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Research has shown that music has a profound effect on your body and psyche. In fact, there’s a growing field of health care known as Music Therapy, which uses music to heal. Those who practice music therapy are findinga benefit in using music to help cancer patients, children with ADD, and others, and even hospitals are beginning to use music and music therapy to help with pain management, to help ward off depression, to promote movement, to calm patients, to ease muscle tension, and for many other benefits that music and music therapy can bring. This is not surprising, as music affects the body and mind in many powerful ways. The following are some of effects of music, which help to explain the effectiveness of music therapy:

• Brain Waves: Research has shown that music with a strong beat can stimulate brainwaves to resonate in sync with the beat, with faster beats bringing sharper concentration and more alert thinking, and a slower tempo promoting a calm, meditative state. Also, research has found that the change in brainwave activity levels that music can bring can also enable the brain to shift speeds more easily on its own as needed, which means that music can bring lasting benefits to your state of mind, even after you’ve stopped listening.
• Breathing and Heart Rate: With alterations in brainwaves comes changes in other bodily functions. Those governed by the autonomic nervous system, such as breathing and heart rate can also be altered by the changes music can bring. This can mean slower breathing, slower heart rate, and an activation of the relaxation response, among other things. This is why music and music therapy can help counteract or prevent the damaging effects of chronic stress, greatly promoting not only relaxation, but health.
• State of Mind: Music can also be used to bring a more positive state of mind, helping to keep depression and anxiety at bay. This can help prevent the stress response from wreaking havoc on the body, and can help keep creativity and optimism levels higher, bringing many other benefits.
• Other Benefits: Music has also been found to bring many other benefits, such as lowering blood pressure (which can also reduce the risk of stroke and other health problems over time), boost immunity, ease muscle tension, and more. With so many benefits and such profound physical effects, it’s no surprise that so many are seeing music as an important tool to help the body in staying (or becoming) healthy.

The earliest easily available jazz recordings are from the 1920's and early 1930's. Trumpet player and vocalist Louis Armstrong ("Pops", "Satchmo") was by far the most important figure of this period. He played with groups called the Hot Five and the Hot Seven; any recordings you can find of these groups are recommended. The style of these groups, and many others of the period, is often referred to as New Orleans jazz or Dixieland. It is characterized by collective improvisation, in which all performers simultaneously play improvised melodic lines within the harmonic structure of the tune. Louis, as a singer, is credited with the invention of scat, in which the vocalist makes up nonsense syllables to sing improvised lines. Other notable performers of New Orleans or Dixieland jazz include clarinetist Johnny Dodds, soprano saxophone player Sidney Bechet, trumpeter King Oliver, and trombonist Kid Ory.

Other styles popular during this period were various forms of piano jazz, including ragtime, Harlem stride, and boogie-woogie. These styles are actually quite distinct, but all three are characterized by rhythmic, percussive left hand lines and fast, full right hand lines. Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton were early ragtime pioneers. Fats Waller, Willie "The Lion" Smith and James P. Johnson popularized the stride left hand pattern (bass note, chord, bass note, chord); Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis developed this into the faster moving left hand patterns of boogie-woogie. Earl "Fatha" Hines was a pianist who was especially known for his right hand, in which he did not often play full chords or arpeggios, playing instead "horn-like" melodic lines. This has become commonplace since then. Art Tatum is considered by many to be the greatest jazz pianist ever; he was certainly one of the most technically gifted, and his harmonic insights paved the way for many who came after him. He is sometimes considered a precursor of bebop.

Although the big bands are normally associated with a slightly later era, there were several large bands playing during the 1920's and early 1930's, including that of Fletcher Henderson. Bix Beiderbecke wasa cornet soloist who played with several bands and was considered a legend in his time.

The mid 1930's brought on the swing era and the emergence of the big bands as the popular music of the day. Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie led some of the more popular bands. There were also some important small group swing recordings during the 1930's and 1940's. These differed from earlier small groups in that these featured very little collective improvisation. This music emphasized the individual soloist. Goodman, Ellington, and Basie recorded often in these small group settings. Major saxophonists of the era include Johnny Hodges, Paul Gonsalves, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and Ben Webster. Trumpet players include Roy Eldridge, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Cootie Williams, and Charlie Shavers. Pianists include Ellington, Basie, Teddy Wilson, Erroll Garner, and Oscar Peterson; guitarists include Charlie Christian, Herb Ellis, Barney Kessell, and Django Reinhardt; vibraphonists include Lionel Hampton; bassists include Jimmy Blanton, Walter Page, and Slam Stewart; drummers include Jo Jones and Sam Woodyard. Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, and Ella Fitzgerald were important singers in this era. Most of these musicians recorded in small groups as well as with big bands. The styles of these musicians can best be summarized by saying they concentrated primarily on playing melodically, on the swing feel, and on the development of an individual sound. The blues was, as in many other styles, an important element of this music.

The birth of bebop in the 1940's is often considered to mark the beginning of modern jazz. This style grew directly out of the small swing groups, but placed a much higher emphasis on technique and on more complex harmonies rather than on singable melodies. Much of the theory to be discussed later stems directly from innovations in this style. Alto saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker was the father of this movement, and trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie ("Diz") was his primary accomplice. Dizzy also led a big band, and helped introduce Afro-Cuban music, including rhythms such as the mambo, to American audiences, through his work with Cuban percussionists. But it was the quintet and other small group recordings featuring Diz and Bird that formed the foundation of bebop and most modern jazz.

