BY JESSIE WANG, LEAD WRITER (COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL AWARENESS)
In this companion piece to her live review of Music and Mental Health at Vivid, Jessie writes about the ways music is reported to affect our emotions. This event was hosted by Katherine Boydell and Sandra Garrido, and took place at the Museum of Contemporary Art on 8 June.
1. The brain stem reflex
The brain stem is the most primitive part of our brain, which means that part is needed for us to survive. And the brain stem is related to music, too.
In evolution terms, it was important for us to respond to sounds as a way to help us survive – to hear when a potential threat is near us.
Because music is simply organised sound, it then makes sense that we also respond to music so easily and quickly.
2. Entrainment
This is also instinctive, but not so much to do with simply surviving. Rather, entrainment refers to our instincts to move in synchronisation with music. Ever wondered why you start tapping along to a beat? That’s entrainment. And although humans are said to be the only creatures that do this instinctively, you can train some animals to do it. I hope Snowball the Cockatoo will make your day as much as he always makes mine…
At Music and Mental Health, we had a live demonstration of entrainment with a qualified music therapist. A group of eight audience members had the opportunity to play on djembes, and were split into groups to play a particular rhythm. And it was entrainment in action – to whatever rhythm we were clapping and the djembe players were playing, we would move other parts of our bodies along!
3. Conditioning
Ever heard of Pavlov’s dog and classical conditioning? So, Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, started ringing a bell as he was feeding his dogs. Over time, he realised that, just by ringing the bell, the dogs began to salivate. And that’s because the bell had been paired with the presentation of food – something that naturally makes dogs salivate.
The same thing can be said with music – you hear the music in a particular environment. So then, over time, and just by being in that particular environment, the emotions will come back to you.
This happens even when the music may be ‘neutral’ and in itself would not normally arouse these emotions.
4. Emotional contagion
Seeing someone’s emotion makes you feel that emotion. It’s also called empathy. So, when you hear a piece of music with a friend and they outwardly express their emotion, you also experience it with them!
5. Visual imagery
The listener imagines things while listening to the music. This is why, while every audience member may listen to the same piece of music, they have different comments about it!
6. Episodic memory
We associate a particular piece of music with a particular event – for instance, the song played at your wedding. This is why musical preferences are very personal!
7. Musical expectancy
We expect music to go somewhere. Otherwise, it makes us feel uneasy.
Learning this at the event reminded me of my high school music teacher, who claimed that Mozart’s dad Leopold would play a major scale on the piano and stop on the leading note, and Mozart would always feel so uneasy that he would drop everything he was doing and rush to the piano to end the scale on the tonic.
While you might not be as frustrated as Mozart, the discomfort is still there if you try this!
8. Aesthetic judgement
This is the subjective evaluation of the music. This explains why we have different musical tastes.
READ NEXT: Jessie reviews this full Music and Mental Health event at Vivid!
Images courtesy Jessie Wang, published with permission.
