It was a milestone birthday for me, 60, so my husband planned an all-inclusive vacation for us. Punta Cana seemed to be the best deal, and the resort had good reviews.
Oh, my goodness! It was paradise. The weather, the ocean, the palm trees, the people. What a beautiful place! What a wonderful resort (Riu Republica, adults only)!
There was one pool, near the beach, that had the most hopping bar and non-stop fun music. The music was so happy and sexy and every once in a while, the DJ would play a few American pop songs, but, most of the time, there was a special sound, a rhythm that will bring me back there. Even when there were rap songs, they were tolerable because of the overall sound and rhythm. I wish I had asked the names of some of the songs. Some of them were so popular that people would sing along and dance extra-hard.
There was lots of music there, not just the wild pool DJ. There was music at the pool near our room and there was music in the evenings, a couple fun parties with dancers and super music (1980s theme was excellent), and a quieter singer with a pianist that I liked singing along with.
I have a playlist of J Balvin Essentials from Apple Music Urbano Latino that has a bunch of songs that remind me of the times by that pool. I've been playing that in my kitchen.
Here's a song by Bad Bunny and J Balvin. Que Pretendes.
Here's a song with some English. Selena Gomez, with J Balvin, and others. I Can't Get Enough.
Now, I like to dance along to my J Balvin playlist to remind myself of how wonderful that vacation was, but I have to just imagine the way dancing felt under water. The pool was so nice and the way my body moved under water was so special, it can't be replicated in my kitchen. Still, that sound and my dancing can bring my back to Punta Cana.
One huge thing that I miss as an empty nester is living room dance parties.
I would set up my bluetooth speaker and play an Apple Music playlist called "Dance Workout" as loud as I could. We'd start by jogging around in a circuit, through the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, down the hall and back into the living room. We'd add arms, we'd stop and do some bouncy moves, some knee lifts, wiggles of all kinds, and then jog around again. I would sing along when I could. Loud. This would take about an hour and then we'd lie on the floor in the living room and do some stretching to a Calm playlist.
Those were such happy hours! I felt good. Sweat and songs and silliness with my girls! Woo!
I can recreate a little bit of that feeling. Victoria recommended @emkfit, a girl who makes exercise videos on YouTube. She's got a series of Dance Workouts that are fun, and a some have a musical theatre theme. Here's the Mamma Mia workout:
I also found @growwithjo who has some fun dance workouts. She has a series of exercise videos called Dance Party Workouts! Perfect. I love Michael Jackson songs, and she's done a great job of creating a fun workout to some really great ones. She's got lots of great themes, including 80s, gospel, and Reggaeton (ooh, Zumba!).
I can play these nice and loud and my young friend on the screen dances with me. I feel happy and I'm exercising. I can find new ones, there are tons of Dance Workout videos on YouTube, or I can repeat my favourites, getting better at the moves every time.
We all need exercise, and it has to be doing something fun so that it's not a chore, so that you keep it up. It should be a joy to move our bodies, to work our muscles. Music is my favourite thing. Dancing and singing help me to enjoy moving my body. I hope I keep dancing for a long, long time. I want to dance with my future grandchildren.
My name means reborn: Renate, from re-natus/re-nata. So, spring is my season.
I was born in February and I love snow, but I'm an Easter baby according to my name. I was a wondrous "rainbow baby", born after a tragic stillbirth. According to my mother, I was named after her favourite cousin, who had a sunny and good-natured disposition. But, I can't help but think that my name represents a rainbow and sunshine after a dark time. It's about rebirth and renewal, rising again. Renate is also related to baptism, and I do really love the water.
So, if spring is my season, I should have a spring theme song. What spring music do I like, though? What is the sound of spring and rebirth, Renate?
Vivaldi's Spring (link to video) from his Four Seasons is pretty, but it makes me think of furniture or eyeglasses, advertisements.
André Rieu has a spring offering: Spring Symphony. You can follow that link to a YouTube video, but you might not want to. To me, it doesn't say spring as much as it says "shoot those birds". It's supposed to be peaceful, relaxing music with charming birdsong. But, the chirping of the birds is just annoying. Birdsong in real life makes me happy. I'm happy to hear the real thing in the trees around my house.
