Music is at the centre of what it means to be human – it is the sounds of human bodies and minds moving in creative, story-making ways.
While the human brain is hardwired to feel pleasure for basic survival necessities, such as eating and sex, music—although obviously pleasurable—doesn't offer the same evolutionary advantages. In this sense, music may be compared to speech—the other cognitively interesting way that we use sound.
Music, art concerned with combining vocal or instrumental sounds for beauty of form or emotional expression, usually according to cultural standards of rhythm, melody, and, in most Western music, harmony. Both the simple folk song and the complex electronic composition belong to the same activity, music.
Music's purpose is to express and modulate emotion. Music's primary use is mood control. We sing lullabies to soothe babies – which works very well when language fails.
Charles Darwin believed music was created as a sexual come-on. Other theorists believe music was an attempt at social glue, a way to bring early humans together into a close-knit community.
Perhaps our innate attraction – and universal reactions – to various elements of music are because music was created on a foundation based in the natural environment. Recent research has found that the music of both humpback whales and many bird species have surprising similarities to the structures of our human music.
Music can raise someone's mood, get them excited, or make them calm and relaxed. Music also - and this is important - allows us to feel nearly or possibly all emotions that we experience in our lives. It is an important part of their lives and fills a need or an urge to create music.
Music is often functional because it is something that can promote human well-being by facilitating human contact, human meaning, and human imagination of possibilities, tying it to our social instincts. Cognitive systems also underlie musical performance and sensibilities.
Music is a language of emotion in that it can represent different feelings and barge into the soul with no boundaries or limitations. People are always challenged by the fact that “no one understands them” or know how they “really feel”, so they turn to music. Music also has the capacity to imitate emotions.
Students categorize the purposes of different pieces of music as ceremonial, recreational, or artistic expression.
Music has been scientifically proven to have a powerful effect on the brain. Recent research shows that music can help in many aspects of the brain, including pain reduction, stress relief, memory, and brain injuries.
Numerous scientific and psychological studies have shown that music can lift our moods, combat depression, improve blood flow in ways similar to statins, lower levels of stress-related hormones such as cortisol, and ease pain.
“Music is a way to express yourself, keep you company while you're alone, and always give you something to do.” “Music is everything, without music there is no purpose to a lot of stuff.” “Music is a way to express yourself and your feelings. “Music is a way of expressing me and being able to relate to other people.”
Notable among the practical values of music are social value, entertainment value, therapeutic value, functioning-enhancement value, and self-affirmation value. The relation between the practical and the musical values a piece of music can possess is somewhat complicated, and varies from case to case.
While modern studies in cognitive neuroscience have made immense progress there is still a long trek ahead to understand why music is so special. Music is beautiful because of the complex manner in which vibrating air molecules are produced, transmitted, detected, and perceived by human beings.
Basic Music Elements
- Sound (overtone, timbre, pitch, amplitude, duration)
- Melody.
- Harmony.
- Rhythm.
- Texture.
- Structure/form.
- Expression (dynamics, tempo, articulation)
There are seven of these: Pitch, Duration, Dynamics, Tempo, Timbre, Texture and Structure.
I love listening to music especially because of this reason. Music has the power to unite people, make us feel at peace, make us feel understood; it is something to dance to, bond over, and even listen to when alone. Music is not just sound, it is its own language and it communicates so much; it is a beautiful thing.
People tend to choose music to achieve seven different ways to feel different things. When you hear a song and get the chills, your parasympathetic nervous system, or “rest and digest” system, is activated, as well as the reward-related brain regions of your brain.
Research has shown that listening to music can reduce anxiety, blood pressure, and pain as well as improve sleep quality, mood, mental alertness, and memory.
Against the conventional wisdom that music is a uniquely human phenomenon, recent and ongoing research shows that animals actually do share our capacity for it. They enjoy what he calls "species-specific music": tunes specially designed using the pitches, tones and tempos that are familiar to their particular species.
Both portray and bring about a strong sense of loss and sadness. But our enjoyment of sad music is paradoxical—we go out of our way to avoid sadness in our daily lives. For some, sad music actually deepens and amplifies the feelings of sorrow and loss—emotions that are connected to personal events and memories.
We get dealt a healthy dose of dopamine.Research has found that when a subject listens to music that gives them the chills, it triggers a release of dopamine to the brain. And if you don't know, dopamine is a kind of naturally occurring happy chemical we receive as part of a reward system.
Cats music researchThe latest research suggests that while cats might like music, they don't care much for human tunes, and respond better to 'species-appropriate' songs with frequencies and tempos that mimic the sounds of purring and birds.
The subconscious need to walk in rhythm served an evolutionary function for our ancestors. When humans walk, we make noise. Our ancestors may have learned to synchronize their steps in order to create predictable sounds as a group, improving their ability to recognize external rhythms.
Wells examined dogs' reactions to hearing modern pop music, classical music, and heavy metal while living in a shelter environment. She found that they might actually enjoy the music—depending on what kind it is. “It is well established that music can influence our moods,” Wells summarized.
