speech on the importance of music

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Speech on Music

Speech on Music for Students in English

Music is quite vital in our daily life, it gives a background to different moods, different moments of life. Music helps the soul to rejuvenate, to find the purpose, this music somehow aligns with the soul and hence we feel so connected to the music. It brings joy and happiness to the life of a person. 

Beethoven, a dominant music figure, has rightly said music has the ability to change the world. Music helps us soothe both physically and mentally. Music is the best ailment, according to physicians.

Good Morning to one and all present here on such an auspicious occasion.

Today, June 21 we are celebrating World Music Day to upright the different forms of music and tunes which uplift our earbuds and soothe our soul. 

Just imagine, how would our life be without music? In my view, it would be a life without harmony, without a purified soul. Music is a pleasant flow of melody in the air, which changes with rhythm and with a systematic playing method. This is the skill or art which a musician qualifies in himself and this gives a soothing and cheerful musical performance for an audience.

Music is considered one of the greatest boons of God for all living creatures.  Music helps the sounds to get classified into a rhythm, which helps us to learn and practice music. Also, we can enjoy the harmony and the pleasant rhythm that is made by the musical sounds. The styles of music have changed in recent years drastically. To say there are six eras of musical history - Middle Ages, Renaissance, Classical, Baroque, Romantic music, and the current one in the twentieth century. Music is a common form of entertainment for everybody.

The dictionary meaning of music is a form of art of sound, that explains the ideas and emotions via the elements of rhythm, harmony, and melody. Music soothes our brain and nerves, it helps us to feel relaxed and also refreshed, this soothes our bodies and mind. It removes the anxiety and the stress level from our everyday life. Also, great physicians prescribe music dosage for our ears to heal better from the pain, music is excellent medicine. It is proven that women who are carrying children in their womb are given music therapy from the everyday rush and pain, this soothes their minds.  Music takes us into the world of melody which helps us in forgetting disturbing memories or thoughts.

Music revives the old memories. Music therapy is often considered a great way to solve bigger problems, stress-related issues, our emotions in our daily life. Music also helps the brain to function quickly and effectively and this allows calmness in our daily life schedule. Music helps doctors and psychologists treat their patients well. It helps to calm the patient’s state of brain and their behavior, it soothes the nerves and stabilizes the heartbeat of the patient. Music also helps those patients to recover from brain injuries. Music is a great way to activate our brain cells in different ways. This helps in healing the damaged areas which allows the people to regain their speech and their physical movement. Thus, music can take out people from stressful situations.

I want to end this speech by thanking God for such a gift, music. While if you have the skill to create music you surely have a gift to cherish forever. Also, I would love to thank those talented musicians, who with their beautiful melodies, supported my low times also helped me to celebrate in my good times.

2 Min Speech on Music

Once the famous Shakespeare said, “If music is the food of love, play on, give me excess of it; that surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die.”

Good Morning Everyone present.

Today on this great occasion of World Music Day, I would love to enumerate the importance of music. Music is a quite pleasurable sound that is combined with melodies, and this helps to soothe the ear. A musician is such a person who knows music.

Music is of various styles. This is said that all sounds got the music. Starting from the sound of the waterfall, the sound of the ocean waves, or the simply flowing of the river have got harmony in themselves.

Music can heal a person emotionally and also mentally. Music serves as a form of meditation to quieten the mind. Music cures emotional disorders like anxiety, depression, and also lack of sleep called insomnia.

Music conveys many such emotions to the people. The power of music is inevitable. Without music, life would be very dull and boring, but with the music, even your bad times will sound perfect, as now you can align your emotions well, this, in turn, will help us to deal with bad times. 

For me, music uplifts the soul, energizes me. While I derail from the purpose music pulls me back on track. The word ‘music’ is as lovely as it serves. In the concluding part I would like to say, let the world heal with the melodies of music and let your life flow with the rhythmic cords of music.

10 Lines on Music

For any culture, music captures an essential part. 

Our country is known for its rich musical culture and diversity. 

India has different types of music, and here people have different music tastes.  

The northern part of India is famous for Hindustani music, while the southern part of India is famous for  Carnatic music.

Music can be of 2 types- Vocal music and instrumental music.

Gives us peace of mind. 

Music is played on every occasion. 

Music helps in the treatment of the patients.

To connect with the supreme being, the best way is through the help of music.

Without music, life would be lifeless.

FAQs on Speech on Music

1. How is World Music Day Celebrated?

World Music Day takes place on the 21st of June to honor all the musicians. Around 120 countries celebrate World Music Day by organizing free public concerts in various other public places. In 1982, there was a  music festival that took place in France called Fête de la Musique which later on was called World Music Day. This day honors budding and seasoned artists and allows them to showcase their accomplishments through their music. It also celebrates equality of opportunities in the world of music.

2. When was Renaissance Music Got Alive?

During the Renaissance time, Renaissance Music was written in European Countries. It saw the growth of new instruments, classical music as well as a burst of new ideas related to harmony, rhythm and music notation. During the 15th and 16th centuries, there was a rise in instrumental dances and the introduction of a wide range of classical music and different genres which also comprised masses, motets, madrigals, chansons, etc. By the 20th century, early musical ensembles came into form as Renaissance Music.

3. What are the Various Styles of Music in India?

Classical, Folk, Baul, Bhajan, Rabindra Sangeet are the different music styles in India. In India, there are two different forms of music. One is Carnatic Music which is associated with South India and the other is Hindustani Music which is played in North India. Carnatic Music is called Karnāṭaka saṃgīta and the lyrics of such songs are mainly devotional and dedicated to Hindu deities. The main features include raga and taal which are mandatory to be understood. Hindustani Music has four forms: Dhrupad, Khyal (or Khayal), Tarana, and the semi-classical Thumri.

4. What is the difference between Medieval and Renaissance music?

Unlike medieval music which comprised only vocals, Renaissance music included both instruments and vocals. The main instruments would be harps, flute, violin, etc. Medieval music was monophonic which in the later ages transformed into polyphonic. Renaissance music largely contained buoyant melodies. The Medieval period saw the beginning of music and by the time it reached the Renaissance era, the musical era was already developed to an extent with many music composers in existence like William Byrd and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina.

5. Is Indian classical music difficult to learn?

Indian classical music sounds too complicated for easy listening. Although it is not difficult to learn, mastering the music forms, both Carnatic and Hindustani, is an uphill task. Unlike Western music which has fixed notes, a note played by two classical music instruments may not sound the same. There are no set compositions or fixed scales. Instead, there are ragas that form the musical framework. Rather than learning the melodies, Indian classical music focuses more on improvisation and there are multiple techniques involved for emoting certain emotions.

• Speech Topics For Kids

Speech on Music

Music could be stated as the language of the spirit. How boring our lives would be if there is no music? Music is a very important part of our lives. Human souls require music to rejuvenate. It brings peace and harmony to their lives. Without any doubt, we can call music ‘the magic of god’, and it is this magic that transforms a mere series of sounds to soulful music.

Table of Contents

Speech on music has the power to heal, two-minute speech on music, one-minute speech about music, top 10 quotes to use in a speech on music, frequently asked questions on music, sample speeches on music.

A few sample speeches on music are given below. Go through these speeches and utilise them to expand your wisdom.

Music could be defined as the form of sound with the power to develop emotions within the minds of the listener. According to Colbie Caillat, “A great song should lift your heart, warm the soul and make you feel good.” With the support of music, an individual constructs an imaginary world within them. Melodious voices soothe our bodies and make us feel refreshed. By hearing music, a person can relax both the body and the mind at the same time.

Music helps us get rid of all unwanted thoughts, anxieties, and stress from our lives. Without any doubt, music is a great medicine for healing the wounds of our minds. More and more people worldwide are realising and accepting the healing power of music. According to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 2020 conference, by listening to music for 30 minutes a day, the pain and anxiety levels were lowered in the patients who had survived heart attacks. Music has the power to slow people’s heart rates and decrease blood pressure.

The connection between human health and music is so strong. Music has the power to bring back old memories of individuals. There are multiple centres worldwide that use music to help treat Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, and Parkinson’s disease. It is definitely a great medicine for our souls.

Music is a global language that is produced by the rhythmic arrangement of sounds. It has no boundaries, and it connects people from various political, geographical, and cultural backgrounds. Without the requirement of any actions or words, music helps individuals to express themselves. For many people, music is the greatest discovery of human beings, and it is considered the closest thing to god. There exist numerous styles of music in our society. And in today’s world, every individual has multiple options available to choose the music based on the feeling that they are experiencing. Music has a great influence on our lives. Music is a powerful tool to unite people. National anthems, hymns recited during worship and songs of various other themes are all examples to prove the uniting power of music.

Do you know why parents sing songs when their babies cry? Because by hearing the soothing sound of the parent, the baby experiences calmness and stops crying. Such lullabies enable parents to develop a deep attachment with their babies.

“Music is everywhere. It’s in the air between us, waiting to be sung.” These are the words told by David Levithan. Some of the greatest music is produced by nature. For example, the sounds made by birds, waves hitting the seashore, waterfalls, flowing water in a stream, rain and so on. How beautiful are those, right? Music produced by nature is highly connected with human emotions. Just like humans have a strong interconnection with nature, the emotions developed within humans are having strong bonding with the music. And that is the reason why many composers, poets, and musicians consider the music of nature as the foundation of their art. Composers throughout many generations and from all over the world have managed to inspire emotions in the listener’s mind through the portrayal of nature in music.