While, as with previous styles, much use was made of the blues and popular songs of the day, including songs by George Gershwin and Cole Porter, the original compositions of the bebop players began to diverge from popular music for the first time, and in particular, bebop was not intended to be dance music. The compositions usually featured fast tempos and difficult eighth note runs. Many of the bebop standards are based on the chord progressions of other popular songs, such as "I Got Rhythm", "Cherokee", or "How High The Moon". The improvisations were based on scales implied by those chords, and the scales used included alterations such as the flatted fifth.

The development of bebop led to new approaches to accompanying as well as soloing. Drummers began to rely less on the bass drum and more on the ride cymbal and hi-hat. Bass players became responsible for keeping the pulse by playing almost exclusively a walking bass line consisting mostly of quarter notes while outlining the chord progression. Pianists were able to use a lighter touch, and in particular their left hands were no longer forced to define the beat or to play roots of chords. In addition, the modern jazz standard form became universal. Performers would play the melody to a piece (the head), often in unison, then take turns playing solos based on the chord progression of the piece, and finally play the head again. The technique of trading fours, in which soloists exchange four bar phrases with each other or with the drummer, also became commonplace. The standard quartet and quintet formats (piano, bass, drums; saxophone and/or trumpet) used in bebop have changed very little since the 1940's.

Many of the players from the previous generation helped pave the way for bebop. These musicians included Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Charlie Christian, Jimmy Blanton, and Jo Jones. Young and Hawkins in particular are often considered two of the most important musicians in this effort. Other bebop notables include saxophonists Sonny Stitt and Lucky Thompson, trumpeters Fats Navarro, Kenny Dorham, and Miles Davis, pianists Bud Powell, Duke Jordan, Al Haig, and Thelonious Monk, vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassists Oscar Pettiford, Tommy Potter, and Charles Mingus, and drummers Max Roach, Kenny Clarke, and Roy Haynes. Miles, Monk, and Mingus went on to further advances in the post-bebop eras, and their music will be discussed later.

Although Miles Davis first appeared on bebop recordings of Charlie Parker, his first important session as a leader was called The Birth Of The Cool. An album containing all the recordings of this group is available. The cool jazz style has been described as a reaction against the fast tempos and the complex melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic ideas of bebop. These ideas were picked up by many west coast musicians, and this style is thus also called West Coast jazz. This music is generally more relaxed than bebop. Other musicians in the cool style include saxophonists Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan, and trumpet player Chet Baker. Stan Getz is also credited with the popularization of Brazilian styles such as the bossa nova and samba. These and a few other Latin American styles are sometimes collectively known as Latin jazz.

Many groups in the cool style do not use a piano, and instead rely on counterpoint and harmonization among the horns, usually saxophone and trumpet, to outline chord progressions. Pianist-led groups that developed from this school include those of Dave Brubeck (with Paul Desmond on saxophone), Lennie Tristano (with Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh on saxophones), and the Modern Jazz Quartet or MJQ (featuring John Lewis on piano and Milt Jackson on vibraphone), which also infuses elements of classical music. The incorporation of classical music into jazz is often called the third stream.

In what has been described as either an extension of bebop ora backlash against cool, a style of music known as hard bop developed in the 1950's. This style also downplayed the technically demanding melodies of bebop, but did so without compromising intensity. It did this by maintaining the rhythmic drive of bebop while including a healthier dose of the blues and gospel music. Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers were, for decades, the most well-known exponent of this style. Many musicians came up through the so-called "University Of Blakey". Blakey's early groups included pianist Horace Silver, trumpet player Clifford Brown, and saxophonist Lou Donaldson. Clifford Brown also co-led a group with Max Roach that is considered one of the great working quintets in history. Several albums from these groups are available today and all are recommended. Miles Davis also recorded several albums in this style during the early 1950's. There were also a number of groups led by or including organists that came from this school, with even more of a blues and gospel influence. Organist Jimmy Smith and tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine were popular players in this genre.

The period from the mid 1950's until the mid 1960's represents the heyday of mainstream modern jazz. Many of those now considered among the greatest of all time achieved their fame in this era.

