We all know that music makes us feel better!  It cheers us up, it calms us down, it brings back wonderful memories of love, childhood, holidays, vacations, and our whole lives.  The field of music therapy has provided lots of wonderful information on this and so much more.

The following list is from www.preludemusictherapy.com.  I highly recommend this site to you and encourage you to check out all of the resources it provides!

• Music captivates and maintains attention — it stimulates & utilizes many parts of the brain.
• Music is easily adapted to, and can be reflective of, a person’s abilities.
• Music structures time in a way that we can understand (“that’s the last verse – my exercise session is almost over!”).
• Music provides a meaningful, enjoyable context for repetition.
• Music provides a social context — it sets up a safe, structured setting for verbal and nonverbal communication.
• Music is an effective memory aid.
• Music supports and encourages movement.
• Music taps into memories and emotions.
• Music — and the silences within it — provide nonverbal, immediate feedback.
• Music is success-oriented — people of all ability levels can participate.

If you still have doubts about the power of music in the health and healing world, I urge you to start at the beginning of this blog and read all the way through.  Music is powerful medicine!

Nora the cat pawing out a little music.

After some research, I found Rusty. At our first music therapysession, Rusty came to my father’s bedroom, tuned his guitar, and began to sing. I sang along. My father laid on his back on his bed, unmoving. The only time he opened his eyes was to say good-bye at the end of the music session.
“Don’t worry,” Rusty said to me when he saw my sad face, “It can take some time for people to warm up to me.” But I felt hopeless.
A breakthrough came, however, during the second music therapy session. We began with folk songs, but they had no effect on my dad. Since his real love is chamber music, I started to hum the melody to Schubert’s Trout Quintet while Rusty improvised on his guitar. My father opened his eyes. Then Rusty moved into a syncopated version of “Ode to Joy.” My dad applauded.
With each subsequent music therapy session, my father grew more engaged. During the sixth session, several other residents peeked into my dad’s room. “Come in! Come in!” Rusty and I shouted, and the staff rushed to get additional chairs. Soon there were six other elderly residents in the room, singing and clapping. We sang World War II era songs, and two women even got up and danced, holding on to each other (otherwise they would have both fallen over.)
Now, Rusty comes every Friday afternoon. We’ve moved the music therapy out of my father’s bedroom into a common area where we are joined by a dozen other residents. The music transforms them. One woman, for example, is usually so folded into herself that she reminds me of a flat tire. But, when Rusty strummed the tune to “Old Man River,” she straightened up, tilted her head back, and gave a performance as moving as any Paul Robeson could have done.

There are days when conversation is too hard for my father. But I know now what to do. We sing.  Even as a younger man, my father knew the lyrics to only one song, “Home on the Range.” So, we end our visits by singing “Home on the Range” together. There’s an irony in this. My father and I are New Englanders. We’ve never lived on the range or even seen a wild antelope. But, no matter. The song brings us comfort, and we are both at peace.

A study from Cornell in 2005 provides some fascinating insight into the musical and rhythmic talents of infants. Please send me your comments and questions regarding this article or anything about babies and music.

Baby has the beat but quickly loses the ability to detect alien rhythms, studies find

ITHACA, N.Y. — Babies have us beat when it comes to picking up languages and distinguishing faces from foreign cultures. But babies also have the beat: Researchers at Cornell University and the University of Toronto find that babies also can recognize unfamiliar musical rhythms far more readily than adults can.
According to two recent studies, six-month-old babies can detect subtle variations in the complex rhythm patterns of Balkan folkdance tunes as easily as can adult Bulgarian and Macedonian U.S. immigrants. But other Western adults find it exceedingly difficult, said Erin Hannon, who receives her Cornell Ph.D. this August before she heads to Harvard University as an assistant professor.

