I recently ran across the web site Sound Health - Advanced Brain Technologies. Advanced Brain Technologies is a foundation created by Alex Doman and Brad Boyajian, for the purpose of advancing research, education, and development and access to neurotechnologies that will help people to realize their fullest potential. It is their belief that incorporating Sound Health into your life nourishes mind, body and soul. (Note from Andrew: No Shit!)
They have compiled a series of CDs designed to complement specific activities, such as Concentration, Productivity, Thinking. The music on the CDs are classical pieces, some from the Great Masters and some that were created just for this. Their research gave them the knowledge as to what types of music were effective with the individual activities.(Another note from Andrew: Talking of specific activities check out Sexercise) In addition to the Sound Health section of their work, they have other similar programs such as The Listening Program, BrainBuilder, Music for Babies, and Shelly’s My First Computer Game.
I like the fact that this web site seems to be very thorough; it discusses the research they did prior to forming the foundation, how the musical pieces are chosen for the various activities, and who the participating musicians would be. This is all particularly interesting to me since music2work2 was built on the same premise, that music is good for you and can be helpful in many ways. We spent many hours researching this idea before music2work2 got off the ground.
There are many similarities between Sound Health and music2work2. We both believe that instrumental music is more beneficial than music with lyrics and that the Classical genre is most fittingl. Looking at the notes that accompany each piece of music in the music2work2 catalog, you can see that music2work2 also recognizes the benefit of certain musical pieces with specific activities. In fact, I have been listening to 1218 while writing this post.