• “Where words fail, music speaks.” – Hans Christian Andersen.
• “Music touches us emotionally, where words alone can’t.” – Johnny Depp.
• “Music is the strongest form of magic.” – Marilyn Manson.
• “When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.” – Henry David Thoreau.
• “Musicians want to be the loud voice for so many quiet hearts.” – Billy Joel.
• “Music is an outburst of the soul.” – Frederick Delius.
• “For me, there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall.” – Eric Clapton.
• “Music is the moonlight in the gloomy night of life.” – Jean Paul Friedrich Richter.
• “Once again, she was free. Once again, she found peace. It was music that freed her soul from the dungeon of her mind.” – Wiss Auguste, The Illusions of Hope.
• “Without music, life would be a blank to me.” – Jane Austen.

Why is music important in our lives?

Music soothes our bodies and makes us feel refreshed. By hearing music, a person can relax both the body and mind simultaneously. Music helps us get rid of all unwanted thoughts, anxieties, and stress from our lives. Without any doubt, music is a great medicine for healing the wounds of our minds.

Why is music called a global language?

Music is a global language that is produced by the rhythmic arrangement of sounds. It has no boundaries, and it connects people from various geographical and cultural backgrounds. Without the requirement of any actions or word usages, music helps individuals to express themselves.

List some top quotes to use in a speech on music.

• “Where words fail, music speaks.” – Hans Christian Andersen.
• “Music touches us emotionally, where words alone can’t.” – Johnny Depp.
• “Music is the strongest form of magic.” – Marilyn Manson.
• “When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.” – Henry David Thoreau.

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Speech On Music - 10 Lines, Short and Long Speech

• Speech on Music -

Music is a beautiful art form that captivates the senses through the harmonious interplay of melodic and rhythmic elements. It has the ability to evoke powerful emotions, memories, and transform moods. Throughout human history, music has played a significant role in cultural expression and continues to inspire and influence people of all ages.

10 Line Speech on Music

Short speech on music, long speech on music.

Music is a universal language that transcends borders and brings people together.

It has the power to evoke emotions, memories and shape our moods.

From classical to hip-hop, rock to pop, and everything in between, music comes in many forms.

It can also serve as a form of therapy, providing solace and comfort in times of need.

Music has been an integral part of human culture and history, dating back thousands of years.

Great musicians have inspired generations and left a lasting impact on the world.

Technology has made music more accessible than ever, with streaming services and online radio stations.

Music is not only entertainment, but also a form of art, requiring creativity, skill and dedication to create.

The creation of music involves not only the musician, but also the listener, as music is a two-way conversation.

Music is a gift that keeps on giving, providing joy and memories that last a lifetime.

Music is a timeless and diverse form of art. It is a reflection of the cultural heritage and traditions of a particular place. Music has the power to evoke emotions and bring peace to those who listen to it. It brings joy and energy, serving as a source of inspiration and motivation.

The word "music" originates from the ancient French term "musique," which means an arrangement of sounds in a pattern, meant to be sung or played on musical instruments. In its essence, music is a harmonious arrangement of sounds that creates a unique experience for the listener.

Popular types of music are

Hearing metal

Classical music

Musical theatre

Hip hop music

Country music

Electric music

Every person's life depends heavily on music. Most people prefer to listen to music that matches their mood. People can heal by listening to music that matches their mood. For instance, we like listening to cheerful music when we are happy and sad music when we are sorry. Everyone's life needs music on an elementary level.

For individuals who are genuinely talented in music, there is a wide range of opportunities. Since genuine skill is always valued, anyone who is an excellent musician can use this as a platform for a successful career. There are many different types of music; one might choose to become a master in it.

Music is an art form and cultural activity whose medium is sound. It is defined as organised sound, produced by humans, with melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre. Music has a profound impact on human emotions and can evoke a wide range of feelings, from happiness and excitement to sadness and sorrow.

Importance of Music

Music plays a crucial role in our lives, serving as a form of expression, entertainment, and therapy. It can bring people together and foster a sense of community, as well as provide a creative outlet for individuals. In addition, music can be used for educational purposes, helping to develop children's cognitive and motor skills, as well as improve memory and concentration.

History of Music

Music has been an integral part of human culture since ancient times. The earliest musical instruments, such as drums and flutes, date back tens of thousands of years and have been found in various cultures around the world. Over time, music has evolved and diversified, encompassing a wide range of styles and traditions, including classical, folk, pop, and rock music.

Changes from the Past

Music has undergone significant changes throughout its history, with new styles and technologies emerging regularly. In the 20th century, the introduction of recording technology and the mass production of records and tapes changed the way music was distributed and consumed. The rise of rock and roll in the 1950s marked a shift away from traditional forms of popular music and paved the way for new forms of expression. In recent decades, the advent of digital technology has had a major impact on the music industry, with the rise of downloading and streaming services transforming the way music is produced.

Current Music Trends

The music industry is constantly evolving, with new styles and trends emerging regularly. Currently, hip-hop, pop, and electronic dance music (EDM) are among the most popular genres. The rise of streaming services such as Spotify and YouTube has had a major impact on the music industry, making it easier for artists to reach a wider audience and for listeners to discover new music. The use of technology, such as digital audio workstations (DAWs) and virtual instruments, has also changed the way music is created and recorded.

Cultural Significance of Music

Music has the power to influence and shape cultural identities, as well as provide a window into the history and traditions of a particular people or community. For example, traditional music is often passed down from generation to generation and serves as a way of preserving cultural heritage. Additionally, music can also play a role in political and social movements, serving as a source of inspiration and motivation for activists and protesters. For example, during the struggle for independence from British rule, musicians and poets used their talents to spread messages of nationalism and resistance. The songs and poems of this era became anthems for the independence movement and inspired people to join the cause.

Music is a powerful and universal art form that has played a significant role in human culture for thousands of years. It has the ability to evoke a wide range of emotions and connect people from all walks of life.

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Speech on Music for Students and Children

Speech on music.

Good morning to one and all present here! We all know about music. I am going to deliver my speech on Music. Music is a pleasing arrangement and flow of sounds in air and of course, it varies in rhythm and systematic method.  It is also art or skill that musicians possess and hence they are capable to give a musical performance for the audience.

Source: pixabay.com

Music is one of the most important boons of God for all living beings. Music is the subject that classifies all the rhythmic sounds into a system and anyone may learn and practice it. Not only that but also the plants, animals can enjoy the harmony, pleasant rhythm of the musical sounds.

Different Styles of the Music

The style of music has changed dramatically throughout the various ages of the time period. Mainly there are six eras in music history. These are the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Twentieth Century. Music has been and always will be a popular form of entertainment for many of us.

The dictionary defines the music as an art of sound in time which expresses ideas and emotions both significantly through the elements of rhythm, melody, and harmony.

Get the Huge list of 100+ Speech Topics here

Music has the Power to Heal

Music is a form of a melody that soothes into our body and helping us to feel refreshed and relaxed. It helps us to get rid of the anxiety and stress of our everyday life. Music is undoubtedly a great way of healing the pain. It makes us forget about unpleasant and disturbing thoughts by taking us in the world of melody.

Music can bring the back old memories in our present time. Music therapy restores us from several problems and emotions in our daily life. When we attend music therapy it helps our brain functioning quicker and helps us keep calm.

The Medicinal Effect of Music

Whatever problems we may have, that will flow out of our brain. Even it also helps the doctor and psychologist to identify the state of our brain and behaviors. Well, according to researchers and practitioners of music therapy is a big tool for all of us.

Indeed, music can heal people in many difficult situations. Music can make a big difference to people with brain injuries and it can activate the brain in alternative ways. It helps often bypassing the damaged areas, allowing people to regain movement as well as speech.

Therefore, music actually changes the structure of the brain, giving people new chances to move and speak. Also, various studies have shown that music therapy can regularize the heart and breathing rates. Even it can help cancer patients. In the field of psychology, music is very useful to help people suffering from depression and sadness. Also, children with developmental disabilities may get support from music in many ways.

In the end, I will say that being skilled in any component of music is a gift of God.  I salute the great musicians who pacify me during my low times and let me celebrate my good times.  Music as a hobby is the best alternative indeed.

Music is an effective way of healing the stress of anyone of any age. It is highly effective and supportive to relieve the person from any kind of mental or physical problem. So, we all be always live with music.

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Speech on Music and Its Importance in English in simple and easy words

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There is some sort of divine power in music! Isn’t it? Music is of different kinds and different people have different likes for different genre of music. It can be Pop Music, Jazz Music, Classical Music, Remix, etc. Since it’s a very exciting topic, it’s easy to talk about Music and its Importance. Below we have provided variety of Speech on Music and Its Importance under short and long speeches category of various words limit for the wide range of students and professionals.

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Long and Short Speech on Music and Its Importance in English

Here are long speeches on Music and Its Importance and short speeches on Music and Its Importance.

Both are written in an easy to understand language; keeping in mind the comfort of every reading audience of ours.

While short speech on Music and Its Importance are meant for school students; long speech on Music and Its Importance are written for college level students or for public speech giving ceremonies.

But both the types of speeches are well-informed and cover useful information. Read on to know more!

Music and Its Importance Speech 1

Respected Class Teacher and My Dear Students – Warm Greetings to all of you!

I – Kavita Mukherji – stand in front of you all in order to deliver a speech for which my topic is Music and Its Importance. I cannot thank our ma’am enough for giving me this speech topic as I am a music enthusiast and cannot imagine my life without it. Needless to say, I can talk endlessly on this topic, but I should hold back my emotions and talk about it objectively.

Friends, I believe that music is the man’s greatest creation, which helps us express our innermost feelings in the most powerful manner; without having to speak. It touches our soul and strikes a chord in our heart. The influence of music on us is what creates a marked difference between the human beings and the animals. It is the sublime power of music that it breaks all the geographical boundaries and helps people come together regardless of their different social, political, geographical and cultural backgrounds.

A lot can be said on music and it is one of the important arenas of study in the sphere of religion and culture. In fact, I would describe it as a sublime force that knows no religion and no discrimination on the basis of caste and creed; it gives equal delight to all and helps us connect with God by transporting our soul to another world. To a certain extent, music also helps in establishing peace and promoting international brotherhood.

