This Week in Music to Work to - September 18th, 2014

Is Noise Always Bad? Exploring the Effects of Ambient Noise on Creative Cognition

I loved reading this study - it reminded me of my own undergraduate work as a Psych major when I was looking at how sound affected physical performance.  What the paper is suggesting is that the low level processing systems of the brain get occupied by the ambient noise, forcing the brain to use a higher level of processing when attending to additional tasks.  This results in greater creativity - which is something we've been gambling our live on!

You can read about my original study here:

Dangerous Decibels

We occasionally see articles about loud music and the damage it can do to teen's ears.  What we didn't know is that there is a movement called Dangerous Decibels which tackles the problem directly.  What we like about this is that it give parents tangible advice on how to help their kids keep their hearing.  If you're the parent of kid who seems to have ear buds surgically implanted in their ear canal - you might want to check this out.

How to Listen to Music at Work Without Sacrificing Productivity 

There's pretty much a consensus nowadays that listening to music at work can help productivity - bosses and managers are getting used to seeing employees wearing ear buds and headphones and are even welcoming the fact.  As the idea matures we see writers spending less time on justification and more on how to make the music really work for you.  This Amex article look s at what types of music can help different working activities - nothing earth shattering here but it's great to see such corporate media channels getting on the music at work bandwagon.

The Super Simple Way to Improve Your Mood

Study out of Missouri that looked at mood regulation - particularly how to make yourself happier using variations of happy sounding and less positive music combined with setting an intention to be happier.  Seems that you need both - happy music and a good intention and you can improve your mood.  Awesome!

Library, Magic House Team Up to Help Ferguson Kids Cope with Crisis

It's amazing to me how fast music therapy is gaining ground in society.  There's nothing new about putting on activities and distractions for kids in tough environments, such as the hell everybody went through inFergusonearlier this year - but the fact that a music therapist is part of those activities and a very popular one to boot - is an indication of just how far we've come.

Music as medicine has huge potential, study suggests

This was the study published last year from Daniel Levitin and Mona Lisa Chanda that reviewed 400 scientific papers on how music affects the human being.  It's pretty clear that there are significant benefits across the board and the idea of music as medicine (a medicine with no side effects,) is something we can all get behind.  A nice summary and worth the read.

#musictoworkto #creativity #medicine #mood #ambient

Written while listening to: Trust

Image Credit: Creativity by Sean MacEntee on Flickr 

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Music & Migraines

I have been listening to the music of music2work2 for a long time. Being a friend of the composer/performer, I was listening to it long before the music2 work2.com venture began. I have used it as background music while doing all sorts of things - working at the computer, cooking, playing Scrabble, writing documents, and even recently used it to calm down after hours of a very frustrating and anger producing session with a companies' technical support in trying to get a new phone system set up.

Yesterday, I had another of my many migraines. Any change in weather causes me to have one for the past couple of years. Preventive medication only partially works and medication that I have been prescribed to take for the migraine often doesn't work as well as it should and has to be taken a second time. So, I decided to test the benefit of music on a migraine. Ordinarily sound, light and movement increases the pain for me.

There are many articles dealing with studies that show that music is beneficial for relieving pain following surgery, or has other medical benefits. I can now attest to the fact that music2work2 music does have a beneficial effect on my migraines. The music playing softly helped me relax; I only had to take the medication one time to get relief from the pain; and the time waiting for the medication to take effect was more pleasant.

I will definitely try this again with my next migraine, but I do feel that music2work2 sessions playing softly in the background made a difference in this one.

IPods and hearing loss

A study by several leading hearing experts offers guidelines to safe listening of IPods. They reported, according to Digital Music News, that the average person could listen to the IPod for 4.6 hours a day at 70 percent of its maximum volume without increasing the risk of hearing loss. A separate study took into account types of earphones used and the environment in which the subjects listen to music. In a noisy environment, 80% of students listened to music at risky levels, compared to only 6% who turned the volume to levels increasing the risk of hearing loss in quiet surroundings.

I'm sure it is an indication of my age, but I have thought for quite a while now that we are likely to one day have a whole generation of hearing impaired individuals. I wasn't basing this on the levels at which individuals listen to IPods but rather the volume at which music is played in some teenagers cars. I wonder if a study has been done about that?