Music from mp3juice music is an essential component of our lives. It helps us to express who we are, what matters most to us and how we feel about things in general. Music can help you to cope with stress, ease anxiety, improve your mood, reduce pain, or even just make you happy!
The right music has the power to change our lives for the better. Here’s how music affects us.
Music improves our moods
Music changes our moods. Some tunes will lift our spirits while others will put us down. But whatever the case, music always helps us to find a balance between being up and feeling low. In fact, if you’re having a bad day, listening to some upbeat music could go a long way towards improving your outlook on life.
Studies have shown that when people listen to sad songs, they experience more sadness after the song ends than before they listened to it. On the other hand, when people listen to happy songs, they tend to smile after the song ends as well! These findings suggest that music can either bring us happiness or sadness.
Of course, not all music will affect us like this. The same study showed that some songs actually made people feel worse after they listened to them. If you’re stressed out and want to de-stress, then avoid listening to uplifting music or anything that makes you think positive thoughts! Instead, choose something that puts you in a negative frame of mind so that at least during the time you’re listening to it you’ll be experiencing some negativity.
Music influences your emotions
Research shows that certain types of music influence us emotionally. For example, there are certain genres of music (e.g., classical) that evoke emotion from us whereas others (e.g., country) do not. This suggests that different artists have various ways of expressing themselves through their music. When we listen to these artists, their music expresses what we feel inside.
For example, many people know the story behind Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik”. It tells the tale of a young girl who was lost in a forest. She was rescued by a stranger but instead of thanking her rescuer she gave him a piece of cake that she had hidden under her skirt! Now, imagine that you hear this song while driving home late one night and then suddenly see this woman dressed in a white dress standing in front of your car holding a plate of cake. You would probably think she was crazy because you’d never seen anyone at a random location holding a piece of cake in their hands! However, when you hear this song, you might understand why she did what she did.
Because you were thinking about the song, you were able to empathise with the young girl. You felt sorry for her because you understood her predicament. Therefore, you began to feel sympathy towards her. So, while Mozart used his music to tell a simple story of hope and love, he also influenced your feelings towards this young girl. He helped you to feel compassion for her.
Music improves our memory
If you’ve ever been involved in a group activity where everyone takes turns reading aloud and then singing a series of poems, chances are you’ll remember most of the poems as soon as you finish reading them. Why is this? Because your brain receives information from your senses such as smell, touch, taste, sight and hearing. Then this information gets stored in short term memory. Your brain uses this short term memory to keep track of everything going on around you.
What’s important here is that the information you receive doesn’t necessarily get stored immediately. What happens is that it goes straight into long term memory which means that it’s now stored somewhere else in your brain. At this point, you don’t need to pay any attention to the information anymore because you already know it. So, when you sing a poem that you’ve heard previously, you won’t necessarily remember every single word. Rather, you’ll only remember some of the words. This is because most of the information gets stored in long term memory.
Now, when you learn new information, the process works in reverse. That is, if you read a poem aloud and then sing it, you’re likely to forget most of the words. You’ll remember the gist of the poem though because you’ve learned it before.
Music influences our behaviour
Our behaviour is often determined by external factors such as social pressure, peer pressure and cultural norms. However, studies show that our behaviour is also affected by the type of music we listen to. For example, research carried out by psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. found that the type of music people listen to influences how much they exercise.
Gallup discovered that people who listen to fast paced music are less likely to exercise than those who listen to slow paced music. His findings suggest that this is due to the fact that people who listen to fast paced music feel anxious whenever they try to start exercising. When they’re anxious, they don’t enjoy working out as much as they usually do.
On the other hand, people who listen to slow paced music are generally in a good mood and therefore feel motivated to exercise whenever they try. They enjoy working out and are more likely to stick with it.
So although your environment and culture may play a role in your behaviour, you should also consider the role that music plays too. Choose music that suits your personality and the activities you want to partake in.