Music also has the power of healing our wounds and it binds people together from all over the world. For this very reason, music is believed to be an instrument of peace which helps in settling down the situation of turmoil and chaos. Imagine yourself in such a situation where you have fought with your close friend or companion and what if he/she plays some nice music for you! Would your heart not melt then? You may not easily forgive the person, but your mind will gradually come at peace and negative emotion will subside.

Whether you are a music enthusiast or not, if you were to express your feelings of love, anger, joy or passion – the best medium would be music. It is often said that when language fails, the best resort is music. Believe in the power of music and you will be able to express your innermost feelings much more effectively and with a lot of magnitude in it.

Did you know that there is a certain kind of music which doctors recommend to their patients? You know why? It is simple because music has the power to heal and pacify our soul. Fall in love with it and trust me your life will get changed for good. You will never be disappointed and then there will be no looking back. So tune into music in your free time or when you need isolation as it will prove to be your true companion not only in happiness, but in distress too.

This is all from my side, thank you!

Music and Its Importance Speech 2

Our Respected Music Guru and My Lovely Friends – Warm Greetings to one and all!

It gives me immense pleasure to announce that our batch has successfully completed a year. Initially, I was a bit apprehensive whether I am taking the right decision by joining to learn music under Shri………. – our music guru, but soon all my doubts vanished away in the air when the classes began. Now I am a proud student of our guru and in the entire journey of one year I have learnt a lot. My most favorite instruments are guitar and tabla – yes even though these two instruments are poles apart, but I have learnt to play them with much ease. I can also sing well and have developed a sound knowledge of all the ragas and the sur.

Over a period of one year, I have evolved as a complete performer and have gained the confidence to perform on stage. All thanks to our guru!

On this auspicious occasion, I on behalf of the entire students want to felicitate our guru with a bouquet of flowers and a small memento. Secondly, with the due permission of all of you, I wish to deliver a speech on Music and Its Importance. Hope you all will allow me.

So here I begin!

Needless to say, Music is my life and adds substance to it. I can unhesitatingly say that I eat music, I drink music, I sleep music and what not! It runs in my very blood. Trust me, it’s not an exaggeration! If I was to describe music in a line, I would say that it’s the sum total of the sounds that create some sort of a pattern. This pattern is so strong that it evokes and stirs up the feelings and emotions in the listener’s heart and creates a sense of joy or excitement.

It’s an art to make sense of the sound, which helps in expressing the ideas and emotions through these elements of music, rhythm, harmony, resonance and timbre. Lyrical music means the coming together of words and sounds in harmony.

Music is the creation of soothing sound as well as tone either in a single running melody or more (harmony) with the help of instruments and voices. It’s an organized melodious sound in succession which helps in creating a composition of music in unity, continuity and harmony.

This very harmony of music produced through musical instruments and voice helps us reach a sublime state, such as we have Sufi music. It is such a delight for our ears to hear this form of music. We can produce music with the help of various instruments falling in different categories, such as:

• Stringed Instruments
• Percussion Instruments
• Keyboard Instruments
• Wind Instruments
• Bowed Wings

In the end, all I want to say that sublime music is really powerful like that of nature for it uplifts our soul, nurtures us and helps us in feeling good from within. The very resonance of sound soothes our senses and gives us instant delight – this is what nature also does to us, right! Good music captivates us and then there’s no escape from it. Thus, I want to say that music is my first love and will always be as it shapes me as a person and brings out the best creativity from me.

Music and Its Importance Speech 3

Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen – Welcome to this grand music concert!

It’s a huge honor for me to be hosting this music concert where such great musicians and performers are going to share the stage. Needless to say, this evening is going to be really memorable and like a never before one. So tighten your seat belts and get ready to be a part of this awesome evening.

However, before our guests arrive and we do the felicitation please allow me to deliver a short speech on Music and Its Importance. I am myself a big time lover of music and cannot stop myself from becoming a part of such great festive evening, especially when I get to play the host.

Let me quote the New World Dictionary of Webster, where music is defined as “the art of combining tones to form expressive composition; any rhythmic sequence of pleasing sounds.” But music I believe is so much more than just this as music is everywhere around us and can be found anywhere, especially in the lap of nature. Haven’t you heard the birds chirping, water running, tree leaves rustling and wind blowing – everything contains music and it is God gifted. When we hear these natural sounds our mind becomes calm and we are more at peace. In the lap of nature we forget all our worries and leave them far behind. Music helps us come to terms with ourselves and find our real self.

It is a great medium to express our emotions to the other person and helps us win them over. Isn’t it? It is one of the finest forms of art. And similar to other forms of art, music requires great technical and creative skills, including the power of imagination. Just like dance is a form of artistic expression through bodily movements and painting which requires finest strokes of brushes, music is composed of different sounds in harmony. Music delights our senses, for instance what a fragrance is to our nose, a gorgeous sight is to our eyes, a feathery touch to our skin, scrumptious dish is to our palate, so music is to our ears!

Plato, who was a great Greek philosopher, once said that Music should be an indispensable part of education. In his scheme of education, he emphasized on three forms of disciplines, viz.

• Mathematics for the development and training of our brain;
• Gymnastics for the development and training of our body;
• And last but not the least, music for feeding our soul!

Therefore, music helps us in connecting with our real self, which is of course our soul and while tuning into good, soothing music, we start to undertake an inward journey to the soul.

With this I bring my speech to an end and now that our chief guests as well as performers have arrived, I would request our event manager to kindly come on stage for the felicitation.

Thank you everyone for being such patient listeners!

Music and Its Importance Speech 4

Hon’ble Guest of Honor, Respected Principal, Vice Principal, Teachers and My Dear Students – Warm Welcome to all of you!

I – Pooja Mishra from Standard (XII) Commerce Department – feel ecstatic to be hosting our school’s 16 th annual function. I am sure you all are excited like I am to watch the performances and enjoy the gala time. In fact, I also can’t wait to kick start the program. But before all of this, let me express my gratitude on behalf of the entire school to our chief guest for accepting our invitation and coming to grace the function with his due presence. I would request our respected principal ma’am and vice principal ma’am to kindly come on stage and pay honor to our guest.

Friends, a huge round of applause for them! Now, I would also request our guest of honor and principal ma’am to address our students and say a few words (………and they deliver a brief speech).

I would now request everyone to allow me to deliver a short speech on Music and Its Importance as today is the Make Music Day. So I wish to speak a few lines about it talking about its relevance and importance in our lives.

Friends, music makes use of different sounds to form patterns! These patterns are so powerful that these evoke emotions and feelings in the hearts of the listeners and give them instant pleasure. Good music has the power to uplift our soul, ease our worries and helps us to come to terms with this world. With music our lives become musical and we start enjoying the harmony of melody, rhythm and resonance. There are different types of music, such as:

• Blues, etc.

Now let’s know what importance it holds in our lives:

• It’s a excellent medium for pastime

Music gives you a permanent solution to wipe off boredom from your life. When you listen to music there is no realization how the time simple flies. If you are sitting idle and got nothing to do, then switch to music for a while – you will be re-energized and would feel rejuvenated.

• It opens up several career opportunities

If you are good at playing any musical instrument or even singing for that matter, you will have ample job opportunities for yourself in the music industry. You just need to know how to make your way through.

• A powerful medium to convey your feelings

Music is one of the strong mediums to help you express your feelings. Whether it’s vocal or instrumental – every form of music is full of feelings and emotions, which you cannot express in plain, normal words.

In the end, all I want to say is that it doesn’t matter whether we know how to play an instrument or not – music in whatever form we listen has the ability to improve the quality of our lives. It also helps us convey the message of peace and brotherhood across nations. So my request would be to make music your permanent companion and “Make Music not war”.

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The Importance of Music in Early Childhood

Music is a natural part of life for young children. From dancing to nursery rhymes to turning everyday objects into musical instruments, children love to engage in musical activities. And like all the best learning experiences in early childhood, exposure to music simultaneously promotes development across multiple domains. Read on for an overview of some of the different ways that music can benefit child development.

Social Emotional Development

Connecting with your baby in a musical way comes naturally, even if you can’t carry a tune! When parents all over the world speak to their little ones, they adjust their voices to make them more lyrical, more rhythmic-- in essence, more musical. And babies love listening to the sound of a parent’s voice. Researchers have found that singing-- more than talking-- keeps babies calm and can lead to stronger social bonds with parents, improved health, and even greater language fluency (Corbeil, Trehub, & Peretz, 2015). The experience of being soothed also helps babies learn to soothe themselves, supporting the development of self-regulation. Music also provides opportunities for young children to interact with their peers and caregivers in collaborative ways when each participant is encouraged to add their sound or voice to the mix. It can also encourage turn taking through call-and-response songs or, when children are very young, through caregivers simply repeating the sounds a baby makes with his voice.

Cognitive Development

A sensory environment rich in a variety of tastes, smells, textures, colors, and sounds is beneficial to early brain development. Music is one many forms of sensory input which can promote cognitive development. Almost every piece of music has a pattern or sequence built into its melody or lyrics, and learning to anticipate patterns and place objects or events in sequence helps build critical early math and early reading skills (Parlakian & Lerner, 2010).  Music also introduces children to the sounds and meanings of new words. A recent study found that exposure to music sharpened infants’ brain responses to music and speech in both the auditory cortex and prefrontal cortex, which manages cognitive skills such as controlling attention and detecting patterns (Zhao & Kuhl, 2016). In addition, the rhythm and repetition of songs helps to strengthen memory skills. The link between music and memory is why you can probably still sing along, word for word, to many of your favorite childhood songs!