Miles Davis had four important groups during this time. The first featured John Coltrane ("Trane") on tenor saxophone, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and "Philly" Joe Jones on drums. This group is sometimes considered the single greatest jazz group ever. Most of their albums are available today, including the series of Workin' ..., Steamin' ..., Relaxin' ..., and Cookin' with the Miles Davis Quintet. Miles perfected his muted ballad playing with this group, and the rhythm section was considered by many to be the hardest swinging in the business. The second important Davis group came with the addition of alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderly and the replacement of Garland with Bill Evans or Wynton Kelly and the replacement of Jones with Jimmy Cobb. The album Kind Of Blue from this group is high on most lists of favorite jazz albums. The primary style of this group is called modal, as it relies on songs written around simple scales or modes that often last for many measures each, as opposed to the quickly changing complex harmonies of bebop derived styles. The third Davis group of the era was actually the Gil Evans orchestra. Miles recorded several classic albums with Gil, including Sketches Of Spain. The fourth important Miles group of this period included Wayne Shorter on saxophone, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams on drums. The early recordings of this group, including Live At The Plugged Nickel, as well as the earlier My Funny Valentine, with George Coleman on saxophone instead of Wayne Shorter, mainly feature innovative versions of standards. Later recordings such as Miles Smiles and Nefertiti consist of originals, including many by Wayne Shorter, that largely transcend traditional harmonies. Herbie Hancock developeda new approach to harmonization that was based as much on sounds as on any conventional theoretical underpinning. John Coltrane is another giant of this period. In addition to his playing with Miles, he recorded the album Giant Steps under his own name, which showed him to be one of the most technically gifted and harmonically advanced players around. After leaving Miles, he formed a quartet with pianist McCoy Tyner, drummer Elvin Jones, and a variety of bass players, finally settling on Jimmy Garrison. Coltrane's playing with this group showed him to be one of the most intensely emotional players around. Tyner is also a major voice on his instrument, featuring a very percussive attack. Elvin Jones is a master of rhythmic intensity. This group evolved constantly, from the relatively traditional post bop of My Favorite Things to the high energy modal of A Love Supreme to the wailing avant garde of Meditations and Ascension.

Charles Mingus was another influential leader during this period. His small groups tended to be less structured than others, giving more freedom to the individual players, although Mingus also directed larger ensembles in which most of the parts were written out. Mingus' compositions for smaller groups were often only rough sketches, and performances were sometimes literally composed or arranged on the bandstand, with Mingus calling out directions to the musicians. Alto saxophonist, bass clarinetist, and flautist Eric Dolphy was a mainstay of Mingus' groups. His playing was often described angular, meaning that the interval in his lines were often large leaps, as opposed to scalar lines, consist mostly of steps. The album Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus featuring Dolphy is a classic.

Thelonious Monk is widely regarded as one of the most important composers in jazz, as well as being a highly original pianist. His playing is more sparse than most of his contemporaries. Some of his albums include Brilliant Corners and Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane. Pianist Bill Evans was known as one of the most sensitive ballad players, and his trio albums, particularly Waltz For Debby, with Scott LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums, are models of trio interplay. Wes Montgomery was one of the most influential of jazz guitarists. He often played in groups with an organist, and had a particularly soulful sound. He also popularized the technique of playing solos in octaves. His early albums include Full House. Later albums were more commercial and less well regarded. Tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins rivaled Coltrane in popularity and recorded many albums under his own name, including Saxophone Colossus and The Bridge, which also featured Jim Hall on guitar. Sonny also recorded with Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, and other giants.

Other noteworthy musicians of the era include saxophonists Jackie McLean, Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, and Charlie Rouse; trumpet players Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, Woody Shaw, and Booker Little; trombonists J. J. Johnson and Curtis Fuller; clarinetist Jimmy Guiffre, pianists Tommy Flanagan, Hank Jones, Bobby Timmons, Mal Waldron, Andrew Hill, Cedar Walton, Chick Corea, and Ahmad Jamal; organist Larry Young, guitarists Kenny Burrell and Joe Pass; guitarist and harmonica player Toots Thielemans; vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson; bassists Ray Brown, Percy Heath, Sam Jones, Buster Williams, Reggie Workman, Doug Watkins, and Red Mitchell; drummers Billy Higgins and Ben Riley; and vocalists Jon Hendricks, Eddie Jefferson, Sarah Vaughan, Betty Carter, Carmen McRae, Abbey Lincoln, and Shirley Horn. Big bands such as those of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton also thrived.

Miles Davis helped usher in the fusion of jazz and rock in the mid to late 1960's through albums such as Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson. His bands during this period featured Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and Joe Zawinul on electric piano, Ron Carter and Dave Holland on bass, John McLaughlin on guitar, and Tony Williams and Jack DeJohnette on drums. Tony Williams formed a rock oriented band called Lifetime with John McLaughlin, who also formed his own high energy group, the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Through the 1970's Miles continued to explore new directions in the use of electronics and the incorporation of funk and rock elements into his music, leading to albums such as Pangea and Agharta.

Other groups combined jazz and rock in a more popularly oriented manner, from the crossover Top 40 of Spyro Gyra and Chuck Mangione to the somewhat more esoteric guitarist Pat Metheny. Other popular fusion bands include Weather Report, featuring Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, and bass players Jaco Pastorius and Miroslav Vitous; Return To Forever, featuring Chick Corea and bassist Stanley Clarke; The Crusaders, featuring saxophonist Wilton Felder and keyboardist Joe Sample; the Yellowjackets, featuring keyboardist Russell Ferrante; and the Jeff Lorber Fusion, which originally featured Kenny G on saxophone. In recent years, several fusion bands have achieved much commercial success, including those of Pat Metheny and Kenny G.

While fusion seemed to dominate the jazz market in the 1970's and early 1980's, there were other developments as well. Some performers started borrowing from 20th century classical music as well as African and other forms of world music. These musicians include Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, saxophonists Anthony Braxton, David Murray, and Dewey Redman, clarinetist John Carter, pianists Carla Bley and Muhal Richard Abrams, the World Saxophone Quartet, featuring four saxophonists with no rhythm section, and the Art Ensemble Of Chicago, featuring trumpet player Lester Bowie and woodwind player Roscoe Mitchell. Their music tended to emphasize compositional elements more sophisticated than the head-solos-head form.

