Music and Mind

It takes around an hour for a c-train from Dalhousie to arrive at Chinook, and when you’re really rushing to get some Christmas shopping done, time stretches. It was 10am on a no school Friday and I was cranky, tired, and impatient to get things over with. I sat at the very end of the strangely crowded train and prayed nobody would sit next to me; simply put, I was NOT in a good mood.

Hoping it would help tune out the conversations going on in the seats in front of me, I pulled out my mp3 player and turned up the volume. ‘Thank You’—by Dido began playing as soon as the train pulled away from the station, and my irritability faded away with the tranquil beats. As song after song shuffled through my music player, my mood improved drastically and before I knew it, the train pulled into Chinook.

Has a song ever drastically altered your mood? Has music ever made you think? From relaxing chords to rhythm that makes you want to dance, it’s obvious that each of us, at some point on our lives, has been touched by music.

My piano teacher once told me about an urban legend of a song written by a Hungarian composer that caused dozens of listeners to become depressed and commit suicide. Apparently the song gave off the same effect as getting your hopes up and having them crushed brutally. Whether that’s true or not, I do not know. However, on my trip to Chinook mall, I witnessed another powerful aspect of music. I think it’s a given that if I haven’t brought my mp3 along that day, the ride would’ve gone by a whole lot slower. ‘Losing’ myself in the music had fended off my boredom so successfully my destination was just a daydream away.

Music is influential in the way it reaches our subconscious minds. It’s more easily interpreted than speeches and far more understandable then human or animal sounds. The power of music is in its ability to empathize; music connects us to one another, music helps us communicate. If music were a person, she would be a psychologist. She’ll familiarize herself with your thoughts, then lead you to think in another perspective. How a song makes us feel determines the state of our minds, for the next little while.

It has been proven that listening to music with moderately fast beats and moderately slow instrumentals helps preoccupy the mind. This gives the illusion that time passes quicker. Piano and violin music between the tempos andante and allegretto are known to increase one’s ability to solve logic problems. This links to the Mozart effect, which states that listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major for more than 8 minutes increases one’s IQ by an average of 5 points for the next 10-15 minutes. It’s also stated that musically inclined people tend to have above average IQs, and that learning to play an instrument will positively influence your ability to understand mathematics.

Music and the mind are two closely connected things. The benefit music would have on our minds, if applied in proper usage, could be tremendous.