The very best spring song has to be the Beatles', Here Comes the Sun. It starts with "It's been a long cold lonely winter". We acknowledge the darkness. Spring is a bit of a struggle for us where I live in Canada. Just because the calendar says it's spring, doesn't mean it's instantly all sunshine and flowers. Some days we have snow, rain, hail, and warm sunshine in one day. "I feel that ice is slowly melting" is really how spring feels most of the time. "It's alright." We're happy because know that summer is on its way. "Sun, sun, sun, here it comes!" That might work for a Renate theme song.
Every spring is full of music for me. From January to May, every year, I'm preparing my choir (YRCC) for a spring concert, except for the past two years, during the pandemic. For our Post-COVID Spring Season, which was supposed to be Spring 2022, we wanted to have as much uplifting music as possible. The pandemic was so depressing for us! Singing is the best (worst) way to transmit the virus and lots of choirs had outbreaks and deaths. Singing became associated with the word "superspreader". We could only meet by Zoom. It was better than nothing, but it was not choir. We finally started meeting in person at the end of February 2022. But, things are not quite safe yet, and we're not all comfortable with it. We're not quite ready for a big concert with the pandemic lingering still after Easter 2022. So 2023 will be our big return, revival, resurgence.
We sing a wonderful arrangement of the song We Rise Again, so that is our main theme. We want to express the certainty that we will be together again, that the pandemic will come to an end, and that we are confidently returning to life and singing.
We Rise Again captures the feeling of spring well. "As sure as the sunrise" everything is going to continue, to keep cycling, and it will be alright.
Here Comes the Sun is our sub-theme. I've been working on creating my own arrangement of a Here Comes the Sun medley. It will also include Stevie Wonder's Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing and Let the Sunshine In from Hair. Here comes the sun, so don't you worry about a thing, and let the sunshine in! I'm looking forward to performing that, sharing it will everyone. It might become my theme song.
Here is a very Canadian production of We Rise Again (as always, I think the YRCC version is the best):
We rise again in the faces
Of our children
We rise again in the voices of our song
We rise again in the waves out on the ocean
And then we rise again
Here are some more of the songs we are enjoying this spring as we prepare for next spring's We Rise Again concert:
My father took me to the opera, which I loved, especially the orchestra in the pit. Those memories are my favourite serious music memories from childhood. But, I also had lots of experience in classical music from children's TV, well, cartoons and Sesame Street mostly.
I have wonderful memories of symphony orchestras and opera singers and flamboyant conductors as drawings and Muppets.
The one Loony Tunes scene that particularly stands out in my memory is the one where Bugs Bunny is a conductor, Leopold, and the Big Tenor has to follow his directions, Leopold’s gloved hands, and ends up turning red and then blue holding a note sooo long. I like to have my choir hold on to the last notes of some of our big pieces, sometimes more than twice as long as written, so we joke about this scene quite often. Here's a link to a video of this scene.
How many classical melodies are popular because of Bugs Bunny and Loony Tunes?! Rossini's William Tell Overture and The Barber of Seville are big ones. Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 and Wagner's Pilgrim’s Chorus from the opera Tannhaüser are among others. I'm sure everyone my age can hum along to music on the popular classical radio station, even if they don't know the pieces by name. I sing along in nonsense syllables, imitating the horns and even the cymbals and kettle drums, and joke with my kids: ooh, I know all the words to this one!
TV commercials have also impressed a couple of famous melodies in my memory. There was a furniture store that used Vivaldi’s Spring from The Four Seasons. Classy and expensive. My favourite was the British Airways ad that featured The Flower Duet from Delibes' Lakmé. Man, I love that! I’m sure there were more.
Then, there's Sesame Street, another childhood obsession on television. Sesame Street is fantastic for tons of reasons, but one big one is all the great music. All kinds of music, pop, rock, jazz, classical, everything is presented along with the ABCs and The Count counting. Sometimes, there are guest musicians, the stars perform their songs, and sometimes the cast presents a song. Some songs were signature Sesame Street songs, written just for the show, like Sing (that's a link to a video).
My worldview comes from this song: Everyone can sing. Don't worry that it's not good enough for anyone else to hear, just sing. Sing a song.
