brain thinking cells) of mice in Group C were damaged and tangled; the neurons of mice in groups A and B were normal.

The remaining 24 mice were then trained in a maze situation for three weeks. Then they were given three weeks rest, after which they were returned to the maze to see if they could recall how to run the maze. The mice from groups A and B scored equally well in memory retention; they could recall how to run the maze. The mice from group C could not recall how to run the maze. In addition, they exhibited hyperactive, aggressive, and even cannibalistic behaviors.

A study reported by the Scripps Howard News Service found that exposure to rock music causes abnormal neuron structures in the region of the brain associated with learning and memory. Exposure to hard rock / acid rock music, regardless of gender, has been shown to inhibit the ability of some people’s brains to store the studied information correctly in the brain. Rock music was found to increase adrenalin levels in a group of students, while a slow piano instrumental had a calming effect.

In his book, Closing of the American Mind, University of Chicago Professor Allan Bloom (in the chapter on music) includes observations based on 30 years of working with students. He says that classical music is essentially harmonic as compared with rock music that is rhythmic. Harmonic music appeals more to the mind and makes its listeners more contemplative. Rhythmic music appeals more to the emotions and makes its listeners more passionate. Bloom indicates that the effect on the brain of prolonged exposure to electrical amplification of rhythmic music is similar to that of drugs.

Joseph Crow, professor at the University of Seattle, reportedly conducted a research project on the impact of rock music on the human mind. He concluded that rock, a form of music based on mathematical formulae, could condition the mind through calculated frequencies (vibrations). It is able to modify the body chemistry and make the mind susceptible to modification and indoctrination.

Having a good ear for music really means having a good brain for music. It requires the combined efforts of the ear and the triune brain for us to hear music (the simultaneous processing of melodies, rhythms, and harmonies plus the manipulating of complex patterns of sound).

The basic mechanisms for recognizing individual sounds are hard wired into the human nervous system. These mechanisms take the cacophony of sensory stimuli reaching our ears and stimulating our skin and group them into meaningful chunks that we experience as coherent music. The groups of sound are fused together according to place in space, which forms the basis for seating similar instruments together in an orchestra. Tones that are closer in pitch are grouped together so we perceive harmony. Other tones are grouped in a manner that helps us to experience tempo and timbre.

Sound waves result from the alternate compression and decompression of air molecules. Sounds that are heard most acutely by human ears are those from sources that vibrate at frequencies between 500 and 5000 hertz (one Hz equals one cycle per second) although the entire audible range extends from 20-20,000 Hz. Speech sounds contain frequencies mainly between 1000 and 3000 Hz. The high “C,” sung by a coloratura soprano, has a dominant frequency at 1048 Hz.

The frequency of the sound vibration is known as its pitch. One musical tone can consist of 20-30 different frequencies. The greater the frequency of vibration, the higher the pitch. The greater the size or intensity of vibration, the louder the sound.

The auditory cortex helps to simplify incoming auditory data, suppressing noise, and sharpening the edges of important components. We begin to detect pitch after 13 thousandths of a second, loudness after about 50 thousandths, and timbre at around 100 thousandths of a second.

Outer Ear

The outer ear or pinna (Latin for feather) amplifies sounds by funneling vibrations into the ear canal. The ear canal, approximately 1 inch in length, conducts the airwaves to the eardrum, which resonates to boost the frequencies. In response to the faintest sound the brain can decode, the eardrum moves only the width of one hydrogen atom.

Middle Ear

The middle ear contains three tiny bones called ossicles. They mechanically move in response to the trigger of the vibrating eardrum and transmit the sound wave data to fluid in the inner ear. The middle ear is fitted with a braking system to prevent as much as 2/3 of very loud sounds from reaching the inner ear.

The braking reflex begins within 1/100 of a second of the onset of the sound, but can require up to ½ a second to achieve full force so it’s not very helpful for sudden noises such as gunshot. In addition, the brake muscles can become exhausted by long exposure to very loud sounds (e.g., construction noises, factory sounds, rock concerts).

There is some decline in the upper limit of our hearing as we age (e.g., presbyacusis), connected with a slight shrinkage in the cochleae that form part of the inner ear. Outside of that, hearing loss usually involves some type of nerve malfunction in the processing of vibrations. Prolonged exposure to loud sound is a prime culprit.

Inner Ear

The inner ear, also called the labyrinth because of its complicated series of canals, converts sound vibrations into information that can be decoded by the brain. Think of it as the concert hall of the nervous system. Both the middle and inner portions of the ear are enclosed in the hardest bone in the body.

Although both temporal lobes of the thinking brain can decode sound, the tracks divide unequally once they leave the ear. The broader path connects the ear to the opposite hemisphere, the smaller path connects to the hemisphere on the same side as the ear. This means that sounds entering the right ear are more likely to be decoded in the left temporal lobe and vice versa. In addition, each hemisphere orchestrates different functions related to sound. The left deals primarily with the identification and naming of sounds while the right is more concerned with the musical quality of sound including rhythm and melody perception.

Music has been part of human civilization for eons. It has been referred to as the universal language and is found in every society known to anthropology. No known human culture has ever lived without music. For example, ancient bone flutes have been found in France and Slovenia and they still make a beautiful sound.