Some groups, such as Oregon, rejected the complexity and dissonance of modern jazz and played in a much simpler style, which has given rise to the current New Age music. On the other extreme are musicians like saxophonist John Zorn and guitarists Sonny Sharrock and Fred Frith, who engaged in a frenetic form of free improvisation sometimes called energy music. Somewhere in between was the long lived group formed by saxophonist George Adams, who was influenced by Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, and pianist Don Pullen, who was influenced by Cecil Taylor. This group drew heavily from blues music and well as the avant garde. Other important musicians during the 1970's and 1980's include pianists Abdullah Ibrahim, Paul Bley, Anthony Davis and Keith Jarrett.

Not all developments in jazz occur in the United States. Many European musicians extended some of the free jazz ideas of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, and further dispensed with traditional forms. Others turned toward a more introspective music. Some of the more successful of the European improvisers include saxophonists Evan Parker, John Tchicai, John Surman, and Jan Garbarek, trumpet players Kenny Wheeler and Ian Carr, pianist John Taylor, guitarists Derek Bailey and Allan Holdsworth, bassist Eberhard Weber, drummer John Stevens, and arrangers Mike Westbrook, Franz Koglman, and Willem Breuker.

One of the big trends of today is a return to the bebop and post bop roots of modern jazz. This movement is often referred to as neoclassicism. Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and his brother, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, have achieved much popular success playing music that is based on styles of the 1950's and 1960's. The best of this group of young musicians, including the Marsalises and their rhythm sections of Kenny Kirkland or Marcus Roberts on piano, Bob Hurst on bass, and Jeff "Tain" Watts on drums, manage to extend the art through new approaches to melodicism, harmony, rhythm, and form, rather than just recreate the music of past masters.

An exciting development since the mid 1980's has been a collective of musicians that refers to its music as M-Base. There seems to be some disagreement, even among its members, as to what this means exactly, but the music is characterized by angular melodic lines played over complex funky beats with unusual rhythmic twists. This movement is led by saxophonists Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, and Gary Thomas, trumpet player Graham Haynes, trombonist Robin Eubanks, bass player Anthony Cox, and drummer Marvin "Smitty" Smith.

Many other musicians are making strong music in the modern tradition. Among musicians already mentioned, there are Ornette Coleman, David Murray, Joe Henderson, Dewey Redman, Cecil Taylor, Charlie Haden, Dave Holland, Tony Williams, and Jack DeJohnette. Others include saxophonists Phil Woods, Frank Morgan, Bobby Watson, Tim Berne, John Zorn, Chico Freeman, Courtney Pine, Michael Brecker, Joe Lovano, Bob Berg, and Jerry Bergonzi; clarinetists Don Byron and Eddie Daniels; trumpet players Tom Harrell, Marcus Belgrave, and Arturo Sanduval; trombonists Steve Turre and Ray Anderson; pianists Geri Allen, Mulgrew Miller, Kenny Barron, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Eduard Simon, Renee Rosnes, and Marilyn Crispell; guitarists John Scofield, Bill Frisell, and Kevin Eubanks; vibraphonist Gary Burton; bassists Niels-Henning Oersted Pedersen and Lonnie Plaxico; and vocalists Bobby McFerrin and Cassandra Wilson. This is by no means a complete list, and you are encouraged to listen to as many musicians as possible to increase your awareness and appreciation for different styles.

Recent scientific research suggests that music can influence a persons relaxation, and have a positive impact on a persons heart rhythms. A study that was published in “Heart”, a British Medical Journal publication investigated the effects of a variety of musical genres ranging from techno and reggae to classical.

Tempo and the human body

It was found that music with a faster tempo can cause:

• Increased breathing rate

• Increased heart rate

• Increased blood pressure

When the music with a fast tempo was paused, the following effects were noticed, with some falling below the beginning rate:

• Slower breathing rate

• Slower heart rate

• Lower blood pressure

Slower music seemed to have an opposite effect to the fast music with a significant fall in heart rate. Reggae caused the largest decline in the heart rate.

It seems that the style of music does not have as much of an effect on the human body as the tempo and pace of the music does.

Music Therapy

Even before science research verified that music can be used to influence the human body, it has been used as a form of therapy. Music therapy is a healthcare profession that uses the effects of music to improve the social, cognitive, emotional and physical aspects of a person. There are many claims made that it can :

• Promote wellness

• Manage stress

• Alleviate pain

• Express feelings

• Enhance memory

• Improve communication

• Promote physical rehabilitation.

Does music affect the heart rate?

So does music affect the heart rate? Yes. The music tempo effects our heart rate and music has many positive effects on the human body.

When you decide to learn to play guitar, choosing the right guitar is a very important choice you have to make. There are quite a few different types of guitars out there, and they all have distinct sounds to them. If you just choose any guitar you can find when you learn to play guitar, you may get discouraged when it doesn’t sound like you expected it to sound. The types of music that you want to play will decide what kind of guitar that you should pick. That poses a problem, because when you first learn to play guitar, you rarely know what type of music that you will be playing or even if you’re going to be playing it long enough to make it worth your investment. Luckily guitars are not that expensive compared to other instruments.