I loved, love, Good Morning, Starshine on Sesame Street. With lyrics like "gliddy glup gloopy" it feels like it was written for the show, for Muppets, but it's actually from the musical, Hair.
There was tons of good classical music there on Sesame Street too. Yo-Yo Ma visited Sesame Street several times, and there were so many other classical musicians with all kinds of instruments, and there were ballerinas too! Itzhak Perlman gave Telly a violin lesson and Lang Lang has appeared at least twice, so they still do all kinds of music. I remember Andrea Bocelli singing with Elmo when I watched with my children- Time to Say Goodnight.
On YouTube, I was directed to videos of Cab Calloway, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Paul Simon, Johnny Cash, and Little Richard all singing with Muppets on Sesame Street.
Wikipedia has a page with a list of all the celebrity guests that have appeared on Sesame Street. It's huge!!! Take a look here.
My parents exposed me to a lot of good music, lots of different genres of music, and I had a lot of music at school: choirs, ukulele, recorder, clarinet. We had band and orchestra in middle school, band, stage band, jazz choir, and musical theatre in high school. I'm grateful for all of that and also for my musical education on Sesame Street and Bugs Bunny!
Will It Go Round In Circles is a 70s soul song by Billy Preston. I love it because of the brass, the grooves, the chorus, everything, but especially the verse that goes:
I've got a dance, I ain't got no steps, no
I'm gonna let the music move me around
I've got a dance, I ain't got no steps
I'm gonna let the music move me around
And then the chorus is so good! My dance with no steps, will go round, and fly, and who knows what else? I'm just going to let the music get into my body and my body will do whatever it feels like. Music, move me around!
This is one of my core beliefs, a thing in my soul: we can all dance and we don't need to learn any steps, don't need to study dance to dance.
Just do it.
Dance performances are wonderful, inspiring too, but they shouldn't make us feel like we should not do our own thing, that our own thing is bad, or unacceptable. We were born to dance and move our bodies to music in all kinds of ways.
Outside of a dance studio, off of a stage, or even there (maybe especially there), we should be encouraged to respond to the music without any prescribed notions about what is the correct way to dance. We should not be told that our bodies are not acceptable for dancing. Everybody, every body can dance. You've got some moving parts, so move them.
I encourage you to dance when you have the opportunity. In a bar, at a festival, in your own living room, dance your heart out! Dance the way your body and soul tells you to. Let others inspire your dance moves, your steps, but don't let them dictate to you or make you feel less than a beautiful treasure. Do your own dance.
Will it go 'round in circles?
Will it fly high like a bird up in the sky?
Will it go 'round in circles?
Will it fly high like a bird up in the sky?
Here's Donny Osmond singing this song! Oh, Donny of the purple socks, you are much much more than a teenage heartthrob!
As Russia attacks Ukraine, the world is learning the Ukrainian national anthem. It's all over the place on social media, posted by individuals, groups, and orchestras, sung in the streets, on stages, in arenas, in protests all over the world.
A national anthem is a powerful piece of music, bringing people together, uplifting and encouraging us in many ways. I often cry when I hear a crowd singing their national anthem, it's so strong and beautiful.
At the same time we're hearing all kinds of Ukrainian musical culture: choral works, symphonies, folk songs. We're seeing artworks by Ukrainians, traditional and contemporary shared on Instagram and Facebook. We all now know the colours of the flag.
People gather and raise their voices together, and raise the flag, and wear its colours, doing what they can to send a message of unity and peace.
Of course
you can sing! You breathe. That takes rhythm.
Your
heart, your respiratory system, your very existence has a regular beat.
A baby is
placed in your arms: you wiggle, jiggle and giggle, and sway and rock, and hum
and sing too!
Pay
attention and see babies move their bodies to music even before they can
walk.
Listen to
babbling. Before they can speak, babies start to sing little melodies. School
children sing together all the time. We love to hear our children sing.
You walk:
one-two, it becomes a march. The tempo might be irregular, poco accelerando and
then poco ritardando, when you see something interesting ahead. Put some music
on and you'll be walking in time to it. Jogging with music, running with music,
you're dancing. You dance, you musical being, you.
