Hey guys,
Two things before I begin.... First, I deleted the former M Pire Magazine Twitter account and created a new one, so take a second to simply press the "follow" button on the right of the page where our twitter post is. I will be honest, we really do need to work our numbers back up. Second thing is, since a lot of my posts have been about music (such as this one), in the future I'm going to be doing posts and having guest bloggers post about other art realms that we cater too, such as visual art, fashion, comedy, literature, etc. So stick with us!
Anyways, as a continuation of a series of posts I've been doing about whether Music is an Invention vs a Discovery (for those who are new to this, I did an essay on this topic, and I've been sharing bits and pieces of it in my posts for people to read and comment on), this segment of my essay was by far my most favorite, and I feel like the world needs to put in some more research on this particular subject, more classes need to be done on it, and more books need to be written about it.
One of the most important reasons why music plays such an important role in our lives is because of how respond to it on a mental and spiritual level. We talk about how sound waves hit our ears, but what happens between the time we hear the sound and the time we respond to that sound? To address this, I pasted a part of my essay that looks into the relationship between music and the human brain. Just thinking about that subject sends chills down my spine. But enough blabbering, here's this part of my essay. Again this is an essay, and the info was pulled from another resource, so you can put down the tomatoes and knives. Enjoy the read!
'One important factor that solidifies built-in musical development is the
natural relationship between music and the human brain. We as humans have
components already built in our brains, such as the temporal lobe, which is
connected with memory and hearing.
The book “This is Your Brain On Music” explains how processing music involves
almost every part of our brain, from hearing to memory to emotion to physical
response, “Different aspects of music are handled by different neural regions –
the brain uses functional segregation for music processing, and employs a
system of feature detectors whose job is to analyze specific aspects of the
musical signal, such as pitch, tempo, timbre, and so on,” (Levitin, Daniel J, pg 86). The book continues
to go into detail on what happens between the time music is heard and the time
we respond to the music. When one
listens to a song, the hippocampus, which deals with memory, activates to help
you remember the song. Tapping to music activates the cerebellum, which deals
with emotions and operating body movements. The book talks about other examples
of mental response to music, but one particularly important example deals with
our emotional response to music. The book explains how the cerebellum becomes
involved in this process, “At a deeper level, the emotions we experience in response
to music involve structures deep within the primitive, reptilian regions of the
cerebellar vermis, and the amyglada – the heart of emotional processing in the
cortex,” (Levitin, Daniel J, pg
87). Even when it comes to general sound, the brain can process the difference
between sounds and what they mean, “Some sounds are instinctually soothing
while others are frightening. Although there is a great deal of interpersonal
variation, we are born with a predisposition toward interpreting sounds in
particular ways. Abrupt, short, loud sounds tend to be interpreted by many
animals as an alert sound…Slow, onset, long, and quieter sounds tend to be
interpreted as calming, or at least neutral,” (Levitin, Daniel J, pg 92).'
I have to look back in my essay to see if I missed any other important segments, but as far as I know, this may be it. Meanwhile, If you haven't checked out our super-cool (and free) interactive digital issue of the newest M Pire Magazine issue, feel free to click below!
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