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A life in balance is a wonderful thing - that moment when the needle is slap bang in the middle and all is right with the world is certainly what I strive for and yet, in a dynamic world, we’re always moving from one side to the other – seeking that which will bring us back into harmony.
As new information comes along we examine it, learn from it and try to get the most out of it, often adopting the “More” construct; if 1 is good then 2 is better – and how about 3? Initially, this approach works really well: beer, chocolate, sex all leave you wanting more and there’s no denying that after 3 beers you’re feeling more energetic and ready for anything (maybe not so much with the other two!) However – take things a little too far and it all goes to shit – too many beers and you’re Mel Gibson, too much chocolate and you’re Mrs. Obama’s pet project, too much sex – Hello Tiger!
The point of this rather long introduction was to introduce you to the prenatal music market. Hat tip to Digital Music News for putting this on my radar this morning but if you have a moment go check out: http://lullabelly.com, http://www.bellybuds.com, http://www.bellysonic.com.
Bottom line – I think this is marvelous and is in line with pretty much everything I personally know and believe about the power of sound. I dig how Lullabelly present their information and make their argument as well as bellybuds’ straightforward approach. Not having a large extended belly (lost 20 lbs since Christmas!) I can’t write about the comfort factor but the pregnant models certainly look happy enough.
But here comes the caveat and the reason for the long introduction - there are already dissenting views from Pediatricians as they raise concerns over too much prenatal stimulus, and you really don't want to get this wrong. I'm guessing that a little bit of music, every now and then is great - lullabelly reckon no more than one hour at a time, two to three times a day - but please don't go overboard, remember - everything in moderation.
Of course it would now make sense for me to pitch music2work2 for your prenatal grooving – and although it is actually perfect music for this (calming, soothing, not repetitive or too percussive) I’m not sure if we really want to put our babies to work just yet!
Have you ever had that experience where you decide you’re going to do something and then you suddenly start seeing this thing everywhere in your life? I had decided to increase the number of posts on the blog about how music can affect you and I have a load of studies lined up to talk about – but before we get into any of them – check out this video from TED:
The speaker, Julian Treasure has a blog based around his book: The Sound Business – and I just subscribed to his RSS feed – I’m looking forward to hearing what he has to say.
I’ve been meaning to share how I developed the concept of music2work2 (the final year dissertation for my psychology degree looked at how people reacted to sound, more on that in another post) but I’ve always known that sound had a huge role to play in how effective we are as human beings. This is a topic that I am going to continue to explore and incorporate into the music that is developed for music2work2.
Finally – a hat tip to Jason Kadlec – another musician masquerading as a University Professor, who referred me to this video just as I was sitting down to write about something else. Jason’s music makes for pretty good music2work2 and you can hear it over at Dreamtempo