Life can be mentally overwhelming. People experiencing stress from their workplace which can be exhausting to the mind. People grieve from a recent death in the family which may lead to depression. People also face hardships from comparing themselves to others, and then loose confidence in themselves. While each of these everyday problems creates angst, weariness, and lack of motivation, there are ways to mend its burdens. Music is a tool that may be used to cope with what repeatedly takes the life out of people. Both the playing and listening of music allows people to shift their focus to sounds that both soothe the brain and motivate its functions. Someone ecstatically singing their favorite song on the way to work provides a much brighter start to the day opposed to the rage felt will being burnt with hot coffee. Various styles and genres will affect the brain distinctively, but all offer benefits to one’s mental and physical health. Music therapy is an occupation focused on how to explore different avenues of music listening and playing in order to improve people’s mental health. Not only are people in need of this therapy for stress related reasons, but they may also seek a relief for their mental health issues, such as dementia. Playing and listening to music has a profound effect on people’s brain functions, attention levels, emotions, and overall the mental health.

Listening to music shifts people’s focus away from their stress, relaxing their minds as a result. The peak of frustration is created not only by the complication of a task, but by the time, energy, attitude, and persistence needed to complete it. People are faced with these draining burdens everyday in some fashion, and commonly have trouble completing them without feeling stale. Music offers an opportunity for people to turn their focus to organized sounds that rejuvenate their minds. Elizabeth Landau, founder of the experimental blog CNN Light Years, researched a study on how music listening affects mental health. She used a study done by Daniel Levitin, a well-known neuroscientist and faculty member at UC Berkley, conducted a study testing how music would affect patients preparing for surgery. Patients were randomly assigned music to listen to, or anti anxiety-drugs to take. Levetin and his team of scientists tracked levels of anxiety and stress prior to their procedure. The results of Levitin’s study found that “patients who listened to music had less anxiety and lower cortisol than people who took drugs.” In this case, music proves to be more helpful in removing people’s stress than medication.

Music can affect not only people’s emotions, but brain functions as well. Barry Goldstein, a grammy winning author, speaker, and producer,  has an enlightening understanding of how humans can express emotions by listening to music. In his book, “The Secret Language of the Heart : How to Use Music, Sound, and Vibration as Tools for Healing and Personal Transformation”, Goldstein uses a mother and child as an example for this transferring of emotions in song. In his third chapter, entitled “Engaging Your Brain With Music”, Goldstein describes how a mother singing a lullaby to her newborn baby gives action to the hormone known as oxytocin. The “cuddle hormone” as Goldstein calls it, “can be released by singing.”(29) Goldstein then writes about music induced brain functions with brain wave entertainment. He explains that music can “affect your mood by entertaining the brain to more relaxed states, where we become more focused and attentive and can increase our cognitive abilities, sleep more soundly, and learn to meditate”(Goldstein). To support his argument for music’s effect on sleep and learning abilities, Goldstein displays human’s hertz levels, which is the level of brain synchronization to musical frequencies. Goldstein placed hertz levels into four categories from highest to lowest activity: Beta, Alpha, Theta, Delta. The Beta waves include hertz levels of fourteen to forty, which are experienced while people are awake at standard alertness. The brain typically experiences the Beta waves while someone is actively engaged in their work. Alpha waves range from eight to fourteen hertz, while people minds are calm and relaxed. Actions associated with Alpha waves include meditation and taking a break from work. The hertz levels are at their lowest activity with the Theta and Delta waves, as levels range from zero to eight hertz. Actions associated with the Theta and Delta waves include daydreaming and dreamless sleep. Goldstein argues that the Beta waves are what people mostly experience during a typical busy day, as “we are moving at a faster pace when our attention is on our outer world (work, family, etc.) and our faster brain frequencies reflect this.”(Goldstein) Alpha waves, Goldstein writes, are experienced while listening to calming music. Due to the relaxation of the brain, Goldstein writes that in the Alpha and Theta people can “tap into enhanced creative frames of mind.” Creativity, linked to motivation, is key to those overwhelmed with stress, as a newly found energy can better their future work habits. Music listening offers a calming outlet for people with high stress levels, a method of deep emotional connection, which can be see through the hertz levels of brain frequencies. 

