music by Van Le

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T

06 - 09

PERSONALITY

10 - 19

MOOD

20 - 25

A P P L I C AT I O N

Music is one of the greatest creations of human kind in the course of history. It is creativity in a pure and undiluted form and format. Music plays a vital role in our daily life. It is a way of expressing our feelings and emotions. Music is a way to escape life, which gives us relief in pain and helps us to reduce the stress of the daily routine. It helps us to calm down, an even excites us in the moment of joy. Moreover, it enriches the mind and gives us self confidence. Music surrounds our lives at different moments of lives, whether we hear it on t he radio, on television, from our car a nd home stereos. Different kinds of music are appropriate for different occasions. We come across it in the mellifluous tunes of a classical concert or in the devotional strains of a bhajan, the wedding band, or the reaper in the fields breaking into song to express the joys of life. Even warbling in the bathroom gives us a happy start to the d ay. Music has a very powerful therapeutic effect on the human psyche. It has always been part of our association with specific emotions, and those emotions themselves have given rise to great music.

04 - M U S I C

In the modern world, Music has gained an honourable designation of ‘HEALING WITHOUT MEDICINE’. Doctors feel that music therapy has been helping them in treating many people with problems like dementia, dyslexia depression and trauma. Music affects all of us in some way or the other. It also is the most common interest of many people. People who love music, listen to it while traveling, reading, meditation, walking, some even have soft music while working in their busy routine. It helps them to relax and escape from the stress of our day-to-day lives. It can transport us to another time or place and it is a great feeling of seeing or doing or experiencing something different. The technological capabilities we carry in our pockets daily are truly awesome and, increasingly, companies are looking to put more content in our eyes and ears as conveniently as possible. Most U.S. residents listen to roughly four hours and five minutes of audio each day.

For many o f us, our taste in music is an i ntegral part of our identity so much so that, to a certainextent, what we listen to is who w e are.

IN A STUDY OF COUPLAES WHO S PENT TIME GETTING TO KNOW EACH OTHER, LOOKING AT EACH OTHER’S TOP TEN FAVORITE SONGS ACTUALLY PROVIDED FAIRLY RELIABLE PREDICTIONS AS TO THE LISTENER’S PERSONALITY TRAITS.

Dance fans are creative and outgoing but not gentleIndie fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard working, and not gentle Reggae fans have high self-esteem, are creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle and at ease

Rock/heavy metal fans have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, and at ease Classical music fans have high self-esteem, are creative, introvert and at ease

Jazz fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing and at ease Rap fans have high self-esteem and are outgoing Opera fans have high self-esteem, are creative and gentle Country and western fans are hardworking and outgoing

Chart pop fans have high self-esteem, are hardworking, outgoing and gentle, but are not creative and not at ease Soul fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease

09 - P E R S O N A L I T Y

Bollywood fans are creative and outgoing Blues fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle and at ease

We can usually pick if a piece of music is particularly happy or sad, but this i sn’t just a subjective idea that comes from how it makes us feel. In fact, our brains actually respond differently to happy and sad music.

EVEN S HO OF H APP MUSIC C AN A

ORT P IECES PY O R S AD AFFECT US One study showed that after hearing a short piece of music, participants were more likely to interpret a neutral expression as happy or sad, to match the tone of the music they heard. This also happened with other facial expressions, but was most notable for those that were close to neutral. Something else that’s really interesting about how our emotions are affected by music is that there are two kind of emotions related to music: perceived emotions and felt emotions. This means that sometimes we can understand the emotions of a piece of music without actually feeling them, which explains why some of us find listening to sad music enjoyable, rather than depressing.

15 - M O O D

Unlike in real life situations, we don’t feel any real threat or danger when listening to music, so we can perceive the related emotions without truly feeling them—almost like vicarious emotions.

12 - M O O D

SO, WHAT UNDERLIES ALL THE EFFECTS THAT MUSIC HAS ON OUR EMOTIONS, THO DECISION-MAKING? HOW IS I T POSSIBLE TH SOMETHING T HAT IS BASICALLY ORGANIZE CAN BRING US TO TEARS, MOVE U S, AND C MESSAGES WITHIN ITS VERY STRUCTURE?