Music may even be older than speech according to some researchers. For many of us our mother’s lullaby is among the first of human experiences, while a familiar song may be one of the last. “The last memories that we keep in our minds are for music,” says Christo Pantev, a neuroscientist at the University of Toronto’s Rotman Research Institute. In fact, individuals with Alzheimer’s disease often recognize songs to the end of life.

More has probably been learned about the brain during the past 200 years, and especially during the decade of the brain (1990s), than during the entire previous history of our planet. Music has been found to be a rich source of information on how the brain works. It has also been found to be of great benefit to the brain. Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture alone reportedly have 20,000 musical notes. Talk about stimulation!

Not Just in Humans

Music is not relegated to the human species. Researchers have reported that numbers of nonhuman creatures produce music. According to Dr. Gray, a professional keyboardist and artistic director of the National Musical Arts at the National Academy of Sciences, humans hold no copyright on music. A number of nonhuman creature produce music. It can be considered an art form with virtuoso performers throughout the animal kingdom.

An in-depth analyses of the songs sung by birds and humpback whales show that, even when their vocal apparatus would allow them to do otherwise, the animals converge on the same acoustic and aesthetic choices and abide by the same laws of song composition as those preferred by human musicians, and human ears, everywhere. For example, the California marsh wren may sing as many as 120 themes in a given jam session. Humpback whales, capable of vocalizing over a range of at least seven octaves, have been found to use rhythms similar to those found in human music. Their musical phrases are of similar length (to those of humans), they can sing in key, and their songs contain refrains that rhyme.

Music can impact the animal kingdom, as well. With spirited songs, hens have been found to lay more eggs and cows to give more milk!

What is Music?

Music has been the stuff of poets and performers. Of all the arts, music has the closest link to the brain and body. Its rhythms are analogous to breathing, walking, and heartbeat. Music has enormous power to communicate specific emotions, an ability that appears to reflect a built-in process beyond cultural conditioning.

Music can prompt you to feel happy, aggressive, fearful, sad, or even sexual. It can hurry you along or put you to sleep. It can tell you stories, prompt you to dance, influence the type of products you purchase in the marketplace, and promote healing. It is, in a word, powerful! But what is it?

Webster’s Dictionary defines music as the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity; an agreeable sound. There really is no stable definition of music, however, and certainly no one definition that works for everyone or every situation because musical appreciation is very subjective. It reflects one’s own experience, thoughts, and wisdom. Here is a sampling of quotations.

• The history of a people is found in its songs. —George Jellinek
• Music, when soft voices die, vibrates in the memory. —Shelley
• I am in the world only for the purpose of composing. —Franz Schubert
• If you don’t live it (music) it won’t come out your horn. —Charlie Parker
• We are the music makers; we are the dreamers of dreams. —Arthur O’Shaughnessy
• After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. —Aldous Huxley
• Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. —William Congreve
• In music, one must think with the heart and feel with the brain. —George Szell
• Music heard so deeply that it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts. —T. S. Eliot
• Music creates order out of chaos: for rhythm imposes unanimity upon the divergent, melody imposes continuity upon the disjointed, and harmony imposes compatibility upon the incongruous. —Yehudi Menuhin
• Musicians must make music, artists must paint, and poets must write, if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What we can be we must be. —Abraham Maslow

Music Moment…

The story is told of an encounter between Pinchas Zukerman, the brilliant violinist and conductor of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, and his father, also a violinist. The older Zukerman had suffered a stroke that had impaired his right hand. Consequently, he had ceased playing his beloved violin.

One day while visiting his father in Israel, Pinchas held up a violin and asked whether his father would like to play a favorite concerto. Puzzled, the father reminded his son that “I don’t have the right hand.”

Smiling, Pinchas placed the violin in his father’s undamaged left hand and, standing behind the elder Zukerman, plied the bow. Imagine the picture: two generations, two brains, and one violin. One man using his right cerebral hemisphere, the other his left, playing in harmony.

Use of Music

Individual human beings approach and use music differently. They also have different expectations and perceptions around music. For example, music may be used to:

• Promote joy and serenity, to sooth frazzled nerves, to raise one’s mood, to calm down when too excited, and to move one to tears or laughter
• Stimulate or tranquilize
• Relieve boredom or to transport one to the threshold of ecstasy
• Get one  in the mood to eat, study, work, commute, sleep, or make love
• Intensify another experience (e.g., dancing, marching, skating)
• Serve as a universal language to achieve commonality and unity
• Transport one to another locale or place in time in imagination
• Serve as background sound (heard but rarely listened to)
• Connect the conscious with the subconscious
• Trigger creative expression and/or to listen to another creative expression
• Portray a picture
• Mimic life experiences (rather than symbolize them as language tends to do)
• Enhance a sacrament (e.g., rituals, religious rites, spiritual experience)
• Conform, taking on music as an emblem of peer solidarity
• Rebel and go against the prevailing societal and cultural mores
• Get in touch with emotions, to express them, or to distance from them (according to Robert Jourdain, Franz Liszt would demand of the orchestra, “Please, a little bluer if you please). This key demands it.”

Music has power. Spirited songs can release new energy in the human body. Researchers have discovered that work rates and efficiency can increase up to 15% by the use of different kinds of music. For example:

• Soldiers march further and faster with a band
• Workers work faster and longer
• Eyesight improves up to 25% in reading capacity
• Perceptions of color, sense of smell, taste, and touch changes