Music playing captures the mind by teaching concentration skills and participation abilities, which result in academic improvements that can be transferred to other areas of life. Performing a musical instrument requires a great deal of focus in order to produce a refined sound. An instrument such as the violin requires years of crafting technique in order for players to be able to master a wide range of musical capabilities. Performing a substantial amount of difficult technical tasks on an instrument simultaneously takes a lot of practice and musical knowledge. Some of these tasks include having proper curvature of the fingers in the violin hand, a proper bow hold, shifting back and forth between left hand positions and patterns, and reading music, to name few. Jascha Heifetz, one of the greatest violinists in history, was once asked by a college violin student how they could learn to play like him. The audience laughed as he responded that if the student would “concentrate, a great deal, it would take you at least three months”(Heifetz). While any musician knows they are far more than three months of focusing away from becoming one of the greatest to ever play their instrument, it is still apparent that concentrating is the first skill needed to begin. By strengthening their ability to complete several actions at once, musicians can translate these concentration skills to other areas in their life. A particular area of life that students can use is in their classrooms. Melissa Locker, writer for Time Magazine, sought to find ways that the concentrations skills developed in music lessons translated to the classroom. She cited a study conducted by Nina Krauss, a researcher and neurobiology professor at North Eastern University School of Communication. In an elementary school class, Krauss attached electrode wires to the heads of musically trained and non-music trained students in the classroom. Krauss tracked the student’s brain functions to learn which of the two groups would have the highest attendance records and participation levels. According to Kraus, the brain functions showed that the students who studied music “actively participated in the class, showed larger improvements in how the brain processes speech and reading scores than their less-involved peers”. This active participation in the classroom sets the music educated students apart, as their motivation and focus may carry with them into their future. Music playing also has a positive effect on students’ academic progress. E. Gleen Schellenberg, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto at Mississauga, sought to find out how music lessons would affect student’s IQ scores. The six-years-olds he assigned to take voice and piano lessons saw a much higher increase in their IQ than a control group who waited a year to begin lessons. The study found that “each additional month of music lessons was accompanied by an increase in IQ of one-sixth of a point, such that six years of lessons was associated with an increase in IQ of 7.5 points, compared with children who did not have the same amount of musical instruction” (Schellenberg 459). Music proves to have a noticeable effect on the participation and academic levels of those who play an instrument. 

Specific characteristics of music affect people and result in an emotional response. Songs such as Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” are known for bringing positivity to people for their catchy melody, inspiring lyrics, and memorable guitar solos. The well-known theme from John Carpenter’s “Halloween” has an eery eery repeated melody played on keyboard, with a loud bras section which instills fear in the listener. Though the influence of music changes from genre to genre, specific elements of musical composition are what affect the feelings people get from them. Psychology professor at Uppsala University Patrik Juslin and associate professor at Stockholm University Petri Laukka studied what musical elements express specific emotions to listeners. They divide the emotions most experienced in music listening into five categories: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and tenderness. The two then include numerous features of music that will mostly affect these five emotions. The musical traits include: “tempo, mode, harmony, tonality, pitch, micro-intonation, contour, interval, rhythm, sound level, timbre, timing, articulation, accents on specific notes, tone attacks and decays, and vibrato”(Juslin220). The researchers found that musical characteristics that increased the listener’s happiness include fast tempo, major mode (pattern of notes), consonances, small sound level variability, and quick tone attacks. Sadness, on the other hand, was felt mostly with slow tempos, minor mode, dissonances, moderate sound level variability, and slow tone attacks. Additionally, the researchers found that anger was felt while hearing music including “fast tempo, small tempo variability, minor mode, atonality, dissonance,…major 7th and augmented 4th intervals,…complex rhythm, sharp contrasts between “long” and “short” notes”(221). Juslin and Laukka then found that fear was felt when people listening to music with “fast tempo, large tempo variability, minor mode, dissonance, rapid changes in sound level, high pitch, ascending pitch, staccato articulation, wide pitch ranges, pauses, and fast vibrato”(221). Finally, the researchers found that tenderness was felt by listeners hearing music that included “Slow tempo, major mode, consonance, medium-low sound level, low pitch, fairly narrow pitch range, legato articulation, slow tone attacks, soft contrasts between long and short notes, accents on tonally stable notes, and medium fast vibrato” (201). Discoveries by both psychologists give people a greater perception of the specific musical details that affect their emotions. 

Music therapy can be effective for those who live with mental disabilities. The benefits of music are regularly unappreciated because people generally believe its benefits have minor positive outcomes. While not every effect of music is visual for people to see, the benefits of music listening for dementia patients is both alarming and heart-warming. The American Music Therapy Association defines music therapy as “the clinical and evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individualized goals within a therapeutic relationship by a credentialed professional who has completed an approved music therapy program”(https://www.musictherapy.org/about/musictherapy/). The goals listed in this definition vary from person to person, but may include improving cognitive skills, learning, categorizing, behavior, controlling impulse, and increasing alertness and the attention span. The association then explains that music therapy is slow greatly helpful to those who have communication issues, writing that “music therapy also provides avenues for communication that can be helpful to those who find it difficult to express themselves in words”. 