Motor Development

Music is a physical activity, supporting both fine and gross motor skills. Playing musical instruments or fingerplay songs, such as "Open Shut Them," can help support the development of small muscles in children's' hands. Dancing to fast and slow music can help children build the muscles in their arms, legs, and trunk. Moving their bodies to music can help children gain body awareness, balance, and coordination.

Tip: Look for opportunities to get your child moving to the beat. Share songs that go along with simple hand motions or dance movies, such as "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," "The Wheels on the Bus," or the "Hokey Pokey." Children will have fun singing and moving!

Cultural Transmission

Music is a unique and powerful way for children to connect to their roots. It transmits culture and is an avenue through which beloved songs, rhymes, and dances can be passed down from one generation to another. Lullabies and folk songs can introduce your baby to your family’s heritage in a way that goes beyond words or pictures. And connecting to their roots is another way to make children feel safer and more secure.

Music has the power to support young children in all of their growing capacities, and best of all, music is a wonderful way to connect with your child.  So enjoy music- playing, singing, or dancing- in any way that feels comfortable to you! And check out the resources below for some great ideas for how you can share music with your child.

• Read tips on Playing with Music at Home  from NAEYC.
• Learn about how to Create Your Own Lullaby with this tutorial from Too Small To Fail .

The Center for Early Childhood Education and Intervention conducts high quality research on early childhood education and early intervention programs. You can follow us on X at  @CECEIatUMD .

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How trent reznor spun out a masterpiece with ‘the downward spiral’, ‘the marshall mathers lp’: eminem’s provocative masterpiece, ‘goodbye yellow brick road’: elton john’s path to greatness, the gap band, dion, and bag raiders: currently trending songs, best brian eno songs: 20 essential tracks, ‘the boys are back in town’: thin lizzy break out of jail and into hot 100, liana flores announces debut album ‘flower of the soul’, schoolboy q’s ‘oxymoron’ gets 10th anniversary edition vinyl release, apple music continues ‘100 best albums of all time’ with elton john, lana del rey, and more, katy perry’s ‘roar’ music video hits 4 billion views, john lennon’s ‘mind games’ to receive new ‘ultimate collection’ release, toby keith to be honored with special tribute at 59th acm awards, disclosure and sam smith’s ‘latch’ reaches one billion streams on spotify, 15 inspirational quotes about the power of music.

Thoughtful and insightful quotes about the power of music as therapy and the ways in which it is good for all of us to open up about mental-health concerns.

Published on

Musicians as prominent as Adele, Kendrick Lamar , Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen have spoken publicly about mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, and all can attest to the power of music to help with such problems.

Numerous scientific and psychological studies have shown that music can lift our moods, combat depression, improve blood flow in ways similar to statins, lower levels of stress-related hormones such as cortisol, and ease pain. Music can improve the outcomes for patients after surgery. A recent study reported in Nature Neuroscience even demonstrated that levels of the feel-good chemical dopamine in the brain rose by up to nine percent when people listened to music they enjoyed.

Though the idea of music as a balm is nothing new – more than 400 years ago, William Shakespeare said that “music can raze out the written troubles of the brain” – people are turning to music as a way to deal with the stresses of modern digital-driven life. Matt Haig, the author of the inspirational book Reasons To Stay Alive , recently set some of the words of his book to music on an album made with former Razorlight drummer Andy Burrows.

‘Bloodletting’: How Concrete Blonde’s Breakout Brought Darkness To The Mainstream

Vevo footnotes celebrates weezer’s ‘buddy holly’ as the ‘blue album’ turns 30, 57 mother’s day songs: a playlist of classic songs about moms.

In his book, Haig says that the way to escape time is music, and that sentiment would echo with the acclaimed composer, pianist and producer Max Richter. The West German-born Brit guest-curated the Peaceful Music playlist, co-created between Universal Music Group and Apple Music, precisely to help people find “a useful place to rest” amid the frenzy of modern life.

Below are 15 inspirational and thoughtful quotes about the power of music as therapy and the ways in which it is good for all of us to open up about mental health concerns.

Listen to the Peaceful Music playlist exclusively on Apple Music .

“Music has healing power. It has the ability to take people out of themselves for a few hours.” Elton John , who says we should never be afraid of saying three simple words: “I need help.”

“The idea of music having a use goes back centuries. The beginnings of written-down music was the liturgy, and obviously that has a connection with the idea of a meditative state and all of that. So music can really be useful in that way.” Max Richter, guest curator of the Peaceful Music playlist

“Music doesn’t get in. Music is already in. Music simply uncovers what is there, makes you feel emotions that you didn’t necessarily know you had inside you, and runs around waking them all up. A rebirth of sorts.” Author Matt Haig, in How to Stop Time

“I think any time I’ve ever got down or ever felt low the one thing that picks me up from that is writing a song about it. At least you’ve got a positive experience out of a bad experience.” Singer Ed Sheeran

“Music should be an essential part of every analysis.” Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961)

“Analysis did me a lot of good. I think that self-confrontation is a good thing, whether you do it by yourself in solitude, or whether you do it in the presence of another person.” Joni Mitchell , from her autobiography In Her Own Words

“When music is needed, it’s really there and it serves a purpose.” Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, whose music, including “Flight From The City,” is featured on the Peaceful Music playlist

“Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears – it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear. But for many of my neurological patients, music is even more – it can provide access, even when no medication can, to movement, to speech, to life. For them, music is not a luxury, but a necessity.” Oliver Sacks, best-selling author and professor of neurology at NYU School Of Medicine

“Music is life itself.” Louis Armstrong , jazz trumpeter (1901-1971)

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” Bob Marley (1945-1981)

“Each time you play music, it becomes new. This is one way I’ve been thinking about memory and the present, past and future times all fitting together. I called it an exquisite moment. It’s an exquisite moment because the audience and the situation of performing allows us, requires us, to think of that moment. Very often we go through life without thinking about that moment. We talk about mindfulness but we’re not very mindful, most of us.” Composer Philip Glass, whose composition “Echorus” is included in the Peaceful Music playlist

“Mental illness is not something that you have to live with for the rest of your life. It is not something that will stop you being part of the workforce. But you do have to talk to people about it and you do have to get help. And you can recover.” Adam Clayton, bassist with U2

“I suffer from a mental illness. I suffer from PTSD. I’ve never told anyone that before, so here we are. But the kindness that’s shown to me by doctors as well as my family, and my friends, it’s really saved my life.” Lady Gaga , talking in 2016 about the mental effects of a sexual assault she suffered as a teenager

“We are the generation that’s watched several other generations of musicians turn to drugs and turn to excess and coping mechanisms that have destroyed them. And there are so many high-profile people recently who’ve taken their own lives. We have a responsibility to talk about mental health and to remove the stigma.” Singer James Blake, talking in July 2018

“Music does a lot of things for a lot of people. It’s transporting, for sure. It can take you right back, years back, to the very moment certain things happened in your life. It’s uplifting, it’s encouraging, it’s strengthening.” The late, great singer Aretha Franklin

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted free on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14.

Sophiyaa Jeyanthan

June 27, 2022 at 7:14 pm

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August 20, 2022 at 1:10 am

Thank you for sharing this article this is very help full indeed. Music has direct connection to your soul and health, if there is a good relaxing music then it can improve your improves mental performance and reduces mental stress or event can improve your nervous system, . Enjoy a beautiful music to relax your mind and soul after a hectic day at work or end a long busy day with a good night sleep. and recharge a new energy.

I would recommend to watch or listen the relaxing video here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clz4WNihNQU

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Why Do People Make Music?

In a new study, researchers found universal features of songs across many cultures, suggesting that music evolved in our distant ancestors.

A research team that comprised musicologists, psychologists, linguists, evolutionary biologists and professional musicians recorded songs in 55 languages to find that songs share certain features not found in speech. Credit... Album/Alamy

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By Carl Zimmer

• May 15, 2024

Music baffled Charles Darwin. Mankind’s ability to produce and enjoy melodies, he wrote in 1874, “must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed.”

All human societies made music, and yet, for Darwin, it seemed to offer no advantage to our survival. He speculated that music evolved as a way to win over potential mates. Our “half-human ancestors,” as he called them, “aroused each other’s ardent passions during their courtship and rivalry.”

Other Victorian scientists were skeptical. William James brushed off Darwin’s idea, arguing that music is simply a byproduct of how our minds work — a “mere incidental peculiarity of the nervous system.”

That debate continues to this day. Some researchers are developing new evolutionary explanations for music. Others maintain that music is a cultural invention, like writing, that did not need natural selection to come into existence.

In recent years, scientists have investigated these ideas with big data. They have analyzed the acoustic properties of thousands of songs recorded in dozens of cultures. On Wednesday, a team of 75 researchers published a more personal investigation of music . For the study, all of the researchers sang songs from their own cultures.

The team, which comprised musicologists, psychologists, linguists, evolutionary biologists and professional musicians, recorded songs in 55 languages, including Arabic, Balinese, Basque, Cherokee, Maori, Ukrainian and Yoruba. Across cultures, the researchers found, songs share certain features not found in speech, suggesting that Darwin might have been right: Despite its diversity today, music might have evolved in our distant ancestors.

“It shows us that there may be really something that is universal to all humans that cannot simply be explained by culture,” said Daniela Sammler, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt who was not involved in the study.

Databases of songs collected by ethnomusicologists sometimes lack important details. It can also be hard for researchers to make sense of the structure and lyrics of songs from other cultures. Computers, likewise, are not very good at recognizing many features of music.

“We thought we should involve the insiders,” said Yuto Ozaki, who earned his doctorate at Keio University in Japan by helping to lead the project.

Dr. Ozaki’s colleague, Patrick Savage, took on the job of recruiting the singers. “It was a combination of the network I’d already built up through the first decade of my career along with going to conferences and making small talk and meeting people,” said Dr. Savage, now a musicologist at the University of Auckland.

All of the team members picked traditional songs from their cultures to record.