You’re
not a capital D Dancer, but you can dance. Don't even think about opera stars,
pop stars, and people in costumes with stage makeup competing for prizes or
earning a living performing! They are capital S singers, but you too can sing.
You sing.
You
speak. You speak and you don't stop speaking because you're not a Speaker who
puts on a suit and stage makeup and charges hundreds of dollars for people to
listen to them. You didn't stop arguing with people because your debate team
didn't win. You didn't even join the debate club, did you? You enjoy debating
about movies and music, what's the best, who's the best, right?
Don't
stop singing. If you stopped, then start up again. Sing to your babies; sing to
your parents; sing to your lovers. Do it in the kitchen, in the living room,
anywhere. Just do it. Just sing.
Put on
some music. Start in the car by yourself, then sing while you’re cooking. Start
by singing along with the la-la and na-na parts, or just sing the chorus. Hum (humming
is good for you too), then ba-ba-ba the melody, and then locate the lyrics.
Sing along with the stars, and maybe add some dance moves, even just some
expressive gestures (especially if you’re in the car). It feels so good!
Sing like
nobody's watching. Or, go out and sing along with the band. Maybe your friends
will sing along too! Facilitate the singing of others. Let everyone sing. Sing
and dance on the dance floor. Let them all watch; maybe they'll be braver
because you were brave.
Singing
is good for your body and good for your soul and good for relationships,
families, and communities; the whole world should sing.
Don't let
people tell people they can't sing, please.
As a choir conductor, I facilitate others' singing. It feels good.
Of course you can dance! You breathe. That takes rhythm.
Your heart, your respiratory system, your very existence has a regular beat.
A baby is placed in your arms: you wiggle and giggle and sway and rock, and hum and sing too!
Pay attention and see babies move their bodies to music even before they can walk.
You walk: one-two, it becomes a march. The tempo might be irregular, poco accelerando and then poco ritardando, when you see something interesting ahead. Put some music on and you'll be walking in time to it. Jogging with music, running with music, you're dancing. You dance.
Don't even think about ballerinas and people in costumes with stage makeup competing for prizes or earning a living performing! They are capital D Dancers, but you too can dance. You dance.
You speak. You speak and you don't stop speaking because you're not a Speaker who puts on a suit and stage makeup and charges hundreds of dollars for people to listen to them. You didn't stop arguing with people because your debate team didn't win. You didn't even join the debate club, did you? You enjoy debating about movies and music, what's the best, who's the best, right?
Don't stop dancing. If you stopped, then start up again. Do it in the kitchen, in the living room, anywhere. Just do it. Just dance.
Put on some music. Turn off the lights so you feel less shy. (Would it help if you put on some makeup, some dance clothes?) Start by marching, skip around a little. Move your head, shoulders, arms, rock the baby, jiggle and wiggle. You can dance. Move what you have; move what you can. It feels so good!
Dance like nobody's watching. Or, go out and dance in front of the band. Let them all watch; maybe they'll be braver because you were brave. Facilitate the dancing of others. Let everyone dance.
Dancing is good for your body and good for your soul and good for relationships, families, and communities; the whole world should dance.
Don't let people tell people they can't dance, please.
The song that first comes to mind when I need to think "This too shall pass" is Bob Marley's No Woman No Cry with its awesome vamp "Everything's gonna be alright. Everything's gonna be alright..." It's a little sad though, starting with "Said I remember when" there's mention of "people we lost along the way", and crying of course. So, I just have to hold onto the vamp, stay there.
Don't Worry Be Happy, that Bobby McFerrin classic is a little more positive, quirky-fun, with that whistling and doop-doop and especially the woo-ooh-hoo melody. I love nonsense. There's quite a bit of gloom in it though when you're in the mood for gloom. Still, it does say, "It will soon pass, whatever it is." Right?
The song that is making me really feel better these days is from the 2016 movie Sing. Singing is my thing, so that's a good start. In the movie, the song is performed by an elephant, which was my mother's favourite animal. It's a bouncy, fun version of Stevie Wonder's Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing. It has a good ba-ba-ba section, which I always like. The best thing about Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing is that it makes me feel like dancing. That's the key for me. Singing and dancing make me feel good.