By providing these avenues for communication, music therapy gives those deteriorating from mental illness a path to improve their speaking skills. Music and Memory is a non-profit organization that provides music of people’s personal interest in order to improve their quality of life. The organization trains nursing and elderly care staff across the nation how to create playlists for specific patients struggling with Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and other physical ailments. As patients struggling with mental ailments such as dementia, their minds are often extracted from the realities of the world and replaced by new thoughts that only exist in their imagination. Music and Memory seeks to brings these absent-minded patients back to the real world by triggering memories with music. The institution writes on their website that by “providing access and education, and by creating a network of MUSIC & MEMORY℠ Certified organizations, we aim to make this form of personalized therapeutic music a standard of care throughout the health care industry” (MusicandMemory.org). 

An example of the work done by Music and Memory can be seen on their YouTube channel, which has over seventy videos posted about the ways in which music can influence the moods and expressiveness of those suffering from mental illnesses. In their video entitled “(original) Man In Nursing Home Reacts To Hearing Music From His Era”, members of the Music and Memory team study a patient named Henry. A ten year dementia patient, Henry was sent to an elders center due to his several censures and memory loss that eventually became too much for his family to handle. Henry’s daughter tells the team that her father used to be the most joyful of men, always singing to them and encouraging them to dance in the rain with him. His state though in this video is quite fragile. As he is rolled out in a wheelchair, slouched over with his eyes closed, he cannot recognize his own daughter. His daughter tells the team his favorite music she remembers him sharing with her years ago, which they create a playlist for on an iPod and give to Henry. As the headphones are placed on Henry’s head, viewers are shocked to see the mentally impaired man begin to shake his arms and legs. Rocking back and forth with his eyes wide open, Henry proudly sings his favorite tunes that he has not heard in years. Oliver Sacks, a British Neurologist, historian of science, and author, observes the miraculous effects Henry displays in his shift of mood. Amazed, Sacks speaks of what the “Philosopher Kant once called music the quickening art. And Henry is being quickened and brought to life”. A quiet patient, Henry was known for having difficulty answering the easiest yes or no questions. After being asked by Sacks if he liked music though, he opens up, answering “I’m crazy about music! You played beautiful music, beautiful sounds”. Though Henry could not remember who his own daughter was, the music instantly allowed Henry to remember other areas of his past. When asked if he liked music when he was young, he responded “Yes! Yes I went to big dances and things”, adding “Cab Calloway was the number one guy I liked”. Sacks closed with asking Henry what his favorite Cab Calloway song was, and Henry began singing “I’ll be Home for Christmas” without hesitation. Considering how Henry was known for rarely speaking or being active due to his dementia, the effect the iPod music had on his speech and emotions was quite extraordinary.

Due to the conclusive results of music listening and playing’s highly effectiveness on mental health, music’s potential for society should be greater recognized. Music allows those who are stressed and overwhelmed to be released from their feelings of sadness and be rejuvenated with contented and peaceful thoughts. These people who were once drained of motivation can now return to work with a newly galvanized mindset. Music has proven to be a capable option to relieving one’s stress prior to a surgical operation, which decreases the use of unneeded stress relief drugs. Music can also provide emotion connections between companions that serve as bonds that are too extraordinary to put to words. Music offers many life-long lessons and skills such as concentration, participation, and academic improvement, which give students a significant edge in the classroom. The emotions affected by music vary due to musical elements such as tempo, articulation, dynamics, modes, and tone attacks. Finally, music has a profound effect on the attitudes, emotions, and speech of those who endure the misery of mental illness. People are blown away and often brought to tears at how those dealing with a great deal of mental confusion can be truly happy and enthusiastic, simply because they listened to a song. People may believe that there is no hidden meaning in the sounds that come from musical singing and instruments, but they have yet to experience the benefits for themselves. These non-believers fail not only to see the difference music makes in others, but also in allowing music to influence them personally. Though an extensive task, classroom style and or performance type music classes should be required in every school in the United States. The best place for people to begin reaping the benefits of music is in education, as children can develop these skills at a young age and learn how to communicate them to the world. One step at a time, music can make the world a more expressive, honest, and cheerful place.