Loretta Falco, University of Toronto, Mississauga
Erin Hannon, right, asks a mother to wear headphones playing music so that she won’t influence her baby’s behavior. The baby watches a cartoon paired with music on two monitors (one not shown). Hannon measures how long the baby looks at the cartoon paired with each type of music.
“But by the time babies are 12 months old, they much more closely resemble adults who are more sensitive to rhythms in their own culture’s music than to rhythms in a foreign musical culture,” said Hannon.
Her studies on how infants learn foreign musical rhythms more readily than adults are co-authored with University of Toronto’s Sandra Trehub. Their first study, published in Psychological Science (Vol. 16:1, 2005), tested how well first- and second-generation Bulgarian and Macedonian immigrants as well as North American adults and 6-month-olds can perceive complex rhythmic patterns in Western and Balkan music. Their most recent study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Online Early Edition (Aug. 15-19), added 12-month-olds to the analysis.
Just as babies learn to tune in to the particular sounds that have meaning in their cultures, Hannon suspects that the developmental trajectory for learning musical rhythm is similar to that of language and speech.
Hannon and Trehub assessed infants’ ability to detect complex rhythms by monitoring how long the babies stared at a cartoon; the same cartoon was always paired with two different versions of a song — one version maintained the basic rhythm of the original song (which the babies heard previously), while the other disrupted it.
“If the infants showed greater interest in one of the two versions, it’s because they detected a difference between the two,” said Hannon, explaining that infant looking time has proven to be a reliable method to assess infant perception.
She said that infant brains are more flexible in processing different word sounds and speech patterns from a variety of speakers, and her research suggests that they also are more flexible than adults in categorizing different types of musical structures. “But it isn’t long before they settle on those that are most common and meaningful to their cultures,” she added. The state of the brain in adults, however, is much more stable, making it difficult for them to learn foreign languages, recognize faces from unfamiliar racial groups and also, the researchers find, to perceive rhythmic patterns in music foreign to their cultures.
“We actually shape and tune our perceptual processes in a manner that is specific to the music of our culture,” Hannon said. “We showed that young infants, who have much less experience listening to music, lack these perceptual biases and thus respond to rhythmic structures that are both familiar and foreign. Although we know that young infants perceive speech in a manner that is language-general, our findings are unique and important in suggesting that the same is true for perception of musical rhythms.”
Just as in the case of language, it is adaptive to learn about the structures in your own culture — it makes you a better and more efficient animal, Hannon said. “Adults become less sensitive to foreign rhythms because they become more efficient at processing familiar rhythmic structures of their own culture (Western) — this is natural and adaptive.” Aug. 15, 2005

When I was in high school, I was introduced to the Swingle Singers, singing their fabulous arrangements of Bach preludes and fugues, Scarlatti sonatas, and all kinds of wondrous musical confections.  Only in my later years have I even become familiar with the music of people like Jerome Kern and even then, only because I went to see the film “Mrs. Henderson Presents.”  This song was featured prominently in that film, though not in the arrangement by Ward Swingle.  I just discovered this on YouTube and wanted to share it with my readers.  It certainly cheered up what was becoming a very gloomy evening for me!  I think I’ll listen to it at least 4 or 5 more times this evening to remind myself that music can cure even the gloomiest situation.  Hope you enjoy it too!

Can music actually create love and passion in your relationship? I certainly think so! Almost everyone remembers certain love songs that remind them of the one they love or loved. Music has a powerful effect on the mind-body connection and when things are NOT going well in your relationship, sometime listening to the songs that brought you together and talking about the memories related to those songs can actually begin to soften the hard edges and re-create some of those vibes!
Are you surprises? I have created an ebook for your with specific step-by-step exercises you can do with your spouse or partner. Click here to get an immediate download of Creating Love and Passion with Music. I think you’ll like it!

I’m always taken aback when someone says to me that they “hate” rap music, or that it’s nothing but noise and hateful, dangerous messages.   It’s what I call “contempt prior to investigation.”  In my experience, there is no class, category or genre of music that is totally without merit…including rap. 

I don’t remember when I first heard this song, but it was probably around 2003?  I was driving to Hilton Head Island for a wonderful vacation and the radio stations were limited, so I was just listening to whatever the strongest signal was and trying to learn a little about other kinds of music that my preferred kind.  Suddenly this song came on and the words just blew me away.  I loved it!!  I did my best to find out who the artist was and what the name of it was.

I was playing it for a colleague the other day who pointed out to me that underlying the whole song is a motive from Beethoven’s “Fur Elise!”  I couldn’t believe that that had not risen to my consciousness but there it was.  I hope you’ll enjoy this,  listen to it many times and share it with friends.