Do We Like Music Analysis

Music has been around for thousands of years; it can be used for entertainment, teaching, or healing and coping. One reason people today listen to music is to help get them through rough times. The structural composition of music can influence a person’s thoughts and mood simply through the right chord progression. It has now become an acceptable modality for certain psychological and medicinal mechanisms. Music has recently developed into a therapeutic mechanism for situations stretching from autistic people to the average person struggling with heart break or simply just focusing.

The music industry has undeniably evolved over time and through the betterment of technology, music has the ability to be heard worldwide. Most artists become popularized through the internet and social media, but numerous composers have become well-known through the music they produce for movies. Soundtracks are extremely popular today, especially with the ever growing entertainment industry. One cannot simply hum a tune from a classic Disney film or any other well-known film without others recognizing the piece. The relevance of soundtracks in our culture today would make the main theme from the film “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” a perfect piece to include in this course.

Music helps us remember events and feel emotions - whether we want to or not. This phenomenon has changed the way we experience and remember songs. Humans have associated certain music with events and emotions for as long as we had the capability to (Baumgartner 316), so listening to these familiar sounds brings forth the memories that come with

Music, “…one of the most widely used and appealing forms of communication…”, is universal and used for different purposes (Root, 2005, p. 7). Among the uses are “…play or entertainment, which humans of all ages engage in to stimulate feelings of joy, tension, and interaction, and enrich their experiences by adding mental complexity, counteracting boredom and lethargy” (Root, 2005, p. 7). In addition, music expresses “…emotions such as love, sentiment, or anger” (Root, 2005, p. 7). Ultimately, it communicates values showing the reality of society and culture. Anyone listening to “a few records [helps] enrich [their] feelings, extend [their] sense of love or despair, and feed [their] fantasies or fire some real relationship” (Cooper & Haverkos,

Rock music has been a large part of our lives since its origins way back in the 1940’s. It’s tone has advanced and changed to meet the needs of specific sub genres, but the message is the same throughout the decades; Rock music is a staple of American culture. Emo and Death Metal hit on the emotional strains of their listeners, while Christian Rock and Rock and Roll give a more positive and upbeat feel. Regardless of the tone, music has been proven time and time again to be directly linked to the brain’s pleasure system. Songs that release a lower level of dopamine have been proven to trigger negative emotions such as depression and anxiety. They are also more likely to cause an emotional connection between the listener, and the song. Other

Often times we use music to relate to ourselves; our lives, experiences, thoughts, and personalities. People use songs as an expression of themselves, their thoughts and past that they may not be able to express in any other

Forde’s essay relates this to musical repetition and the what/how the lyrics coach you. With the song “Happy” for example, the artist is directing you by saying: “because I'm happy, clap along if you feel like a room without a roof.” There is a direct correlation to the emotions a person feels with a song that allows you to bridge the gap of tedium and relive a song over and over again. This song elicits the same feelings we received from childhood classics you know and love like “If You’re Happy and You Know It (Clap Your Hands), or Don’t Worry, Be Happy” (223). According to Margulis, music with the right amount of repetition and lyrics can “capture the motor circuitry of the brain, so you have the sense that the music is really pulling you along. It can make people feel really happy” (Happy, 223). The delight you feel while listening to a summer song can help get bring you a feeling of euphoria, even if it only lasts as long as the song is

The brain scans highlighted the nucleus accumbens, a deep region of the brain that connects to dopamine neurons and is activated during pleasurable activities. Connections between the nucleus accumbens and other areas of the brain could predict how much a participant was willing to spend on a given song. The article is concluded with a quote from Salimpoor, “Music is an intellectual reward. It’s really an exercise for your whole

For decades, we have adjusted music into our life but we almost never ask why. This is where I begin to wonder if music has an evolutionary advantage to human species or not. Our music today compared to hundred years ago isn’t the same because throughout the years music has changed over time. Music today can easily be recorded to listen to anywhere you go without necessarily having a live performance because of our technology. In fact, walking in most clothing stores or any other shopping center music is playing without shoppers even noticing it, brings in a comfort zone while the individual are shopping. In the chapter book “The World in Six Songs” by Daniel Levitin states that “We all find comfort in music” (Levitin, 2006, p. 113). Levitin also states that “an evolutionary purpose, which is to help us conserve energy and reorient our priorities for the future after a traumatic event” (Levitin, 2006, p. 133). A comfort moment of you and the music creating an ‘evolutionary communication’. In other words, a comfort moment that you receive a message

Attention Getter: Who here listens to music? What type of genre’s do you listen to? What does your taste in music say about you? We have developed such strong relationships with music internally and socially. So why is it that you cant get that one song out of your head?

The promotion process and the accumulation of an audience was also crucial to a successful launch of the EP. Due to the focus upon the previously mentioned processes, the promotional facet was not developed until the latter stages. The original meetings held with the band at the beginning of the compositional process brought forth discussions about the band’s name and thus image we wished to portray. Therefore, the ideas brought forth within this meeting began the point of initiation of this process. The genre of Dark Folk was the overall goal stylistically, thus, many aspects of this process were adjusted to fit this criteria. Various platforms for which the EP should be released were researched in great depth in order to achieve the best

The impact of music on positive psychology and emotion is a well known fact. Music has an extraordinary ability to change people’s emotions. In humans, music has the ability to invoke emotions of sadness, happiness and even fear (Goycoolea, Levy & Ramirez, 2013). The ability of music to alter human mood makes it one of the greatest subjects of positive psychology. Seligman (2011) argued that even though a lot of effort has been spent on psychotherapy and pharmacology, such interventions are not

As the combination of different sounds travel through out ears, we tend to connect music with certain emotions or memories. For example, to feel that adrenaline rush we select a more upbeat tone in music. If you want a relaxed mood, you listen to something nice and calm with a relaxing melody. According to an article by Mental Health Center, students at Penn State did a study on music and emotions; they showed that people’s emotions have a more positive attitude after they listened to music. Music has a great

There are only a few activities that exist that utilizes the entire brain, and music is one of those things. When we listen to music our whole brain in reacting to it and this is in a good way. When we listen to music dopamine is released into our bodies making us happy. Music is and has been part of our culture for a long time. But if we go back to the Romantic era in music we can find a musician with the name of Robert Schumann. Robert was a musician who was part of a love story, a real one not like a fairy tale. But he put these emotions into his music making it amazing. By doing this Robert Schumann revolutionized the romantic era, changing music forever.

Music elicits an emotional and cognitive response in all who listen to it. It is powerful at the individual level because “it can induce multiple responses – physiological, movement, mood, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral” (Francis, 2008,