The different types of guitars are acoustic, electric, classical, flamenco, semi-acoustic, 12-string, and bass guitar. Even though there are a few different types of guitars, there are two main types which are acoustic guitars and electric guitars. It seems to be the consensus that when you first learn to play guitar, you should start with an acoustic guitar. You can play them pretty much any place and they are much cheaper than electric guitars. If you buy an acoustic guitar, don’t buy a cheaply made one. It won’t be fun to play and it won’t sound very good, which means you probably won’t play it and it’ll end up in your garage somewhere.

You don’t have to pay a whole lot of money either. You can get a quality cheap “no-name” guitar for under a couple hundred dollars. You shouldn’t buy a guitar because of the name brand. You have to make sure the quality of wood is good. Most guitar players will tell you to stay away from plywood. Make sure it feels good and that it is well-made. You should also play it or let someone else play it before you buy it to make sure it sounds good.

If you choose to get an electric guitar, you will also need to buy an amplifier and effects, which could get very expensive. If you want to play the harder and louder music like rock and roll and you have some extra money on your hands, than go for it. When you first learn to play guitar, the extra noise that the electric guitar brings could annoy you in the beginning.

So when choosing you guitar, keep in mind the type for music that you will be playing. If you don’t know yet or if money is tight, you should invest in a quality acoustic guitar. Remember, not to choose a cheaply made guitar or you’ll probably give up sooner or later because it won’t feel or sound good to you. Make good decisions now and you’ll be a successful guitar player in no time at all.

Listening to Mozart won't raise a child's IQ, but music classes could help her or him to understand directions and diagrams. For enhancing a student's ability to speak, read, and write, drama is a better choice. Beyond that, the arts don't offer much boost to academic achievement in math or other non-arts courses.

That's the conclusion of the largest, most comprehensive study ever conducted on the effects of arts on education. Researchers at Harvard's Graduate School of Education analyzed 188 studies, conducted over 50 years.

"Arts advocates need to stop making sweeping claims about the arts as a magic pill for turning students around academically," says Lois Hetland, project manager of the study. "Arts teachers should not be held responsible for better test scores in math or history."

Budget problems around the nation are causing schools to question the value of spending money on arts education, and the Harvard study results seem to justify cutting back. But Hetland and her colleagues insist that is the wrong way to read their conclusions.

"Arts should be justified in terms of their intrinsic merit; they offera way of thinking unavailable in other subjects," she says. "Arts have always been a fundamentally important part of culture. An education without them is an impoverished education leading to an impoverished society."

Take music, for example. "Every human has musical intelligence," Hetland notes. "It's the responsibility of schools to develop that along with other types of intelligence."

Mozart effect is mixed

The study found "absolutely no evidence" that playing Mozart or any other music for unborn babies, infants, or toddlers ups their IQ. Hetland calls that idea "totally bogus. It's motivated not by education but by a desire to sell CDs. I feel sorry for parents who are duped by the hype."

The idea of Mozart as an easy path to greater intelligence arose in 1993 when researchers at the University of Wisconsin linked listening to 10 minutes of a Mozart sonata to an eight- to 10-point rise in IQ test scores. But the subjects were 36 college students, and they were tested on paper folding not IQ. Students who listened to the great Austrian composer did better on a test that required them to visualize changes in shape produced by cutting and folding pieces of paper.

"Such results are difficult to quantify," Hetland comments. "To make them more understandable, the researchers compared the size of the effect to an eight- to 10-point rise in IQ."

The relative advantage lasted only 15 minutes, and other researchers cannot always reproduce the Wisconsin effect. Last year, Christopher Chabris, a psychologist at the Harvard Medical School, analyzed 16 studies of the Mozart effect and found no real change in comparative improvement. However, that hasn't stopped several states from giving classical music CDs to all new mothers, or the music industry from profiting from the idea.

Hetland has changed the tune of the controversy by concluding that the effect does exist. She found that learning music in school, as opposed to listening to it in the womb or in diapers, can produce an effect on spatial reasoning. That's the type of thinking that improves students' ability to manipulate objects in their minds, understand graphs and maps, and find their way in a new school or city.

What's more, learning to read musical notation produces a stronger effect, no matter what style of music the student plays.

The finding doesn't translate into a recommendation that all students should take piano or violin lessons in school, and learn to read music to do better in other classes. Spatial skills can be taught more directly using blocks, paper, and other objects.

"Strong spatial skills could give students an advantage in subjects like geography or math, depending on how these subjects are taught," notes Ellen Winner, a psychologist at Boston College who worked on the Harvard study. "Sadly, however, many schools offer few chances to apply spatial abilities."

The big mystery is why music affects spatial thinking at all. Gottfried Schlaug, a neurologist at the Harvard Medical School, discovered that musicians with perfect pitch have an area on the left side of their brains that is larger than usual. The area, known as the planum temporale, specializes in processing music.

"Areas of the brain dealing with spatial orientation and music may stimulate each other through brain-cell connections, or both areas may be used together while making music," Hetland speculates.