I just watched a video, a Ted Talk from seven years ago about choral singing. It was so moving!
I know first hand how incredible it is to meet weekly with a diverse group of people to sing together. I am the musical director of the York Region Community Choir. For nearly two years now, during the COVID pandemic, we've been silenced. Singing is the worst thing, the best way for this virus to be transmitted.
We have found a way to meet, on Zoom. It's not anywhere near the experience that we have singing in a room together, but at least we have the opportunity to chat, to connect with each other, and we have found a way to sing our songs together so that we remember some of our repertoire and have an opportunity to read music every week. Only a small number of us take part. I feel so sad for the rest of the choir, sad for the loss of our weekly joy.
Watching this video reminded me of how much we've been missing and how very important it is for us to get back together again.
Audio Latency: the reason we can't synch on video calls- so annoying. We solved the problem by muting everyone during YRCC Zoom Choir. It worked!
Balconies: During the first lockdown, there were so many nice videos of people making music together on their balconies. Here's a compilation of people in Italy making music during in March 2020. I loved seeing the snippets during the news, or shared randomly. The balcony thing started in Italy, but spread everywhere. It's been so frustrating to have no live music!!!
Concert Recordings: Videos and sound recordings of our YRCC concerts saved us. We sang along with our best selves. It was perfect. Here's a link to one of our YouTube videos. Finding videos of songs performed live was sometimes an emotional thing. Feelings of longing for the live music experience and also shock and horror to see all those people close together, breathing right beside thousands of other people!
Droplets: YUCK Here's a video of droplets released when singing. We had Carol buy face shields for the choir in hope of rehearsing together in the fall of 2020. We still haven't had the chance to use them. But, we will soon. I'm determined to get the choir rehearsing in person again as soon as possible.
Exercise: Aside from walking the dog, the best exercise during COVID has been evening “dance parties”. My eldest and I would crank up volume on the speaker, turn off the lights and dance around to the Apple Music Dance Workout Playlist. This was key to keeping sane.
Facebook Live: Livestreaming on Facebook from their bedrooms, a number of big names gave us precious concerts and musicians of all kinds found ways to perform and share their music.
Guitar: I picked up the guitar again and started learning chords so that I can sing and accompany myself. I really wish I had learned to play guitar. It’s so hard! My fingers hurt and don’t want to behave.
Headphones: Noise cancelling headphones were life savers. Blocking out the world and providing the right music for the moment, energizing or moody, sad or romantic, whatever I needed to be submerged in and alone in. While I was working, they were essential. Music made them bearable.
Instagram Live: Livestreams from bedrooms, and random locations that allowed social distancing were sometimes wonderful, and sometimes sad.
Just Dance: This is the fun musical exercise of choice for my eldest. Sometimes, I would join her. When I could, I would convince her to have a dance party instead (see Exercise).
K: short for Okay, sometimes kk, in a chat of a Zoom call, or in a text. Like LOL (laughing out loud) and TY (thank you), IRL (in real life), we learned these short forms. I hardly use my phone to talk anymore. Video calls and messages seem to be best. Messages are good because you can share songs by sending a link to a YouTube video or a song on Apple Music or Spotify.
Live Music: There was no live music. Without the internet, it would have been awful, unbearable. See Facebook Live, Instagram Live, Online Concerts. The first time I saw live music, on Canada Day, 2021 on a bar patio off Main Street, I cried. It was so good to see and hear and feel it! Going to be sure to go to see more live performances. I might have to start bar-hopping post COVID.
Masks: So much controversy at the beginning, and now it seems strange to think we might be taking them off soon. It’s not easy to sing with a mask, but we can’t sing together anyway! Sigh. The YRCC, my choir, bought face shields. We’ll see how that works when we get together again.
Needles: Vaccination was key to the reopening plan in Ontario. I got the first shot I could, so I had Astra Zeneca and also got the AZ for my second shot. In England, they got jabs and here we got shots.
Online Concerts: There were a few big ones. Elton John’s Living Room Concert Fundraiser in March 2020 was memorable.
PPE: Personal Protective Equipment was in short supply at the beginning. Masks, gloves, and hand sanitizer were in huge demand early on when the toilet paper thing happened. I have a good collection of masks now, so I’m not in a big hurry to stop wearing them. The choir will try face shields.