OUGHTS, AND E VEN HAT ED SOUND CONVEY DEEP EMOTIONAL

It turns out that a moderate noise level is t he sweet spot for creativity. Even more than low noise levels, ambient noise apparently gets our creative juices flowing, and doesn’t put us off the way high levels of noise do. The way this works is that moderate noise levels increase processing difficulty which promotes abstract processing, leading to higher creativity. In other words, when we struggle ( just enough) to process things as we normally would, we resort to more creative approaches.

In high noise levels, however, our creative thinking is impaired because we’re overwhelmed and struggle to process information efficiently. This is very similar to how temperature and lighting can affect our productivity, where paradoxically a slightly more crowded place can be beneficial.

17 - M O O D

We can easily see how music and t he brain engage mood and emotion when a child smiles and begins to dance to a rhythm. We also see this when parent and child connect through song.

Music affects our mood in a variety of ways. But at the base of the phenomenon is rhythm and tone. When we listen to a rhythm, our heart actually begins to synch with it. A slow heartbeat with a strong diastolic pressure tells our brain that something sad or depressing is occurring. Very fast beating is obviously related to excitement, whereas a dreamy rhythm with occasional upbeats can signify love or joy.

22 - A P P L I C A T I O N

LISTEN TO UPBEAT MUSIC IN THE MORNING Hormones related to that “get up and go” you feel in the morning begin to peak at around breakfast-time. Encourage this activity, along with your brain’s response to it, by putting on some light, easy and cheery music shortly after you awaken each morning. Decrease your anxiety with soothing music and meditation. Anxiety and sadness/depression often go hand in hand, feeding on one another to lower your mood. Set aside time each day to meditate to soothing music, such as classical music, soft rock, MP3s of wind chimes soft tones. Choose “directed tones.” Pioneers in the field of music, tones and mood are creating more and more pieces aimed at not only speaking to the brain, but actually directing it to achieve changes you’d like to feel. One example of such pieces is the science of binaural beats, or tones played in each ear individually. These produce rhythms that the brain automatically begins to follow, creating the mood you want.

Give yourself breaks between listening and not listening to music. It’s fun to have music on as a background all day, but in the initial stages of training your brain to respond happily, you want it to sense a definite distinction between your therapeutic tones time and downtime. Don’t overdo it on fast music or hard rock. As fun as hard rock is, don’t listen to it non-stop. Eventually the quickened heart beat response will begin to produce a vague message of anxiety to your brain. Do keep listening to the tunes you love, but save them for when you really want to get up and dance. Rhythm and tone can have a definite impact on your happiness – and on your life. Listen to the right set of tones and you can begin to feel the effects more quickly than you’d ever dreamed.

SHORT-TERM USE OF THERAPY WITH PARKINSON’S D LED TO IMPROVEMENT INCLUDING LESS RIGIDITY AND B SPEED WITH BIGGER STEPS AND RED

Also, it can apply to something called thalmocortical dysrhythmia — a disorientation of rhythmic brain activity involving the thalamus and the outer cortex that appears to play a role in several medical conditions including Parkinson’s, fibromyalgia and possibly even Alzheimer’s disease.

Short-term use of vibroacoustic therapy with Parkinson’s disease patients led to improvements in symptoms, including less rigidity and better walking speed with bigger steps and reduced tremors.

The goal of all of this is to develop “dosable” and “prescribable” music therapy and music as medicine protocols that serve specific neurologic functions and attend to deficits that may result from many of these neurologically based conditions. Rather than viewing music only as a cultural phenomenon, the art should be seen as a vibratory stimulus that has cognitive and memory dimensions.

Since the rhythmic pulses of music can drive and stabilize this disorientation, low-frequency sound might help with these conditions. The hope is that using the therapy to restore normal communication among brain regions may allow for greater memory retrieval.

25 - a p p l i c a t i o n

F VIBROACOUSTIC DISEASE PATIENTS TS IN SYMPTOMS, BETTER WALKING DUCED TREMORS

At its core, music is sound, and sound is rooted in vibration. Whether sound vibrations absorbed through the body can help ease the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, fibromyalgia and depression. Known as vibroacoustic therapy, the intervention involves using low frequency sound similar to a low rumble - to produce vibrations that are applied directly to the body. During vibroacoustic therapy, the patient lies on a mat or bed or sits in a chair embedded with speakers that transmit vibrations at specific computer-generated frequencies that can be heard and felt.