Asabanabushi Song (Amami Island, Japan)

Petara Song (Brazil)

Éiníní Song (Ireland)

In addition to singing, they recited the lyrics of the songs without a melody so that the team could later compare the music and speech. And for a further point of comparison, the researchers played their songs on a wide range of instruments, including sitars and melodicas.

Petara on Bamboo Flute (Brazil)

In each recording, the researchers measured six features, such as pitch and tempo. Despite their variety, all of the songs shared a number of features that set them apart from speech. The pitch was higher and more stable, for example, and the tempo was slower.

Dr. Sammler cautioned that the singers in the new study were mostly academics, and that the songs they chose might have introduced some bias into the research. “It’s essentially academics singing material that may not be representative,” she said.

But she also noted that another study , not yet published in a scientific journal, came to a similar conclusion. In that study, researchers analyzed songs from 18 languages and pinpointed many of the same features.

It’s possible that songs have distinct features because they have a special role in human communication separate from speech, said Aniruddh Patel, a psychologist at Tufts University who was not involved in the study. What’s more, our brains appear to be sensitive to those features. In 2022, Dr. Patel pointed out, researchers discovered human neurons that only responded to singing — not speech or music played on instruments.

“There is something distinctive about song all around the world as an acoustic signal that perhaps our brains have become attuned to over evolutionary time,” Dr. Patel said.

What sort of evolutionary benefit would come from that signal is still a matter of debate.

“Maybe music was needed to improve group cohesion,” Dr. Ozaki said. Singing in choruses, sharing rhythms and melodies, could have brought people together whether as a community or in preparation for a battle.

But Dr. Sammler didn’t think that the new study ruled out other roles for music, such as helping parents bond with their children . “It could support a lot of theories,” she said.

Audio courtesy of Patrick Savage. Songs by Marin Naruse, Tutushamum Puri Teyxokawa and Tadhg Ó Meachair. Instrumental by Tutushamum Puri Teyxokawa.

Carl Zimmer covers news about science for The Times and writes the Origins column . More about Carl Zimmer

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Music as a window into real-world communication

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Communication has been studied extensively in the context of speech and language. While speech is tremendously effective at transferring ideas between people, music is another communicative mode that has a unique power to bring people together and transmit a rich tapestry of emotions, through joint music-making and listening in a variety of everyday contexts. Research has begun to examine the behavioral and neural correlates of the joint action required for successful musical interactions, but it has yet to fully account for the rich, dynamic, multimodal nature of musical communication. We review the current literature in this area and propose that naturalistic musical paradigms will open up new ways to study communication more broadly.

Introduction

When two people communicate, they exchange information, ideas, or feelings, typically through dialogue. While the vast majority of communication research has focused on speech and language, another universal and emotionally powerful medium of human communication is music. Music allows parents to bond with babies, friends to form lifelong memories while singing together on a car trip, and performers to feel a rush of connection with other players and audience members.

Music’s evolutionary origins are rooted in communicative functions ( Savage et al., 2021 ), with one example being the use of African talking drums to communicate messages across villages, including emotional information ( Carrington, 1971 ; Ong, 1977 ). Music and verbal communication share many common features. For example, music relies primarily on acoustic signaling but is highly multisensory, involving social cues such as gesture and facial expression. Music and language rely on overlapping neural substrates (see Peretz et al., 2015 for a review), both recruiting a hierarchy progressing from primary auditory cortex to higher-order brain regions that process successively longer syntactic units ( Lerner et al., 2011 ; Farbood et al., 2015 ). This hierarchical structure has also been observed in auditory samples taken from conversations, musical interactions, and even in communications between animals such as killer whales ( Kello et al., 2017 ). Many studies have focused on the ontological and neural overlap and mutual influence between music and language (see Peretz et al., 2015 for a review). However, music connects people in ways that transcend language, thus providing a unique lens into certain aspects of communication largely overlooked or less relevant in language research. Perhaps more than almost any other medium, music communicates a rich tapestry of emotional content, another type of communicable information ( Parkinson, 2011 ), both within a musical group and to the audience. As a collective art form, music plays an important role in establishing shared cultural identity through ritual (e.g., at weddings, funerals, festivals), in which its powers of emotional communication play a large role. In film and television, music adds emotional depth to critical plot points, and it can unlock autobiographical memories in patients with dementia ( El Haj et al., 2012a , b ). In essence, it provides the social–emotional fabric of many people’s lives, both in the moment and through the ongoing construction of our personal and collective social narratives. While music’s activation of specific emotional processing regions in individual listeners has been fairly extensively studied ( Koelsch, 2014 ), there is little work examining how multiple performers’ brains jointly represent the moment-to-moment dynamics of musical emotion and how these representations relate to listeners’ ongoing experiences.

Another key component of communication between performers takes the form of joint action. Although conversational speech does involve turn-taking and mirroring of body movements (e.g., gestures, head nods), the degree of interpersonal bodily coordination involved in a musical interaction is typically much more precisely temporally aligned, can have a large impact on the interpretation of a piece, and is often required for the interaction to run smoothly. For exampleed fo, musicians must breathe together to align note onsets, and coordinate head, arm and even leg movements to maintain a steady tempo. If this bodily system of the ensemble becomes misaligned, it can have disastrous effects on the musical outcome, potentially requiring the players to start over. Beyond large-scale, visible bodily coordination, players also must precisely coordinate intonation by making micro-adjustments to embouchure and strings, which involves listening and matching at multiple levels (see Supplementary Video Figure 1 ). Broadly, communication is a requirement for coordination, which is particularly relevant for joint music-making among all types of human interactions. Although incidental synchrony could theoretically occur in the absence of communication (e.g., if two people played at the same time by individually following the beat of a conductor without seeing or hearing each other), this would not represent musical coordination or communication between players. Lacking the in-the-moment, interpersonal adaptation that makes every performance unique, this would almost certainly yield a less naturalistic, less cohesive, less beautiful result.

Traditionally, most studies of human communication have focused on language and have investigated processing and learning of highly controlled linguistic units. However, modern approaches have begun to feature more naturalistic stimuli, such as stories ( Huth et al., 2016 ), movies ( Chen et al., 2017 ), and lectures ( Meshulam et al., 2021 ), and real-world tasks, such as live interactions between multiple interlocutors using hyperscanning paradigms ( Dikker et al., 2017 ; Dai et al., 2018 ). In this review, we propose applying novel and naturalistic approaches to characterizing the myriad of complex cognitive, social, and emotional processes that enable playing music with others. We highlight new ways of measuring crucial but largely overlooked aspects of everyday musical communication: the dynamic exchange of acoustic and gestural signals, the interpersonal coordination that supports rhythmic and harmonic alignment, and the uniquely rich emotional exchange between performers (and between performers and listeners).

Another unique feature of music that enriches its contribution to communication research is the diversity of musical interactions that exist in the world. Virtually all humans are experts at using language to communicate, but the depth and type of musical engagement varies drastically across individuals and cultures, enabling the investigation of musical communication across a range of abilities, modes, genres, and contexts (e.g., amateur vs. professional, instrumental vs. vocal, classical vs. rock, theater vs. church vs. karaoke bar). Finally, music’s potential as an educational and therapeutic tool has only begun to be explored, and we highlight the ways in which research on naturalistic musical communication can lead to more powerful interventions in classroom and clinical settings.

How has real-world musical communication been studied and which questions remain unanswered?

Joint music-making is unquestionably a highly social activity (see Mehr et al., 2021 ; Savage et al., 2021 for a debate on its evolutionary origins). Over the course of a musical interaction, musicians must jointly attend to ensure that they are aligning to one another (rhythmically, harmonically, affectively) and flexibly reacting to moment-to-moment changes enacted by their musical partner(s), resulting in mutual entrainment on several levels. Most previous studies examining the behavioral and neural underpinnings of communication have largely ignored these dynamic features, which are critical components of everyday interactions (see Redcay and Schilbach, 2019 ).

Some researchers have begun to investigate behavioral coordination between multiple musicians (see Volpe et al., 2016 for a review). The string quartet is an excellent model for the study of small group dynamics and communication; because there is no conductor leading them, the musicians must jointly attend to one another in order to play together. For example, musicians must expertly direct attention simultaneously to the written music and, peripherally, to the other players to maintain synchrony. Quartets have been used as a proxy for intense work groups, and the success of a quartet predicts measures of its conflict management and group effectiveness ( Murnighan and Conlon, 1991 ). Members of string quartets become empathetically attuned to one another during a performance ( Seddon and Biasutti, 2009 ), and body sway reflects joint emotional expression ( Chang et al., 2019 ). Players identify and correct for timing asynchronies, and these adaptive strategies often vary based on each quartet’s unique dynamics ( Wing et al., 2014 ). Joint action also requires separately tracking and differentiating one’s own actions versus a partner’s over time, which facilitates interpersonal coordination ( Loehr et al., 2013 ; Liebermann-Jordanidis et al., 2021 ) (See Supplementary Video Figure 1 for a demonstration of the dynamic joint actions required to support successful musical communication in a similar small group, a woodwind quintet).

To answer questions about musical communication at the neural level, researchers have used a variety of neuroimaging paradigms. In single-brain approaches, researchers collect data from only one participant’s brain, while that person communicates with an in-person or virtual partner, or is made to believe they are ( Donnay et al., 2014 ). In dual-brain (hyperscanning) approaches, researchers collect data simultaneously from two participants’ brains during a social interaction (see Czeszumski et al., 2020 and Montague et al., 2002 for reviews). Both types of paradigms can make use of electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electrocorticography (ECoG), and/or functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to answer different questions. EEG has millisecond-level temporal resolution but poor spatial resolution and is best suited to answer questions about the brain’s response to a particular event in time (e.g., a listener’s response to a musician’s change in tempo). By contrast, fMRI has good spatial resolution but poor temporal resolution, and is best suited to answer questions regarding the patterns of activation in certain brain regions during a particular task or listening condition. ECoG offers high spatial and temporal resolution and enables good coverage of the temporal lobe, but the practical constraints of working with surgical patients limit the feasibility of naturalistic, interactive musical tasks to some degree. Lastly, fNIRS has higher spatial resolution than EEG and comparable temporal resolution to fMRI but is relatively cost-effective and minimally susceptible to motion artifacts, making it well-suited for naturalistic hyperscanning paradigms ( Czeszumski et al., 2020 ).