Even so, the Harvard researchers don't recommend changing school curricula to take advantage of any benefit that comes from the connection. "It's dangerous to justify arts education by secondary non-arts effects," Hetland believes. "More research needs to be done on how the brain could provide such cross-stimulation and how long any effect lasts."

Acting out pays off

A better case can be made for using drama to help students with reading, writing, and speech. Based on 80 studies, Winner, Hetland and their colleagues report a strong link between acting out classroom texts and increased understanding of stories, improved language development, and better reading achievement.

"Drama not only helped children's verbal skills with respect to the texts enacted, it also helped when verbal skills were applied to new non-enacted materials," Winner notes. "Such an effect has great value for education because verbal skills are highly prized. Adding drama techniques cost little in terms of effort or expense, and a high proportion of students are influenced by such curricular changes."

The research on dramatization effects was done by Ann Podlozny, who earned her master's degree from the Graduate School of Education and has gone on to work in the movie industry. The whole arts-effects study was funded by the Bauman Family Foundation and conducted by Project Zero, a Harvard research group that explores the development of learning in children, adults, and organizations.

When the researchers looked at programs that cover multi-arts -- music, drama, dance, and visual arts, they concluded that such a mixed bag of instruction does not increase test scores or grades.

Although students who study the arts did have higher test scores, that doesn't mean it was the arts that caused their test scores to rise. "All this link tells us is that children who study the arts tend to be high academic achievers, no matter what their racial or ethnic group or social class," Winner says. When researchers analyzed only those studies that directly investigated a connection between the arts and test scores, they found no improvement.

But Hetland and Winner emphasize that the purpose of arts study is not to improve test scores, just as it's not to provide better grades in math or other subjects. "Studying the arts should not have to be justified in terms of anything else," they say. "Cultures are judged on the basis of their arts. Most cultures and historical eras have not doubted the importance of including the arts as part of every child's education. They are time-honored ways of learning, knowing and expressing."

Miles Davis (1926-1991), American trumpet player and bandleader, one of the most innovative, influential, and respected figures in the history of jazz . Davis was a leading figure in the bebop style of jazz and in combining styles of jazz and rock music. Asa player, he was a master improviser (one who invents melodies while playing; see Improvisation) who played seemingly simple melodies with great subtlety and expressiveness. As a combo (small ensemble) leader, he assembled classic groups and allowed them the freedom to experiment and develop. The recordings of Davis and his groups have been imitated by musicians around the world.

Born Miles Dewey Davis III in Alton, Illinois, he grew up in East Saint Louis, Illinois. Davis began music lessons after receiving a trumpet on his 13th birthday from his father. Two years later he joined the musicians' union and began playing with a local band on weekends. About this time he met trumpeter Clark Terry, who helped and encouraged him. In 1944, after graduating from high school, he went to New York City to study classical music at the Juilliard School of Music. While there, he also began playing with alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and other pioneers of the new jazz style known as bebop. In 1945, at the age of 19, he began playing in a combo led by Parker. The recordings he made with Parker that year demonstrate that Davis had excellent tone but an immature style of improvising. However, he refined and improved his style of improvising during the next few years with Parker.

In 1949 and 1950, Davis made a series of recordings with a nine-person group that appeared on the album The Birth of the Cool (1950). The terms cool and cool jazz referred to a slower, more subdued style of bebop. By the mid-1950s Davis had developed one of the most distinctive styles in all of jazz. Unlike Gillespie, the first great bebop trumpeter, Davis preferred simple, lyrical melodies to speedy, flashy ones. Using delicate pitch-bending (a slight lowering or raising of a note) and a light vibrato (a gentle and regular wavering of pitch), he created a beautiful and expressive style. Often he used the harmon mute (a metal mute) to get a pinched, quiet sound. In the 1960s he began playing louder and used high notes and quick phrases more frequently. Still, he maintained most of his uniquely beautiful playing style to the end of his life.

Beginning in 1955 Davis led some five- and six-person groups that were among the finest in jazz. Between 1955 and 1970, his various groups included saxophonists John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, and Wayne Shorter; drummers Jimmy Cobb, Philly Joe Jones, and Tony Williams; bassists Paul Chambers and Ron Carter; and pianists Bill Evans and Herbie Hancock. The albums recorded by these groups, such as 'Round about Midnight (1956), Milestones (1958), Kind of Blue (1959), E.S.P. (1965), Miles Smiles (1966), and Nefertiti (1967), represented major landmarks in the evolution of bebop. In particular, Kind of Blue is considered by many to be one of the finest jazz albums ever made. His other important albums of this period include Miles Ahead (1957) and Sketches of Spain (1960), which he recorded with big bands led by arranger and composer Gil Evans.

At the end of the 1960s Davis began to make use of the electronic instruments, rhythms, and song structures of rock music. His manner of playing the trumpet did not change much, but his musical surroundings were dramatically different. The album Bitches Brew (1969) is one of Davis's first significant fusions of the jazz and rock music styles. Although many jazz fans disliked his move into fusion jazz, many bebop musicians followed his lead and took up the new style in the 1970s. His accompanists of the late 1960s and early 1970s included guitarist John McLaughlin, keyboardists Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul, and drummers Jack DeJohnette and Billy Cobham.

