The Effects of Music

The effects of music on living beings

Many people believe that music is part of their lives and they could not imagine life without it. Many of them take music as an entertaiment (like many of us may think it really is), but at the same time they might ignore the effects that it has upon us. And not only on us, but also on any kind of living organism. Music is not only played to entertain people, it is played and it has been played in religious ceremonies and in many aborigine tribes as a way to iniciating youngsters in the daylife and activities of the tribe.

Music can be a very good companion for people in different circumstances, for example it is played at nightclubs where people are having fun at weekends or even in pubs where many people gather after working all day long to relax and drink something. Many people like to listen to music when they are doing the housework. Music plays an important role in their lives. Whatever the kind of music they like, it is something that they have chosen because they like it and it makes them feel good.
Some people who have researched the effects of music on humans, say that it does not only affect human’s mood, but it can also affect their body physically. Music has the power to change their moods, to help them relax after a long stressing day or to make them feel even worse. It has also the power to make them feel angry. In spite of that, the music that people really like has to play an important role, too. Personally, I like some sort of music, but there are times, when I am very tired or I have such a terrible headache that I do not want to listen to any kind of music.

Scientists also claim that music has effects on humans’ organisms. They found that the rhythm of slow classical music can influence the beat of humans hearts and make their blood stream go slower. With fast classical music the influence is the same, it makes their heart beat faster and also changes the speed of the blood stream.

The effects of music on animals have also been researched by some curious people. The most amazing experiment was done by an university student who exposed some mice to classical music 24 hours per day, and took another group of mice and exposed them to heavy metal. The experiment was meant to see what influence music may have on them. He found that those mice which were exposed to classical music had increased their ability to solve mazes, but he had to stop the experiment because the other group of mice (the ones which were exposed to metal music) started killing each other. This means that music has the power to influence not only humans but also animals. On the one hand, there is the classical music power, which helped the mice increase their intelligence. On the other hand, there is the metal music power which led mice to let their beast and angry instinct take control of them and became very violent.

A further point to add here is about experiments on plants. Retallack carried out an experiment which consisted of playing different kinds of music to plants and seeing how they (plants) grow up. The researcher used different kinds of music such as rock and pop, country and jazz. Those plants which were exposed to country and jazz music, grew healthily and very well. But the ones which were exposed to rock, grew tall and in a sad way. These ones died in just a fortnight.

All in all, music is around everything, and it has been around probably since the beginnings of the human race. It may sound strange to talk about the powers of music, but it may be because those powers were ignored until today. Now that experiments have enlightened something about the influence of music it could be a good idea to go on with these experiments. Some of them have shown that music can help people with some diseases, like Autism, and they have also shown that classical music is good to develop memory or increase intelligence, even to relax.

Esteban Arrieri