Studying live interactions between multiple musicians at once enables the characterization of interpersonal dynamics that underlie everyday music-making, such as mutual entrainment and joint improvisation. Entrainment can involve alignment (synchronization) to an external beat maintained by a metronome or conductor, whereas mutual entrainment additionally involves moment-to-moment adaptive adjustments between multiple players to maintain a steady meter amidst local changes in tempo. Behavioral studies have shown that two people can jointly entrain to a beat, and that being paired with a musician increases a non-musician’s ability to maintain a steady beat via tapping ( Schultz and Palmer, 2019 ). During joint music-making, humans temporally and affectively entrain to one another (see Phillips-Silver and Keller, 2012 for a review), resulting in synchronous brain activity ( Zamm et al., 2021 ). Using EEG paradigms, between-brain oscillatory couplings both before and during dyadic guitar playing have been linked to interpersonally coordinated actions ( Lindenberger et al., 2009 ; Sänger et al., 2012 ). Additionally, different patterns of directionality in brain-to-brain synchronization are associated with leader and follower roles during guitar playing ( Sänger et al., 2013 ). Similarly, during joint piano playing, alpha oscillations index participants’ knowledge about their own actions as well as their musical partner’s ( Novembre et al., 2016 ). In an fNIRS study, distinct blood oxygenation patterns in temporo-parietal and somatosensory areas were found to be associated with different violin parts in a duo ( Vanzella et al., 2019 ).

The inferior frontal cortex (IFC) has been implicated in several studies of communicative interaction, both because of its role in language processing and its involvement in the mirror neuron system for joint action ( Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004 ; Stephens et al., 2010 ; Jiang et al., 2012 ). Studies using fNIRS have revealed neural synchronization in the left IFC while two people sang or hummed together ( Osaka et al., 2015 ), and the strength of neural synchronization in bilateral IFC between learners and instructors during interactive song learning predicts behavioral performance ( Pan et al., 2018 ).

While most everyday verbal communication (e.g., dialogue) is improvised, musical communication regularly takes both scripted and improvised forms. The difference between these forms of joint action lies in performers’ reliance on planned versus emergent coordination mechanisms ( Goupil and Aucouturier, 2021 ). During improvisation between musical partners, not only do shared intentions emerge and cause coordination between musicians, but third-party listeners can identify the musicians’ goals (e.g., finding a good ending for oneself or the group as a whole). Hyper-networks based on an interplay of different EEG frequencies are involved in leader/follower roles during guitar improvisation ( Müller et al., 2013 ), and musical improvisation enhances interpersonal coordination, promoting alignment of body movements in a subsequent conversation ( Robledo et al., 2021 ). fMRI research has begun to examine the neural underpinnings of jazz improvisation, finding deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), associated with creative thinking or being in a state of “flow” ( Limb and Braun, 2008 ). During the highly communicative exchange known as “trading fours,” activation in areas related to syntactic processing was observed, suggesting these areas play a domain-general role in communication beyond language ( Donnay et al., 2014 ). However, very few neuroimaging studies have asked pairs or groups of musicians to improvise freely and exchange musical ideas back and forth. Finally, and perhaps counterintuitively, even very large groups improvising together can attain a high level of coordination and joint action during complex tasks without much external structure ( Goupil et al., 2020 ).

The existing hyperscanning literature largely focuses on mirrored synchrony and phase-locking to stimuli or to a communicative partner measured across an entire interaction, but future dual-brain approaches must embrace the moment-to-moment, back-and-forth, nature of music-making, including the way musicians adapt to one another on a number of features and how that process is modulated by expertise. This will require measuring different kinds of interpersonal coupling in fine-grained time bins organized according to constantly changing musical content. For instance, EEG could be used to examine the precise timing of the brain’s response in musician A to a change in tempo, pitch, or rhythm by musician B and the resulting behavioral change. fMRI could be used to measure how a musician’s brain adapts to unexpected musical content (e.g., a non-diatonic note or syncopated rhythm) initiated by a partner outside of the scanner. fNIRS could be used to examine moment-to-moment adaptation to a communicative partner in pairs of musicians, across multiple brain regions at once. EEG could be used simultaneously in many musicians to examine the leader/follower temporal dynamics of orchestral music. Motion capture could be used in conjunction with hyperscanning to assess how the brain represents the dynamics of gesture over time. Finally, while previous studies have used hyperscanning to examine scripted music-making, future studies should directly compare scripted versus improvised musical interactions, as well as joint versus solo improvisation.

How is emotion communicated during joint music-making?

Music is inherently emotional ( Juslin, 2000 ), enabling it to support important social functions when played or even listened to. Performing in an ensemble has a uniquely powerful bonding effect between players (and between players and audiences), and simply listening to music often occurs in the context of social experiences that have huge emotional implications (e.g., hearing a sweeping movie score and feeling connected to the other people in the theater or listening to a nostalgic song with a friend during a road trip). However, emotion has been largely ignored in more ecologically valid hyperscanning paradigms examining musical communication ( Acquadro et al., 2016 ). Indeed, music and speech overlap to some degree in their ability to communicate emotion, with a shared mechanism responsible for affective processing of musical and vocal stimuli in the auditory cortex ( Paquette et al., 2018 ) and shared acoustic codes ( Curtis and Bharucha, 2010 ; Coutinho and Dibben, 2013 ; Nordström and Laukka, 2019 ). Across speech and music, participants’ emotional experiences can be predicted by the same seven features: loudness, tempo/speech rate, melody/prosody contour, spectral centroid, spectral flux, sharpness, and roughness ( Coutinho and Dibben, 2013 ), and the minor third is associated with sadness both in music and in speech prosody ( Curtis and Bharucha, 2010 ).

Music often triggers physiological responses like chills, changes in skin conductance, and changes in heart rate. When participants listened to music that induced chills, areas of the brain associated with reward/motivation, emotion, and arousal were found to be more active ( Blood and Zatorre, 2001 ). Additionally, those who experience chills show higher white matter connectivity between auditory, social, and reward-processing areas ( Sachs et al., 2016 ). Further, feeling moved or touched by music shares common physiological changes with feeling moved or touched by videos of emotional social interactions, like an elephant reuniting with its mother ( Schubert et al., 2018 ; Vuoskoski et al., 2022 ).

While there is an intuitive notion that music has the ability to communicate emotion even more powerfully than speech, there is minimal direct empirical evidence for this. Developmental research has shown that song is reliably more effective than speech at modulating emotion in infants ( Corbeil et al., 2013 ; Trehub et al., 2016 ; Cirelli and Trehub, 2020 ). And in a dual-brain fNIRS study with adults, the right temporo-parietal junction (rTPJ), which has been previously implicated in social and emotional communication, was found to be more strongly activated during joint drumming than conversation ( Rojiani et al., 2018 ). However, the relative efficacy of music versus speech to communicate emotional information is still largely unknown.

Future studies must delineate the multiple ways that musical emotion is communicated during everyday experiences: the emotions a listener experiences as they hear live or recorded music, the emotions a performer experiences as they play with others or receive feedback from listeners, and the way the communicated emotion helps to create a cohesive social unit between people. Such studies could use behavioral methods and questionnaires to assess emotional states before and after music making, ask performers or listeners to continuously indicate (e.g., via button press or slider) when they enter a new emotional state throughout a performance, and/or use multivariate pattern extraction techniques in neuroimaging paradigms to decode the fine-grained patterns of brain responses in emotion-associated areas as these states change over the course of music-making. Further, while research suggests that song has a unique emotional power over speech in infants ( Corbeil et al., 2013 ; Trehub et al., 2016 ; Cirelli and Trehub, 2020 ), it remains to be seen if this effect persists into adulthood. Thus, future studies would benefit from directly comparing emotional communication using musical versus matched linguistic stimuli in adults.

Musical engagement exists on a spectrum: how do individual differences in musical engagement affect musical communication–and everyday communication more broadly?

One major way in which communication via music differs from communication via language is that in many cultures, musical expertise—as well as degree and type of musical engagement—varies widely in a population. Such variability also exists across cultures: in some cultures, joint music-making is a crucial part of everyday life and rituals, and in others, music is less a part of everyday life and is something that is reserved for certain occasions and highly trained experts. How do differences in musical engagement affect musical communication and translate into everyday social communication?

Most people engage with music in some way on a daily basis—overhearing it at the grocery store, actively listening to recordings at home, attending live concerts among other audience members, singing karaoke with friends, or performing in an ensemble. In many of these examples, music acts as a social reinforcer, but it is unknown how this spectrum of musical engagement impacts development, social bonding, and other processes. Much of the research on the impacts of musical expertise has investigated how training affects relatively low-level communicative processes, such as early neural responses to simple speech sounds. For example, in two longitudinal studies, preschoolers showed enhanced auditory brainstem responses to speech in noise after 1 year of musical training ( Strait et al., 2013 ), and adolescents in a school band showed a level of subcortical response consistency to syllables that was less degraded over the course of adolescence than in peers in a non-musical control group ( Tierney et al., 2015 ). Some studies have found a modest benefit of musical training on speech segmentation ( François et al., 2013 ) and phonological awareness ( Degé and Schwarzer, 2011 ; Patscheke et al., 2016 ). Given that musical engagement early in life (e.g., singing or playing in a school choir or band) is often a highly rewarding and socially enriching experience, surprisingly little is known about the impact of early musical training on social processes, but formal music training has been associated with a decrease in relationship conflict in undergraduate students ( MacDonald and Wilbiks, 2021 ).

