Thursday 31 January 2013

Match Music to your Mood or Change your Mood with Music


So there are websites that do what my girlfriends and I did when we were teenagers!

We used to put sad, romantic music on when we were feeling heartbroken, or romantically frustrated, and it would make us feel even sadder and we'd wallow on basement couches crying.

In those days, we'd have to get up every 3 minutes to change the record.

Now, you can make a playlist on your iPod, or media player and listen to hours of music to match any mood. Or, you can get someone else to do it for you.

There are websites that will play music for you based not only on artists or genres, but also on moods. Here's an article that reviews 5 of them. You can choose from calm, energetic, dark, or positive on one, and another site suggests aggressive and melancholic music among their choices.

You can find places online that play relaxing music for you to help you meditate or fall asleep. When you're feeling stressed-out, you can calm down by listening to this calming music.

So, if you're feeling a bit sluggish, you can ask to be energized by a song? If you're feeling wimpy, you can ask for something aggressive to empower you?

Will this kind of musical empathy work for you? Can you change the way you're feeling by playing a song?

Tuesday 29 January 2013

When music is dangerous: Driving Music

One of my first posts on my choir blog, Renate's Baton, was about the effect of music on driving.

(This Musical Empathy post was initially published in 2013, but I discovered the video links were broken, so I'm fixing it now in Sept. 2021.) 

I was commuting for a while and discovered that listening to the classical music station helped to keep me calmer and also helped to control my speeding.

That was fine except when a piece of music was so beautiful that it made me cry.

Why do I cry when I hear or see something really beautiful? Awe-inspiring things do that to people. But, I am really easily moved to tears, and I don't always know exactly why something has moved me.

Here's the post I wrote, called Driving Music:
(http://renatesbaton.blogspot.ca/2011/06/driving-music.html)

Here are a couple of the songs I mentioned:

This one makes me speed involuntarily: On the Floor, by Jennifer Lopez. When a song like this comes on, and I'm on the highway, especially the 404, but also on the 400, I just start hitting the gas! And, before I know it, I'm doing 130! It's interesting that I would say that this song has a strong driving beat. The rhythm propels you to move. Great for dancing but not so good for driving :




This one made me cry so that I couldn't see properly, had to find the kleenex, blow my nose, etc. Very distracting while I was driving! Luckily, it only had that effect the first time I heard it.:



BTW: My family doesn't love these guys as much as I do. They call them " The Singing Coyotes". 



Monday 28 January 2013

Break Your Heart Lyrics-Taio Cruz ft. Ludacris: Fun and ironic



Love this song because it's so much fun and very positive-sounding, and makes you want to dance and be happy.
But, when you listen to the words, well, that guy is pretty awful and those girls are pretty stupid.

Reminds me of Mad World. The original version that I danced to was actually kind of sad, and watching the video was moody, but when you heard the record playing at a dance, it made you feel happy and cool. I love it. The music was upbeat and made me feel good.


And, then someone took it and made a beautiful moody and sad arrangement of it.
I love this one too. It's like a completely different song, but still the same. This one is simpler though, because you don't have that tension between the meaning and the presentation. It's moody and sombre.


Sunday 27 January 2013

Mozart Eine kleine Nachtmusik - Serenade in Gmajor, K-525, 2nd Movement --Happy Birthday, Mozart!



Happy Birthday, Mozart (Jan.27)!

Serene and formal. This makes me feel relaxed and comfortable, but not messy-relaxed. This is the comfort of order and balance, not a lazy day in pyjamas kind of comfort. It would sound great on a lazy-pj day looking out over a lake, holding a coffee or a brandy.

Owl City and Carly Rae Jepsen - "Good Time" (Lyric Video)



Owl City's "Good Time"
We listen to and dance with this song at Teen Choir. It's wonderfully positive.
We feel happy and silly, and feel a need to move with it too.


KOOL & THE GANG-CELEBRATION 1980

I went to a Kool and the Gang Concert ages ago. It was fabulous! Uplifting and energizing, fun and cool!
Celebrate Good Times! Here's a video of a performance of  "Celebration", a song to play at any party. 



This reminded me of the fun I have with the Owl City song "Good Time" at Teen Choir. We sing along to it and dance to it. It makes us all smile and move our bodies and feel very positive about ourselves and the world.



Saturday 26 January 2013

Visual response to Killing in the Name

some pictures that reflect my feelings from Killing in the Name

This is the product of a child's art therapy. I once had an angry student "make some pictures to show me your anger". It was cool. Thank God for lots of crayons in the classroom. This is a link to the source of this art: http://www.janetillman.com/art_gallery.html



http://www.play-and-stay.co.uk/news/thorpe-park-vomit-collector-114.html

Rage Against The Machine - Killing In The Name *Warning: language



And they say that pop is repetitive. Hee hee! (in my opinion, the best music has to be repetitive. if i like a melody-or a riff-a chorus-a hook-, i want to hear it repeated, to anticipate it)

I'm feeling anger and anxiety, frustration and fear when I hear this and watch this.

Grunting and swearing are totally not my thing. I generally try to avoid anger and conflict, and heavy metal :)

My sister likes this song, and finds it helpful for letting off steam when she's feeling frustrated and angry.