Beginning in 1975 Davis experienced a period of inactivity and reclusiveness because of injuries suffered in an automobile accident and the subsequent onset of several illnesses. He returned to performing fusion jazz in 1980, playing with musicians such as guitarist John Scofield, bassists Darryl Jones and Marcus Miller, and saxophonists Bill Evans (not the pianist of the same name) and Branford Marsalis. Albums from this final period include The Man with the Horn (1981); Decoy (1983); and You're Under Arrest (1985), which contains recordings of the popular songs “Human Nature” by singer Michael Jackson and “Time After Time” by singer Cyndi Lauper. In 1990 Davis performed a leading role as a jazz musician in the Australian motion picture Dingo (1991). His album Doo-Bop, released the year after his death, was one of the first to fuse jazz with the hip-hop and rap music styles.

Since 1960 the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) has honored Davis with eight Grammy Awards, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and three Grammy Hall of Fame Awards. In 1986 the New England Conservatory awarded him an honorary doctorate of music.

Trance is a style of electronic dance music or slow ambient music that developed in the 1990s. Dance trance music is generally characterized by a tempo of between 124 and 148 bpm, featuring repeating melodic synthesizer phrases, and a musical form that builds up and down throughout a track, often crescendoing or featuring a breakdown. Sometimes vocals are also utilized. The style is arguably derived from a combination of largely electronic music and house. 'Trance' received its name from the repetitious morphing beats, and the throbbing melodies which would presumably put the listener into a trance-like state. As this music is almost always played in nightclubs at popular vacation spots and in inner cities, trance can be understood as a form of club music.

History

Origins

Early electronic art music artists such as Klaus Schulze have proven to be a significant influence on trance music. Throughout the 1970s Schulze recorded numerous albums of atmospheric, sequencer-driven electronic music. Also, several of his albums from the 1980s include the word "trance" in their titles, such as the 1981 Trancefer and 1987 En=Trance.

Elements of what became modern club music also known as trance music were also explored by industrial artists in the late 1980s. Most notable was Psychic TV's 1989 album Towards Thee Infinite Beat, which featuring drawn out and monotonous patterns with short looping voice samples and is considered by some to be the first trance record. The intent was to make sound that was hypnotic to its listeners, this would also lead to a strain of trance known as Euphoria being developed which caused an uplifting sensation among its listeners who became somewhat euphoric during listening.

These industrial artists were largely dissociated from rave culture, although many were interested in the developments happening in Goa trance which is a much 'heavier' sound than what is now known as trance. Many of the trance albums produced by industrial artists were generally experiments, not an attempt to start a new genre with an associated culture — they remained firmly rooted culturally in industrial and avant-garde music. As trance began to take off in rave culture, most of these artists abandoned the club style.

Trance begins as a genre

The trance sound beyond this acid-era genesis is said to have begun as an off-shoot of techno in German clubs during the very early 1990s. Frankfurt is often cited as a birthplace of Trance. Some of the earliest pioneers of the genre included DJ Dag (Dag Lerner), Oliver Lieb, Sven Väth and Torsten Stenzel, who all produced numerous tracks under multiple aliases. Trance labels like Eye Q, Harthouse, Superstition, Rising High, FAX +49-69/450464 and MFS Records were Frankfurt based. Arguably a fusion of techno and house, early trance shared much with techno in terms of the tempo and rhythmic structures but also added more melodic overtones which were appropriated from the style of house popular in Europe's club scene at that time. This early music tended to be characterized by hypnotic and melodic qualities and typically involved repeating rhythmic patterns added over an appropriate length of time asa track progressed.

Of worth to note, the album that is generally accepted as THE definition of the frankfurt trance sound, and which subsequently influenced all of the early pioneers mentioned above, was the Pete Namlook "4Voice" album. Of note, one of the studio engineers who worked on this pioneering effort was one Maik Maurice, otherwise known as ½ of Resistance D, the famed Hard Trance duo. If you are a fan of the frankfurt sound, this album is the beginning.

At about the same period of time in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a musical revolution was happening in Goa, India. Electronic body music (EBM) bands like Cabaret Voltaire and Front 242 came to Goa and began influencing artists like Goa Gil, Eat Static, The Infinity Project, Doof, and Man With No Name who heard the psychedelic elements of EBM, expanded on them minus the vocals and guitars to create Goa trance. Goa music is heavily influenced by Indian culture and psychedelic drugs, as seen in numerous references to both in track and album titles. Goa trance was brought back to the electronica hubs London and Sheffield in the UK and around the world.

The original Goa sound played heavily on scientific and technological themes, overlappingwith the techno-pagan movement and the dot.com bubble. Later these influences (most notable though vocal samples dropped into the music) faded away, along with the more baroque complexities of countermelodies, leaving a more minimalist psy-trance.