Around the world, music plays a crucial role in important moments in life, from celebrations (festivals, weddings, graduations, inaugurations) to funerals. The extent to which collective music-making exists as an important part of social bonding is surprisingly variable across small-scale societies ( Patel and von Rueden, 2021 ). In addition, there is significant variability across kinds of collective music-making in terms of whether most people (versus merely professionals) feel welcome to participate. For example, at weekly religious services, many congregants sing along regardless of vocal training (this is also true at karaoke bars and many sporting events around the world), but at other kinds of social occasions (dinner parties, talent shows) non-musicians often feel shy and ill-equipped to “perform” at a certain level. This variability in people’s engagement with various musical interactions also likely differs across cultures in ways that would be productive to study within a multi-brain framework.

While previous work has established musician/non-musician differences in processing communicative information (typically, simple music and speech sounds), future work must take into account this spectrum of everyday musical engagement and how it impacts music’s communicative functions throughout development and society at large. For example, it would be informative to use dual-brain hyperscanning paradigms to examine the difference between patterns of neural synchrony within pairs of highly trained musicians versus less trained musicians, or between pairs of people from a culture where music is more versus less widely practiced. In addition, studying differences in both musical and verbal communication between pairs of professional musicians who are accustomed to playing with each other versus strangers could help elucidate the neural overlap between these two domains of communication in more naturalistic, interactive contexts. For example, highly skilled jazz musicians who regularly “trade fours” are uniquely adept at matching certain aspects of other performers’ acoustic patterns to create coherent and complementary melodic lines; does this powerful “conversational” ability extend in any way to verbal communication [beyond body movement; ( Robledo et al., 2021 )] among such players, and do similar neural substrates support both of these processes?

Music therapy can improve interpersonal connection and communication in clinical settings

One of the most powerful clinical applications of music is to improve communication among populations that struggle with verbal communication, self-expression, and/or social engagement. In children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), music therapy has been shown to improve emotional and interpersonal responsiveness during the course of a session ( Kim et al., 2009 ) and improve communication over an 8–12 week intervention ( Sharda et al., 2018 ). Music has also been used in group settings to specifically improve communication and interpersonal relationships: group music therapy has been shown to improve social skills of children with ASD ( Blythe, 2014 ) and family-centered music therapy has been shown to improve interpersonal relationships at home ( Thompson, 2012 ; Mayer-Benarous et al., 2021 for a review).

Music therapy is also used to help improve communication for people with dementia. Music therapy strengthens interpersonal relationships between the patient and their music therapist, peers, and family ( McDermott et al., 2014 ). People with dementia show more communicative behavior during a music therapy session ( Schall et al., 2014 ) and an increase in language use and fluency after a session compared to a conversational therapy session ( Brotons and Koger, 2000 ). Since listening to familiar music enhances self-awareness ( Arroyo-Anlló et al., 2013 ) and autobiographical memory ( El Haj et al., 2012a , b ), for people with dementia, music may provide a means of connecting with the people around them and their past selves, thus helping them maintain a sense of personal identity as the disease progresses.

These studies document some of the cognitive and behavioral benefits of music therapy on communication, but there is more work to be done to fully understand these benefits and the neural mechanisms that give rise to them. A traditional approach would be to use neuroimaging pre- and post-intervention in an attempt to measure neural correlates of observed cognitive, behavioral, or social effects. Beyond that, hyperscanning approaches (e.g., with EEG or fNIRS) will be transformative in capturing the dynamic interactions between patients and music therapists or parents as they unfold in real time. For example, dyads of parents and non-verbal children become neurally synchronized during a music therapy session even when the parents are not active participants ( Samadani et al., 2021 ). This could be evidence of cognitive-emotional coupling mediated by therapy and might be involved in strengthening the parent/child relationship. Isolating a neural signature or biomarker of communication success will provide useful feedback to improve the efficiency of not only music therapy but music education as well.

Concluding remarks: future work would benefit from using music as a model for communication and taking into account complex brain-behavior dynamics

Because music is universal, has features that overlap and complement those found in speech, and plays a unique role in human emotional, social, and cultural experiences, it offers an ideal model for future studies on human communication. In this review, we have proposed that naturalistic, interactive music paradigms provide a rich opportunity to study the interpersonal dynamics of communication, and that communication research in general would benefit from a closer examination into the phenomenon of joint music-making (see Figure 1 ).

Our proposed framework for future studies of communication includes three methodological axes: behavioral to neuroimaging, perception to production, and single- to multi-person. Single-person behavioral studies of perception, which are already quite common, include psychophysical experiments or survey methods. Single-person neuroimaging studies of perception typically include EEG or fMRI experiments in which participants listen to music. Studying music production in a single person behaviorally involves examining the way a single musician communicates information as they play, whether by adjustments in tempo, dynamics, body sway, or other features. Finally, multi-person studies are essential for capturing the real- world dynamics of everyday musical communication. For example, we propose neuroimaging experiments in which a person’s brain responses are measured while they interact with a live partner or are made to believe they are. Such studies could examine the way musicians jointly attend to one another and adjust to musical partners, how they communicate emotion both to each other and to an audience, and how representations in brain areas involved in these joint actions dynamically change across the interaction. This figure contains icons from thenounproject.com: Activity by mikicon, Mri by Flowicon, Music Note by Nico Ilk, and Piano by Adrien Coquet.

While previous studies have examined some aspects of musical communication, often focusing on the overlap between the processing of music and language at the acoustic or syntactic level, most paradigms use fairly simplistic stimuli and individual participants (rather than dyads or groups) or have focused on inter-brain mirrored synchrony rather than modeling the complex dynamics inherent in real-life musical interaction. Further, the existing literature has largely ignored the influence of musical experience on communication as well as the power of music to transfer emotions between people. Future studies must take into account the dynamic nature of communication and the parallel features that must be coordinated across performers (e.g., timing, tuning, leader/follower dynamics), going beyond the single- or even dual-brain models that have previously been used. Naturalistic paradigms featuring real-life musical interactions and stimuli are best suited to address these complex questions and relationships, and findings have the potential to inform avenues for future therapeutic interventions.

Author contributions

SI and EP contributed to the conception of the topic. All authors wrote the sections, contributed to revision, and read and approved the final manuscript.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a GRAMMY Museum Grant awarded to EP. Figure 1 contains icons from thenounproject.com : Activity by mikicon, Mri by Flowicon, Music Note by Nico Ilk, and Piano by Adrien Coquet. Thanks to video figure quintet members Vince Cassano, clarinet; Mark Questad, horn; Kristy Larkin, bassoon; Meaghan Stambaugh, flute (left to right in the video) who played Pastorale Op. 14, No. 1 by Gabriel Pierné. Written informed consent was obtained from the individual(s) and/or minor(s)’ legal guardian/next of kin for the publication of any potentially identifiable images or data included in this article.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1012839/full#supplementary-material

Supplementary Video 1

Demonstration of the dynamic joint actions required to support successful musical communication in a similar small group, a woodwind quintet.

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Home › Blog › Advocacy › How Does Music Affect Society?

November 3, 2021

How Does Music Affect Society?

By Lia Peralta

Music has shaped cultures and societies around the world for generations. It has the power to alter one’s mood, change perceptions, and inspire change. While everyone has a personal relationship with music, its effects on the culture around us may not be immediately apparent. So, how does music affect society ? The impact of music on society is broad and deeply ingrained in our history. To demonstrate how deeply our lives are affected by music, let’s delve into the sociological effects of music and how it affects culture.

How Does Music Affect Society

Music is an essential aspect of all human civilizations and has the power to emotionally, morally, and culturally affect society. When people from one culture exchange music with each other, they gain valuable insight into another way of life. Learning how music and social bonding are linked is especially crucial in times of conflict when other lines of communication prove to be challenging.

Music, as a cultural right, may aid in the promotion and protection of other human rights. It can help in the healing process, dismantling walls and boundaries, reconciliation, and education. Around the world, music is being used as a vehicle for social change and bringing communities together.

At the core of our everyday experience with music, we use it to relax, express ourselves, come to terms with our emotions, and generally improve our well-being. It has evolved into a tool for healing and self-expression, often dictating how we, as individuals, take steps to impact society.

Why is Music Beneficial to Society?

Music has the power to connect with and influence people in a way that feels fundamentally different from other forms of communication. Humans often feel that “no one understands them” or knows how they “truly feel.” Many resort to music to find connections with others to express themselves or find a sense of understanding among peers.

How does music affect our lives? Music has the ability to deeply affect our mental states and raise our mood. When we need it, music gives us energy and motivation. When we’re worried, it can soothe us; when we’re weary, it can encourage us; and when we’re feeling deflated, it can re-inspire us. It even functions to improve our physical health, as it’s been proven that high-tempo music results in better workouts . We connect with others via music, especially those who produce or perform it — we recite their lyrics, dance to their melodies, and form a sense of connection through their self-expression.

Songs and melodies have the power to inspire people, guide their actions, and aid in the formation of identities. Music can unite people – even if absorbed in solitude, capture your imagination and boost creativity. A person who has been affected by music is not alone. They are among the masses trying to find their role in society and form connections with others. Thankfully, while it can help us “find ourselves,” music influence on society can also be seen in:

– Providing a platform for the underrepresented to speak out

– Affecting mood and inspiration

– Helping us cope by encouraging us to express ourselves through movement and dancing

– Bridging a divide in communication

– Creating a venue for education and idea-sharing

Music’s Effect on Our Thoughts and Actions

Music’s effect on the self is far-reaching, tapping into our memories, subconscious thoughts, emotions, and interests. Thanks to the music artists who have put their heart and soul into creating, we feel connected with other people and their difficulties, challenges, and emotions. So much about our brains is still being discovered but through neurology, we are learning more and more about how music affects us.