I guess it's like when my girlfriends and I felt sad and then listened to music that made us cry. The choice of music reflected and then intensified our feelings to help us deal with them.

The choice of music reflects and intensifies our feelings to help us deal with them.

Music can help us deal with our feelings.

Musical Empathy helps us deal with our feelings.

Friday 25 January 2013

Greater Empathy makes a Better Musician

Lindsay Kupser, a jazz musician from Calgary, Alberta wrote about Empathy on the Berklee High School Jazz Festival Website Blog. 

She thought about the connection between empathy and music after a music teacher gave an empathy quotient test. 

Here's some of that blog post:

 I wondered why my teacher at a music school would want us to take this quotient. What did empathy have to do with music? But after taking the test and really thinking about it, I realized that my professor might have been on the right track. Perhaps empathy has a larger role in music than we realize.

I absolutely believe that being empathetic is extremely important in this life. In fact, without it, I don’t think relationships could really exist, musical or otherwise. Empathy enables us to put ourselves in another’s shoes, and that is the only way that help can be given to those who need it. Society would be a disaster without empathy, and I believe my empathetic nature makes me a good friend and someone who will give help when it is needed. The question is, does it make me a better musician? I believe it does, but I invite you to take this same quotient and decide for yourself if the questions being asked are applicable to music. You might be surprised!

I took the test and it turns out that I only have an average 'empathy quotient'. I like to think of myself as very empathetic!

I do believe that empathy makes music better- when it's involved in the making of the music, and when it's the listener whose empathy is involved in the appreciation of the music.

Loretta Goggi - Maledetta primavera (with lyrics) Back to Broken-hearted Teenager Times

I grew up in a predominantly Italian neighbourhood in Downsview, Ontario. We would get together in someone's basement and listen to songs on a record player. Usually lots of 45s.

Most of the time most of us were feeling the heavy-hearted sadness of unrequited love, which could change in a moment from that sadness to the bliss of hopeful love, and then to anxiety, and embarrassment, and then to frisky-playfulness, etc. We listened to emotional Italian love songs like Maledetta Primavera and Ti Amo, and hugged cushions in frustration. Sometimes someone would cry. It was great!





Thursday 24 January 2013

Musical Empathy: Scientific Explanation by David Byrne


I'm reading David Byrne's How Music Works. This is an excerpt.
The UCLA study proposed that our appreciation and feeling for music are deeply dependent on mirror neurons. When you watch, or even just hear, someone play an instrument, the neurons associated with the muscles required to play that instrument fire. Listening to a piano, we “feel” those hand and arm movements, and as any air guitarist will tell you, when you hear or see a scorching solo, you are “playing” it, too. Do you have to know how to play the piano to be able to mirror a piano player? Edward W. Large at Florida Atlantic University scanned the brains of people with and without music experience as they listened to Chopin. As you might guess, the mirror neuron system lit up in the musicians who were tested, but somewhat surprisingly, it flashed in non-musicians as well. So, playing air guitar isn’t as weird as it sometimes seems. The UCLA group contends that all of our means of communication—auditory, musical, linguistic, visual—have motor and muscular activities at their root. By reading and intuiting the intentions behind those motor activities, we connect with the underlying emotions. Our physical state and our emotional state are inseparable—by perceiving one, an observer can deduce the other.
People dance to music as well, and neurological mirroring might explain why hearing rhythmic music inspires us to move, and to move in very specific ways. Music, more than many of the arts, triggers a whole host of neurons. Multiple regions of the brain fire upon hearing music: muscular, auditory, visual, linguistic.


Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/How-Do-Our-Brains-Process-Music-169360476.html#ixzz2IxRuhWh8 
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter







Waves of Love and Gratitude, and...


These are a few visual representations of some of the feelings that I got from the song below. 



Yesterday's Emotional Response to Music: For Good, from Wicked, by Stephen Schwartz

Yesterday, I had a very strong response to a piece of music.

Now, it might have been exaggerated because I was picturing 2 of my choir members singing it, who have voices that I absolutely adore. And, maybe visions of the rest of the choir hearing it for the first time would have boosted the emotion factor. But, the song itself is strong. The words and the music are powerful.

I was really choked up, holding in my tears for the benefit of my 12-year-old who was listening with me.

Let's see what you think:


I chose this video, because it has the lyrics for you to read, and it doesn't show the singers. This is the one that I was listening to yesterday. I was picturing a man and a woman singing it, 2 particular people, but I think I would have been touched by it no matter what.

Musical Empathy

Music 'gives us feels', makes us feel feelings.

A good musical experience creates an emotional response.

The composer and lyricist, the arranger and all the other musicians who create music understand our feelings and create experiences that help us to explore those feelings.

  • This is what I'm calling Musical Empathy
  • And, our response is Musical Empathy too.

Music moves me. It moves me emotionally and physically. I almost always have a physical response (dancing, tapping, closing my eyes, crying...) and emotional responses, feelings. Sometimes I feel that I have to hold in my responses, try to keep them inside.

Now, I am easily manipulated by music and movies and even TV commercials, crying or laughing easily. And, that's got to be good for something.

I've been soul-searching. What am I good at? What can I do with what I've been given, my talents? I decided to work on this blog, which will provide people with music that I believe expresses particular feelings, and hopefully we can explore feelings and music together.