Questionnaires: Those COVID questionnaires, also called assessments, everywhere! We’ll probably need them for when we get back to choir. No fever, no travel, no contact, no, no, no, …
Reading music: One reason I insisted on keeping up the Zoom Choir meetings was that I thought it was important for us to keep up our music reading skills. For the majority of the choir, they haven’t had to look at sheet music for over a year.
Singing: We couldn't sing together. Singing was deadly! The videos of people singing and germs spreading were horrifying. News of outbreaks in choirs who rehearsed after the lockdown was shocking. I decided to try the Zoom platform so that we could sing together from our own homes. It worked, but it wasn't perfect. I sang while exercising, which was one reason for blasting the volume.
Tik-Tok: I didn't even download the App until Spring 2021, but it was influential.
Ukulele: The small size and relative simplicity of the ukulele make it a good choice for accompanying myself while singing.
Video Calls: vital when you can't meet in person
We Rise Again: this will be a new anthem for us, I think. Getting the choir back together after COVID will be wonderful, but a challenge. We will need to be reborn.
X: see Questionnaires. All the X’s we had to enter beside the NO’s!
YRCC: York Region Community Choir, my music family
Zoom: our saviour, the platform for video calls with large groups, which we used to keep the YRCC going, to keep me sane.
What a stressful week this has been! With all the news of cancellations and closures, you must be wondering what will happen to choir.
We will join in solidarity with other groups and the YRCC will stop meeting until COVID-19 is under control. Already researchers have made headway, and with people withdrawing themselves from the potential pool of victims, and from the potential need for medical care, etc., together we will stop this thing.
Keep your eyes on the website. There's an announcement on the home page. We'll continue to watch Facebook for news and will post there too.
While you're on the website, head over to the recordings and sing along with your part and then sing along with the accompaniment when you're strong on your part. For songs that don't have recordings, take a look here at my blog. I've posted links to YouTube videos of performances of the songs we're doing, and often they are the same arrangement so you can sing along with those too.
Keep singing.
Sing while you wash your hands, sing in the kitchen, sing in the bedroom, sing in the bathroom in the shower as usual, sing in the car and sing while you walk in the park. Sing to the dog and sing to the kids and grandkids (maybe you're babysitting during the extended March Break).
Singing will help you to take deep breaths and maintain your composure. You will feel less stressed and in better control. Try it.
People hearing your singing will benefit too, and maybe they'll join in to benefit even more.
The YRCC Spring Concert in 2014 was called "Take Me Home". The York Region Community Choir prepared songs about Canada, by Canadians and other songs that take us home, so, Canada and Home were our themes. It was one of our very best themes. The concert on May 3rd was powerful, with excellent music playing with our emotions, ours and the audience's, and inspiring passionate performances.
After the concert, we had tons of positive feedback from members of the audience, mostly friends and family, saying it was our very best concert ever! It was, truly. I wrote about it here.
Now, in the months after the concert, the YRCC goes on tour. Every Monday, our rehearsal night, we visit a seniors' home or nursing home in the area. We perform for them and lead some sing-alongs. It's the most rewarding part of our season, the best thing about the choir. It's always a special experience to sing with seniors, and this time, we're getting even more satisfaction with this powerful theme.
Whenever we sing with seniors, there are powerful moments when people who are listless, in pain, sad, or just bored, come to life singing. Bodies sit taller and sway and wiggle with the music and faces light up with joy and laughter. Sometimes there are tears, but it's always good.
This season, we took people home, and they stopped us after to thank us. At one performance, a woman over 90 years old, told us that the music brought her back to when she was 15 and first came to Canada. She was beaming with happiness. Yesterday, another older woman was smiling from ear-to-ear as she told us that our songs about Nova Scotia reminded her of her time growing up there and the work she did in Nova Scotia during WWII as a code breaker. She talked for a while about Nova Scotia and Cape Breton and code breaking. She couldn't stand straight and her eyes were blind, but she was feeling great. I wrote about yesterday's performance here.
What a wonderful thing we do! We have fun, doing what we love to do, and we bring fun and happiness to people who need it and deserve it. Music is powerful; music is love.