We all know that being exposed to music’s beauty, rhythm, and harmony significantly influences how we feel. We also know that music emotionally impacts us, reaching into forgotten memories and connecting us to ourselves. Music therapy is often used to improve attention and memory, and can have a positive effect on those suffering from dementia or Alzheimers. Music has the potential to be a powerful healing tool in a variety of ways and pervades every aspect of our existence. Songs are used to define spiritual ceremonies, toddlers learn the alphabet via rhyme and verse, and malls and restaurants, where we choose to spend our free time, are rarely silent.

But how much can this ever-present object influence our behavior and emotions? According to research , music has a significant impact on humans. It can potentially affect disease, depression, expenditure, productivity, and our outlook on life. The impact of music on our brain is being better understood thanks to advances in neuroscience and the examination of music’s impact on the brain. It has been shown via brain scans that when we listen to or perform music, nearly all brain regions are active simultaneously. Listening to and making music may actually changes the way your brain works .

According to studies, music impacts how we view the world around us. In a 2011 research paper , 43 students were given the job of recognizing happy and sad faces while listening to happy or sad music in the background by researchers from the University of Groningen. Participants noticed more cheerful faces when upbeat music was played, while the opposite was true when sad music was played. According to the researchers, music’s effect might be because our perceptual decisions on sensory stimuli, such as facial expressions in this experiment, are directly impacted by our mental state. Music triggers physical responses in the brain and puts in motion a series of chemical reactions.

In the book, Classical Music: Expected the Unexpected , author and conductor Kent Nagano spoke with neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin on how music interacts with the brain. The sociological effects of music can include the improvement of people’s well-being due to chemical reactions in the brain, such as an increase in oxytocin. Oxytocin, or the “love hormone,” makes us more inclined to engage in social interactions or build trust between individuals. Music also boosts the synthesis of the immunoglobulin A antibody, which is crucial for human health. Studies have also shown that melatonin, adrenaline, and noradrenaline levels increase after only a few weeks of music therapy. The hormones noradrenaline and adrenaline cause us to become more alert, experience excitement, and cause the brain’s “reward” regions to fire.

The Cultural Impact of Music

Today’s popular music reflects the culture of the day. But, how does music affect society over time? How has music changed over the past century? In the lyrics and sound of each era, we can discern the imprints of a particular generation and see history in the making. And, in this day and age, culture is changing faster than ever before, mirroring musical forms that are evolving and emerging at the same rate.

For decades, the effects of music on society have been a source of contention, and it seems that with each generation, a new musical trend emerges that has the previous generations saying, “Well back in my day, we had…”. Music and social movements are intrinsically linked together. Almost every popular kind of music was considered scandalous back in the day, and the dancing that accompanied jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, and hip-hop drew protests and boycotts from all around. Just look at The Beatles, who were considered scandalous by the older generation when they first arrived on the music scene.

While we may not like a new music trend or a particular genre of music, we must also take a step back and appreciate how lucky we are to be exposed to it at all. Music in some parts of the world is not as easily accessible. While music has always been a means of pushing the boundaries of expression, it’s clear that the world isn’t expressing itself in the same way. The various musical trends we’ve seen in just this lifetime provide an insightful look into what is and isn’t being discussed in some cultures.

Music as an Agent for Change

Another essential factor to consider is how strongly music influences society and, thus, human behavior. Music’s impact on human rights movements and its role as an agent for change is clear in the history books. One example is the impact of the “freedom songs” of the Civil Rights movement, such as “We Shall Overcome” and “Strange Fruit.” These songs broke down barriers, educated people, built empathy across the divide, and had a hand in ending segregation. Music today continues to shed light on the inequalities experienced by people worldwide, and it’s clear that music will never stop acting as an agent for change.

Because of how strong of an influence melodies and lyrics have on society, we must be acutely aware of our current culture. Still, more importantly, we must be conscious of the cultures we wish to build and develop via our music. Songs have the power to change the world in unexpected ways, challenging preconceived notions and shedding light on issues that have historically been ignored.

Music’s Impact on Youth

How does having music education impact youth? We know from our experience that music in schools improves student, teacher and community outcomes – and in turn, society, specifically the future generation. In a case study about our work in Newark, NJ , 68% of teachers reported improved academic performance. 94% of teachers also saw improvement in social-emotional skills. Schools saw better attendance and ELA (English Language Arts) scores.

Another example of this is our work in Metro Nashville Public Schools , which has been a partner district of Save The Music since 1999. Students who participated in music programs for up to one year had significantly better attendance and graduation rates, higher GPAs and test scores, and lower discipline reports than their non-music peers. Students with more than one year of music participation performed significantly better than their peers with less on each of these indicators.

We Invest in Music in Schools

Whether you’re a music buff or not, anyone can appreciate the impact music has on society. A great way to show this appreciation is by being part of music’s impact on the world and learning how you can help facilitate change. Save The Music is a music foundation that collaborates with public school districts to provide grants for music education instructors and school administrators in the form of new instruments, technology , and online music education . Our initiative helps schools get their music programs off the ground and keep students inspired.

Contact us today to learn how you can save the music through our music education advocacy programs .

Advocacy , Blog

• Neuroscience

Why Is Listening to Music So Pleasurable?

Exploring the fascinating overlap between the enjoyment of a melody and a meal..

Posted May 14, 2024 | Reviewed by Ray Parker

• The joy of listening to music is shaped by our musical experience as a teen and our cultural background.
• The pleasure of music is processed in the phylogenetically newer frontal cortex.
• Music pleasure also relies on primitive reward-related structures that allow the enjoyment of eating.

Restaurateurs want you to enjoy your dining experience. However, it’s not only about the food: ambiance matters. The music within each restaurant is carefully chosen according to the presumed tastes of their clientele with the goal of enhancing the experience of eating. Scientists know quite a lot about the brain mechanisms that reward us for eating; little is known about how the brain interprets the aesthetic experience of listening to music and whether they activate similar brain regions.

The joy of eating is processed by a set of brain regions that constitute the classic reward circuit. These include the ventral tegmental area, where all our dopamine neurons live, the nucleus accumbens (the most important reward center), the insula cortex, and a small region of cortex on the middle face of the frontal lobes.

This circuitry has been conserved by evolution and appears in similar locations, usually similar neurotransmitters, in reptiles, birds, and mammals. Yet, the ability to experience pleasure from music is considered a uniquely human trait (although birds interpret pitch differently than humans do, they will move rhythmically to music). The enjoyment of food is innate and highly preserved across species for an extremely good reason: survival. In contrast, musical preferences are shaped by whatever we listen to as teens and cultural background (Greenberg et al., 2015). Neuroimaging studies suggest that that music-induced pleasure is mediated by the communication between the ancient reward circuitry involving dopamine and higher-order cortical regions.

In a recent study (Mas-Herrero et al., 2020), hedonic responses to food were used as a control condition to determine common and distinct brain responses associated with the pleasure of listening to music. The authors hypothesized that the pleasure of listening to music would be processed in the phylogenetically newer prefrontal cortex as compared to the pleasure of eating. They conducted a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies that investigated brain responses to music- and food-induced pleasure.

Music, as compared to food, appears to have some unique reward circuitry in the brain. These areas are particularly important.

The ventral striatum (and the nucleus accumbens in particular) is often referred to as the brain’s most important pleasure center. The pleasures of eating and listening to music powerfully activate the ventral striatum. One of the main inputs to this region is the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine. When scientists pharmacologically enhanced the function of dopamine in this area, the patients reported significantly enhanced feelings of subjective pleasure described as “music-induced chills” (Ferreri et al., 2019). In contrast, blocking the actions of dopamine completely reduced the music-induced emotional responses.

Learning is also crucial for the experience of musical pleasure. One area called the superior temporal gyrus (located conveniently next to each ear) is responsible for perceiving the characteristics of music, such as pitch, tonal pattern, and musical imagery, and for helping us remember that we like those characteristics.

An area of the cortex called the inferior frontal gyrus is activated while listening to pleasant music, but only on the right side of the brain. This is consistent with a long-held view that the right hemisphere is responsible for processing music rather than language. People who suffer with amusia (a deficit in music perception and production) show significant anomalies in the right inferior frontal cortex.

The ventral-medial prefrontal cortex (located just a few inches behind the bridge of your nose) responds to both food- and music-induced pleasure and then informs the ventral striatum. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have shown that activation of this brain area consistently correlates with subjective reports that the music they are listening to is considered pleasurable. Recent studies have shown that music activates anterior portions of the prefrontal cortex more reliably than food rewards. Patients with frontotemporal lobe dementia may develop musicophilia, a specific craving for music.

The insula, a region of the brain that tells you whether you like or dislike a particular sensory experience, was consistently engaged across both music and food rewards. This is not surprising, given that the insular cortex is an integration hub involved in sensory, cognitive, motivational and emotional functions.

Overall, recent studies have provided clear evidence that music-induced pleasure relies on the engagement of both higher-order cortical regions involved in auditory cognition and somewhat primitive reward-related structures that are usually associated with the enjoyment of eating. (For more about the effect of eating on the brain, see my book Your Brain on Food .)

Mas-Herrero E, et al., (2020) Common and distinct neural correlates of music and food-induced pleasure: a coordinate-based meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.12.008.

Ferreri L, et al., (2019) Dopamine modulates the reward experiences elicited by music. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 116, 3793–3798. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1811878116

Greenberg DM, et al., (2015) Musical preferences are linked to cognitive styles. PLoS ONE 10, e0131151. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0131151

Gary L. Wenk, Ph.D. , is a professor of psychology, neuroscience, molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics at the Ohio State University.

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