1) Music engages several parts of the brain and can elicit emotional responses, helping to relieve stress and shift one's mood. 2) Listening to instrumental music can provide a sense of calm and mental clarity, even if the specific songs are not consciously processed. 3) Music therapy has been shown to help with conditions like depression, stress, autism, and more, by improving social engagement, cognitive skills, and reducing anxiety. It allows people to better understand and process their emotions.

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BEAUTYPSYCHE
The sound of music doesn’t just help problems like Maria —
it can also help you deal with everyday stressors. Samantha
Joseph discovers the benefits to finding your own beat
GETTING IN TUNE
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music that transports us to a specific place. Why do we have
this deep, unasked-for emotional connection with music? Poet
William Congreve’s oft misquoted “music has charms to soothe
a savage breast” rings true in this case, if one replaced ‘savage’
with a host of other mildly negative emotions.
The effects of music on us humans have a long list of studies
behind it. Just the act of listening to music engages several parts
of your brain, including the cerebellum or ‘reptile brain’, a nod to
the role music plays in our primal desires, as well as the frontal
lobes and the mesolimbic system, both associated with the
production and distribution of dopamine, the pleasure chemical.
“Research has shown that music will elicit responses from
different parts of the brain, from both right and left sides. This is
the same for the association zones in our brain. They are widely
distributed across different regions,” says Lim Kar Gee, a music
therapist with the Enrich Counselling and Therapy Centre.
T
he first thing I do when I get into the office is slip on
my headphones and play instrumental music. Whether
it’s a three-hour compilation of Vivaldi’s classical
compositions or one of those questionable music-to-
calm-your-soul playlists, it is the soundtrack that helps
me believe that I can handle my job — I’m not really
listening to the music, though.
If you asked me to name any of the tracks on my playlist,
I wouldn’t be able to tell you, even if I’ve listened to the same
set of scraping violins for two months straight (speaking from
experience here). Just the knowledge that the music is there,
like some sort of harmonious parachute for my hamster-like
emotional flailing, is good enough. Instrumental music became,
for me, associated with moments of calm and mental clarity.
Most of us have background music in our day-to-day lives.
Whether it’s at work, in the car or on the train, we’ve chosen
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“We have [a] strong emotional reaction to music because we
associate a musical piece with a person, incident or memory.”
According to neuroscientist Daniel J Levitin in his book This
is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, we tend
to decide what music will be closest to our heart during the
formative years of our adolescence. “We tend to remember things
that have an emotional component,” says Levitin, “because
our amygdala and neurotransmitters act in concert to ‘tag’ the
memories as something important.”
How and what music affects us isn’t set in stone. Although
our everyday preferences see little change from our teen years,
our moods direct what we like at a certain moment. That’s why
when a breakup occurs, our playlist is filled with the wails and
whingeing of the likes of Damien
Rice and Kelly Clarkson.
While listening to Mozart
isn’t likely to make you smarter
(that myth has been soundly
debunked), listening to music
can shift your emotional
mindset, alleviate anxiety and
change how you feel about the world around you. A 2011 study
funded by the University of Groningen in Netherlands found
that music could actually alter one’s perception of the world —
happy music led people to see happier faces and sad music led
them to see more sorrowful faces.
Music therapy is an extension of how we engage with music.
Grammy-nominated jazz singer Melody Gardot was hit by a car
at 19, leaving her with massive head and spinal injuries. Unable
to speak properly or move, she remained on a hospital bed for
a year. While there, a physician recommended that she turn to
music therapy to aid her speaking skills. She wrote songs and
played the guitar lying on her hospital bed. From there, Gardot
made progress from humming to performing on stage.
The use of music has also been shown to be an effective tool
for dealing with cognitive and behavioural issues. The American
Music Therapy Association has found that children with autism
react positively to the use of music in their sessions, leading to
better social engagement and a marked reduction in anxiety.
The treatment has garnered a wider following, so much so that
an episode of the new hip hop drama Empire had Andre, the heir
to Lucious Lyon’s titular recording company, seek out a music
therapist to help him better manage his bipolar disorder.
Music therapy has been proven to help neonatal infants
de-stress, as found in a 2006 study by the Department of
Neonatology at the Meir Medical Centre in Israel, and was
also found to improve quality of life in terminally ill paediatric
patients in a study conducted by the State University of New
York in 2005. But can it help someone whose biggest problem
is how to stop worrying? Probably. According to Lim, “Music
therapy is effective in helping clients with depression and stress
management. Music-assisted relaxation and breathing techniques
are extremely helpful in managing stress. For depression, music
can be used to cope with emotions.”
Before a session with a music therapist, a psychological
assessment is carried out and then goals for the treatment
are settled on. Treatment usually involves singing, playing
instruments, playing games that involve music or musical
instruments or just listening to music and then discussing the
lyrics. But it’s not all about listening to ambient sounds such as
the sound of waves crashing against the sands of a white beach.
Lim says therapy sessions can sometimes get quite intense.
“It’s not really about relaxation. It’s about personal growth,”
Lim explains. “People come in and they don’t know what they
want from the treatment. They think they’re stressed out about
something, but sometimes it’s just that some people don’t
understand themselves.”
She relates an instance where
one of her clients came in with
a complaint about the stress of his
workload. After a few sessions
of music therapy, however, the
patient realised that he simply
didn’t enjoy his job but was
unable to leave — at that point, the focus of the session shifted
from stress management to discovering what it was the patient
wanted to fulfil in life.
That said, you aren’t expected to come out of music therapy
as another Gardot, wielding a guitar like a sceptre of healing.
It’s about learning a little more about yourself and reaching
a place of calm — and sometimes the easiest way there is along
the notes of your favourite song. 
“Listening to music can shift
your emotional mindset, alleviate
anxiety and change how you feel
about the world around you.”
CHANGE YOUR TONE
GETTING CREATIVE: Ambient noise increases creativity.
Researchers at The University of Chicago Press found
that ambient café sounds help foster creativity the most.
Check out coffitivity.com for customised ambient sounds.
GYM RUN: Music helps you exercise longer. It
reroutes your brain’s attention away from signals of
fatigue and helps you be more efficient with your
movement, thanks to rhythm.
DIAL IT DOWN: Relaxing music can decrease your heart
rate and blood pressure. Dubbed the ‘most relaxing song
on earth’, Weightless by Marconi Union was released in
collaboration with the British Academy of Sound Therapy