Music, Media, Message, Morality, and the Mind
Last Updated December 29, 2011... emotions ... are produced by melody and rhythm; therefore by music a man becomes accustomed to feeling the right emotions; music has thus the power to form character, and various kinds of music ... may be distinguished by their effects on character -- one, for example, working in the direction of melancholy, another of effeminacy, one encouraging abandonment, another self-control, another enthusiasm, and so on.... - Aristotle, from his Poetics
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| Copland |
A melody that remains static (on the same pitch) can through repetition produce a hypnotic effect.-- Aaron Copland, famous influential music composer
"Music is the most powerful sound there is." - Julian Treasure, author of "Sound Business" at amazon.com and blogger
'The ways of poetry and music are not changed anywhere without change in the most important laws of the city.' So wrote Plato in the Republic (4.424c). Music, for Plato, was not a neutral amusement. It could express and encourage virtue -- nobility, dignity, temperance, chastity. But it could also express and encourage vice -- sensuality, belligerence, indiscipline. -- Dr. Roger Scruton, research professor at the Institute for Psychological Sciences and member of the advisory board of the Catholic Education Resource Center
There is growing, within pop, another kind of practice altogether, one in which the movement is no longer contained in the musical line but exported to a place outside it, to a center of pulsation that demands not that you listen but that you submit. If you do submit, the moral qualities of the music vanish behind the excitement; if you listen, however, and listen critically as I have been suggesting, you will discern those moral qualities. -- Dr. Roger Scruton, Writer, philosopher, and scholar
Music can play a positive role in moral development by creating sensual attractions to goodness, or it can play a destructive role by setting children on a temperamental path that leads away from virtue. -- Dr. William Kilpatrick, from Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong
Would anyone assert that '(You Ain't Nothin' but a) Hound Dog' has the same 'soul' as Gregorian chant? The one inspires to prayer and contemplation, the other to shouting and stamping. Not that there’s anything wrong with shouting and stamping once in a while, but children these days tend to be raised almost exclusively on that sort of music. Besides, they don't need much incentive to shout, stamp, whine, and demand. They do these things naturally. Why should we want music that validates and confirms such juvenile states? -- Dr. William Kilpatrick, from Why Johnny Can't Tell Right From Wrong
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| Dame Gillian Weir |
People simply turn on the nearest radio station [for] some form of rock because now a rock beat is fitted to almost everything automatically... -- Dame Gillian Weir, world-renowned organist; GillianWeir.com
Take it from a brain guy. In 20 years of research, I still cannot affect a person's state of mind the way that one single song can. -- Dr. Richard Pellegrino, Arkansas Neurologist
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| Dr. Pellegrino |
The wrong kind of plant -- marijuana -- destroys brain cells when smoked. The wrong kind of music can disrupt brain waves. Listening to the wrong kind of music over an extended period of time can ultimately corrupt the human mind. - The Daily Decibel
I don't listen to a lot of 'Rap'. One reason is: it isn't terribly relaxing, rumor has it. - Longtime Southern California radio broadcast professional -- and music expert -- Mr. Jim Schweda of Classical KUSC Radio
[Classical music] is the only [type of music] I listen to. -- Eddie Van Halen, interview with LIFE Magazine, 1985
If media images don't impact real world behavior, then YOU, Mr. ABC, should start refunding several billion dollars in advertising money that You've charged over the years for people to sell everything from canned goods to candidates!
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| Michael Medved |
Music is arguably the quickest, most immediate mass-cultural auger [drilling tool] into the brain. Sound streams through the ears to the auditory cortex, which links directly to the limbic system, the emotional clearinghouse. In a fraction of a second, your hearing's job is already accomplished.
- Linton Weeks, "We're tuning in to tune out as music shapes our moods", The Washington Post, 2005
... Identification with rock music... functions to separate adolescents from adult society. Some forms of rock music extend well beyond respectability in fulfilling this definitional role. Total immersion into a rock subculture, such as heavy metal, may be both a portrait of adolescent alienation and an unflattering reflection of an adolescent's perception of the moral and ethical duplicity of adult society. Physicians should be aware of the role of music in the lives of adolescents and use music preferences as clues to the emotional and mental health of adolescents.
-- Adolescents and Their Music: Insights Into the Health of Adolescents; Elizabeth F. Brown, M.D.; William R. Hendee, Ph.D.
-- (The Journal Of The American Medical Association, Abstract; 1989;262:1659-1663)
"Music is essentially the manipulation of sound. It has the power to arouse, it has the power to frighten [and has] the power to make people profane. You know, all those things they were saying about rock n' roll in the early days -- 'ohh, it's gonna subvert our youth, it's gonna make 'em all wanna have s-x, it's gonna make 'em all go crazy' -- they were right!!"
- Billy Joel, from an interview - Excerpt from the above Billy Joel statement is found in Music of the Soul: Composing Life Out of Loss (2006), written by Joy S. Berger and published by the Taylor And Francis Group.
(yes, that Billy Joel)
The truth is, that all music can be hypnotic. The moment you let the music take you away, you're already hypnotized. --from www.subliminal-hypnosis.org/hypnosis-music, Cache date 12/02/2010
'[Baby, Baby] Where Did Our Love Go' established a sound and a group in one giant step, with Diana Ross's bright, insinuating lead, and hypnotic repeating counterpoint from Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard.
-- Supremes, Classic Motown
Motown is also very inspired by Rhythm and blues as it is much rehearsed and creates a hypnotic texture which does not make any instrument stand out as a solo instrument.
-- Pop Music in Practice by Matthew Gleason
['I Heard It Through The Grapevine'] retains a hypnotic power unmatched by any of [Motown's] other classics. . .
Review of 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine by AllMusic dot com
Where Did Our Love Go is a song with a thumping beat and a hypnotic baby, baby in the background.
-- Diana Ross And The Supremes, by Afgen
When Wilson Pickett sings, "In The Midnight Hour", what do you think he's gonna do in the midnight hour? Twirl his thumbs? Comb his hair? Walk the dog? Play a game of chess? Um, here's a thought: NO. He sings of something Rated 'R' or very possibly Rated 'X'. And the 'X' doesn't stand for 'Xylophone' either.
- The Daily Decibel
Changes in emotional state, particularly mood fluctuations or anxiety can increase overall arousal and make us more able to detect potential threats in our environment. This is a normal protective mechanism. These emotional changes can also increase the apparent loudness and irritation of sounds to which we are already hypersensitive. In some people this results in a "global" hypersensitivity where all stimuli, be it vision, touch, heat, smell, taste or pain are increased greatly in their perceived intensity. - - Jonathan Hazell FRCS, Director, Tinnitus and Hyperacusis Centre, London UK (website)
Even ear-safe sound levels can cause nonauditory health effects if they chronically interfere with recreational activities such as sleep and relaxation, if they disturb communication and speech intelligibility, or if they interfere with mental tasks that require a high degree of attention and concentration (Evans and Lepore 1993). -- Dr. Wolfgang Babisch, German Federal Environmental Agency Senior Research Officer and Member of the International Commission on Biological Effects of Noise
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| Fitting plugs into the ears |
"Just One Word: Earplugs" : What you might hear in a modern-day version of the film "The Graduate"- The Daily Decibel
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