The relationship between feelings and music is obvious to even the smallest child. Children respond to music with their whole bodies. They'll express their feelings with much more than just their faces. They can naturally make their whole body look sad or happy or excited. It's wonderful to see.
If you have children in your life, expose them to as much music as possible. Don't just have the radio playing on your favourite station and don't just play them children's music either. Give them a taste of everything from country to classical and don't forget to include the folk music of your ancestors. Give them musical roots and musical wings.
Play sad music and happy music, dancing music and thinking music, and share the memories that music triggers.
Sesame Street is the coolest show and has the coolest music. Here's a clipof a violinist showing Big Bird how music shows feelings.
Here's another cool clip of hunky Mark Ruffalo on Sesame Street explaining to a Muppet what empathy is.
A study done to test if listening to music helps cardiac patients came to two conclusions that I think are quite obvious. (It's nice to have one's ideas backed up by science, right?)
First of all, the study found that music helps us to feel better, and it's not just an emotional response, it's also physical.
In addition, it was shown that the kind of music that works will be different for different people.
Here's a link to an article (September 1st, 2013 in the Telegraph) about the study, and here's the conclusion:
"Listening to favourite music alone and in addition to regular exercise training improves endothelial function and therefore may be an adjunct method in the rehabilitation of patients with coronary artery disease. There is no 'ideal' music for everybody and patients should choose music which increases positive emotions and makes them happy or relaxed."
What kind of music increases positive emotions for you?
What kind of music makes you happy?
What kind of music relaxes you?
The answers to those questions can help you to keep your heart healthy and strong.
The sun has been shining for a few days now, and the temperature is supposed to go above zero today. The official first day of spring is the day after tomorrow, but the reality is that our winter continues well beyond the first day of spring. The ground is still frozen solid and our first frost-free date is in mid-May. We will also have summery days from time to time well before the first day of summer, so I guess it balances out somewhat.
The coming of spring, even if it's just a word on the calendar, is exciting anyway and I was wondering what kind of music makes me think of spring.
André Rieu has something to offer: Spring Symphony. You can follow that link to a YouTube video, but you might not want to. To me, it doesn't say spring as much as it says "shoot those birds". It's supposed to be peaceful, relaxing music with charming birdsong. But, the chirping of the birds is just annoying.
I'm happy to hear the real thing in the trees in front of my house. Their chirping makes me happy.
Vivaldi's Spring from his Four Seasons is pretty, but it makes me think of furniture or eyeglasses.
Here's a song that has a happy, hopeful, spring feeling: Simon and Garfunkel's The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy). I'm looking forward to walking down the sidewalk without slipping and falling. When the ice and snow go away, I'll be singing this song. But, I can't walk outdoors and feel groovy yet.
I think the best one has to be the Beatles', Here Comes the Sun. It starts with "It's been a long cold lonely winter". Yup, it's got to have winter in it if it's a spring song. "I feel that ice is slowly melting" is really what I'm feeling.
I've been suffering from the February Blahs lately.
Sometimes, I use music to stoke the sadness, to let it all hang out. I guess it helps me to have a reason to cry and grieve when I'm really just feeling sad for no reason.
Sometimes, I use music to lift myself out of the sadness, to make myself forget about the gloom and rise into happiness.
This is common. We use music to enhance our mood or to change our mood.
I work out much better when the music is good. And, I use music to help me clean and wash the dishes. It helps! I use music to calm myself down in traffic.
How do you use music?
I found this article on Mental Floss about some really interesting studies done on uses for music. It's called 11 Problems Music Can Solve.
Here are the problems that music has solved according to the article:
Low birth weight
Droopy plants
Effects of brain damage
Teen loitering
Hearing loss
A broken heart
Poor performance in sports
Grumpy teens
Illiteracy
Sluggish alcohol sales
Wine snobbery
You'll want to read it yourself to find out the details.
This is just perfect, isn't it? Happiness is the Truth!
It says clap along, but don't you want to dance a full-blown Happy Dance?! Yeah!
Just try not to wiggle! Ha!
And, the version with the minions from Dispicable is also cute.
This is one excellent, happy tune!
