If you look on the Internet or go into your nearby audio store you’re likely to find music labeled “Healing Music.” The section may include music for relaxation, meditation, stress reduction, pain relief or tapping into one’s soul. There may be a variety of instruments or sounds from a forest or the ocean.
So what makes this music “healing music?”
Music has a way of stirring our innermost feelings and all of our senses, of tapping into parts of ourselves unlike anything else. Music is a universal language that has the ability to speak to us deeply and uniquely.
If you’ve paid much attention to how you respond to a variety of music, you may have noticed that some music seems to energize you, some music can move you to tears or spark a special memory of a time, place, food, or perhaps a certain person. Some music seems to make you relax, feel less stressed, and feel happier. And some music fills us with deep spiritual attunement.
The following are some examples of what I mean.
- Tapping into our innermost feelings:
Think about some of the movies you’ve seen. “Jaws” wouldn’t be the same without its daunting, low, repetitive sounds that makes you sit on the edge of your seat waiting for the shark to attack from somewhere. Then there’s “Titanic” and its gorgeous love theme that permeates throughout the movie and throughout ourselves with its bitter sweetness, generating the beauty of love and the tragedy of the massive ship’s sinking and loss of so many lives.
One aspect of “healing” music is to stir our feelings, to help us deal with grief, sadness, anger or other feelings. By allowing ourselves to FEEL those feelings, the intensity will eventually lessen and even dissipate, resulting in being healing for us. When we avoid our feelings (consciously or subconsciously) they nonetheless tend to build up inside. They don’t just go away. Music can be a tool to help us deal with feelings within us, whether we’re aware of them or not. This is one of the wonderful ways music can be incredibly healing.
- Music for an energy boost:
I recall the late 1970′s when I did housework to the Doobie Brothers’ latest album, “Minute by Minute.” It would help keep me energized and cheerful while I did the laundry, dusted and straightened (not my favorite things in the world to do). Remembering that, I recently bought the CD and I find that it still works to energize me. Handel’s Messiah is also a very energizing piece, or the last movement to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, the famous Ode to Joy.
In The Mozart Effect, Don Campbell talks about using music in a variety of ways throughout the day, in the morning to help energize us, throughout the day to help us focus or concentrate better, music to help our intelligence, and in the evening to help us relax.
- Music for relaxation:
Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep, so I listen to relaxing music, which can be a tremendous help. Lately I’ve been listening to some wonderful Native American flute music by Scott Cunningham to help me go to sleep as well as recently during some very busy days to help me not feel so stressed out. I’ve also drifted off to sleep listening to a guided meditation by Ron Mann, Ph.D., Sleep.
What exactly is “relaxing” music? Whether we are aware of it or not, music that’s relaxing tends to slow down our heart rates to about one beat per second. If we’re feeling stressful, angry, anxious, or irritable, our heart rates tend to increase. Music can actually help our heart rates slow down to a more relaxing pace, changing our physiology. This phenomenon is what can help me fall asleep more easily. It’s what is found with many meditation tapes or other music specifically designed for stress reduction or relaxation.
- Music for spiritual attunement:
Chanting has existed for centuries. For example, there are wonderful recordings of Gregorian chants, chants from India, chants sung by Catholic or Buddhist monks and other religious or secular groups. They tend to be repetitive with the goal of deepening our spiritual lives, whatever they may be, or at the very least, to help bring peaceful feelings into our beings.
There is a large variety of music that taps into our souls. For example, I am almost finished recording music that I’ve written for a new CD (or audio tape), Journey Within. It has been a truly inspirational journey, one that has been incredibly healing. It was all written from my soul, and those qualities are heard throughout every piece.
- Choosing Music
How do we know what music to choose to be healing for us? What about the variety of musical tastes that we each have? I have some suggestions on my Bibliography page to help get you started. There are also several books listed there, such as Hal Lingerman’s, The Healing Energies of Music, which lists music categorically, a tremendously helpful resource.
If you don’t already, I encourage you to pay attention to your responses to a variety of music – physically, mentally, spiritually. To refer to when you need it, jot down the music that helps you in different ways, such as some of the examples I’ve mentioned above. That can be a valuable tool to use when you need it.
Music for Little Mozarts is a program designed to help your little ones develop a love of music. Learning music at an early age helps develop little minds and expands their cognitive ability. While listing to music can certainly help your youngster pick up songs, actually learning to play the piano can expand areas of the mind that are responsible for fueling later leaps in the childes education development.
This program was developed for the little ones attention spans in mind. It focuses on little creatures that both entertain and teach. By grasping the attention of a young child’s mind and engaging them with stories along with hands on experience, you can provide them with a positive experience that just may fuel a little Mozart in later years.
What Does This Program Offer?
Within this multi-book and multi-year lesson plan there are ten little characters that help draw the child into the lesson plan. These little creatures actually can be used to help the child grasp basic concepts n music. The series starts out in the preschool years and provides day by day lessons that can aid the child or a classroom of children right through early adolescence.
The series is a designed for both classroom and preschool use and for those at home with homeschoolers. It contains a series of books along with audio CD’s, flash cards, and other visual aids that can help very young children develop an ear and an eye for music.
Developing a Love of Music Quickly
It can be hard to hold the attention spans of children for very long. However, with the right creativity and the proper attention along with simple, easy to master daily lessons, most children will not only grasp music rather quickly, they will also develop a love of real music, not just banging on a piano keyboard and making sounds.
The short, daily lessons are planned out so that children learn to play music by ear. They focus on short, easy to master songs or song parts and gradually add more song elements in a quick progression. Children find that they learn to play real songs and master real passages quickly and easily. This element keeps them involved. They also master playing by ear and then later by reading rather quickly.
We all know how in wonder children’s minds are, and we know that if they feel they have accomplished something then they quickly learn to love performing that task again and again. This sense of accomplishment with easy to learn lessons helps children to develop a love and desire to play music. Music for Little Mozarts is designed to engage the child through the use of play and quick accomplishments while repetition and small victories over time help the child maintain the interest.
Adapting the Program for Home or Preschool
• If you are home schooling your youngsters or have preschool age children whom are not attending preschool you can still use the lesson plans. The books are designed for home or classroom use. You may find that your children at home can easily handle a few minutes every morning while their minds are still fresh, to learn music.
• If you own a preschool or day care you may find that adding a few minutes into your daily routine to stop and go over the lessons with your charges will prove very rewarding. You can easily fit in these short and fund lesson plans right into your daily activities.
Music for Little Mozarts was developed and designed by a team of expert pianist who have experience teaching young children and classrooms of students. It is designed for children ages 4 to 6 years old. The books not only teach piano, but also singing and a general love of music. They help develop listing skills and impart an appreciation for many different musical styles. If you decide to use the system in a preschool, day care, or at home you will be delighted to find how much fun your children find in playing music.
Whether you admit it or not, music imbeds our daily life, weaving its beauty and emotion through our thoughts, activities and memories. So if you’re interested in music theory, music appreciation, Beethoven, Mozart, or other composers, artists and performers, we hope you’ll spend some time with here and learn from these music articles of note for all ages and tastes.
When I first started studying the history of music, I did not realize what I was getting into. I had thought that music history was somewhat of a trivial pursuit. In fact, I only took my history of classical music class because I needed the credits. I did not realize how completely fascinating music history is. You see, in our culture many of us do not really learn to understand music. For much of the world, music is a language, but for us it is something that we consumed passively. When I began to learn about the history of Western music, however, it changed all that for me. I have had some experience playing musical instruments, but I have never mastered one enough to really understand what music is all about. This class showed me.
When most of us think about the history of music, we think of the history of rock music. We assume that the history is simple because the music is simple. In fact, neither is the case. The history of music, whether you’re talking about classical music, rock music, jazz music, or any other kind, is always complicated. New chord structures are introduced bringing with them new ways of understanding the world. New rhythmic patterns are introduced, bringing with them new ways of understanding time. And music reflects all of it.
Even when the class was over, I could not stop learning about the history of music. It had whetted my appetite, and I wanted more. I got all the music history books that I could find. I even began to research forms of music that had not interested me before in the hopes of enhancing my musical knowledge further. Although I was in school studying toward something very different – a degree in engineering – I had thought about giving it up and going back to get a degree in musicology. That is how much I am fascinated by the subject.
If you have never taken a course in the history of music, you don’t know what you are missing out on. The radio will never sound the same to you again. Everything will seem much more rich, much more luminous, and much more important. A new song can reflect a new way of being, and a new way of imagining life in the world. This is what learning about the history of music means to many of us.