Commercial trance

Immensely popular, trance found itself filling a niche as 'edgier' than house, more soothing than drum and bass, and more melodic than techno, something that made it accessible to a wider audience. Artists like Paul Oakenfold, Paul van Dyk, DJ Tiesto, Ferry Corsten, Above & Beyond and Armin van Buuren came to the forefront as premier producers and remixers, bringing with them the emotional, "epic" feel of the style. Many of these producers also DJ'd in clubs playing their own productions as well as those by other trance DJs. By the end of the 1990s, trance remained commercially huge, but had fractured into an extremely diverse genre. Some of the artists that had helped create the trance sound in the early and mid-1990s had, by the end of the decade, abandoned trance completely in favour of more underground sounds - artists of particular note here include Pascal F.E.O.S. and Oliver Lieb

As trance entered the mainstream it alienated many of its original fans. As the industry became bigger, record labels, Ibiza, clubs (most notably Ministry of Sound) and DJs began to alter their sound to more of a pop based one, so as to make the sound more accessible to an even wider, and younger, audience. Female vocals in particular are now extremely common in mainstream trance, adding to their popular appeal. This mainstream trance is also known variously as commerical trance, vocal trance, euphoric trance or uplifting trance.

Eventually trance became so commercial that even Madonna and All Saints released a trance-like songs, through their collaborations with William Orbit.

Post-commercial trance

The original trance scene has largely died down, partly by having been overrun by the commercial mainstream; some would also argue that the original Goa and Psy- trance has exhausted the possibilities of its musical niche. An open question is where non-commercial trance will go next. One lively underground scene is "dark" or "goth" trance, also known as "neuromantic", which reunities the original EBM influences with Psy-trance and modern synthesizers. This music is characterized by low -- usually male -- vocals, and also borrows heavily from the 1980s new romantic and gothic movements. In the mid 2000s, other new bands like Tony Reed and Synthetik FM began to fuse rave styles of music with synthpop and new wave and use the new medium of the internet to distribute their music. The evolution of Goa trance into dark trance is well illustrated by the changing population of London's Cyberdog store, which has notably started to attract goths into its previously goa/psy culture. An alternative evolution would be to fuse trance with other stagnating genres such as drum'n'bass, various artists have attempted this but it has still to break into acceptance even in the underground. Frustrated, extreme versions of trance have mutated through gabba into violent fringe genres such as terrorcore and drillcore.

Trance and drugs

Trance developed alongside the increasing use of the drug ecstasy in the club scene. Ecstasy invokes a feeling of intense optimism and goodwill, and when taken while listening to loud trance music the feeling can become euphoric and highly energetic. The structure of trance music came to develop, deliberately or not, so that it became ever more effective at provoking these euphoric feelings. The metronomic beat, simple distorted waveforms drenched in large amounts of reverb, and long build-ups with snare rolls leading out of a breakdown all trigger a huge predictable response from ecstacy users. At the end of the 1990s, it is likely thata large number of clubbers in clubs such as Gatecrasher in Sheffield and Passion in Coalville (both in the UK) were using ecstasy. Trance songs were included in the heroin flick, Trainspotting.

Trance production

Trance employs a 4/4 time signature, and has a BPM of 130-160 beats per minute, somewhat faster than house music. Early tracks were sometimes slower. A kick drum is placed on every downbeat, a snare or clap on each second beat, and a regular open hi-hat on the off-beat. Some simple extra percussive elements are usually added, but, unusually in dance music, tracks do not usually derive their main rhythm from the percussion.

Trance is produced with keyboards, computerized synthesizers, drum machines, and music sequencer software connected via MIDI. The 909 drum machine is widely used to create the drum sounds. The unwavering drum mechanism may be constantly tweaked with for effect, with the Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release (ADSR) all given liberal treatment.

Synthesizers form the central elements of most trance tracks, with simple saw sounds used both for short pizzicato elements and for long, sweeping string sounds. Rapid arpeggios and minor scales are common features. Trance tracks often use one central "hook" melody which runs through almost the entire song, repeating at intervals anywhere between 2 beats and several bars. Much, but by no means all, trance music contains minimalist vocals.

Trance records are almost invariably heavily loaded with reverb and delay effects on the synth sounds, vocals and often parts of the percussion section. This provides the tracks with the sense of vast space that trance producers tend to look for in order to achieve the genre's epic quality. Flangers, phasers and other effects are also commonly used at extreme settings - in trance there is no need for sounds to seem in any way authentic, so producers have free rein.

Like much dance music, trance tracks are usually built with sparser beginnings and ends to the tracks in order to enable mixing more readily. As trance is more melodic and harmonic than much dance music, this is particularly important in order to avoid dissonance between tracks.

Jazz is sometimes referred to as “America’s classical music”. It has become a diverse genre with its roots in native American and African music; in particular, the blues, spirituals and rag time. Jazz first became a defined music form in the early 1920 springing from the US cities of New Orleans and later Chicago. Early Jazz was characterized by traditional rhythms and melodies being taken and improvised upon, giving a combination of swing and syncopation. Early Jazz performers of note included Jelly Roll Morton, Fats Domino, Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong. A good taste of this period can be gained by listening to recordings of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Fives and Hot Seven ensembles.

By the 1930 Jazz had spread out of its local bases in South American and became more mainstream attracting white musicians as well. One development of Jazz was the big bands such as Ben Goodman and Glen Miller. Glen Millers big band became very successful and popular, but offering little scope for improvisation jazz aficionados saw it as more of swing rather than real jazz. However other big bands such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie provided some of the all time great Jazz recordings.

Whilst the Big Band led jazz in a more conventional direction. The late 1930s and 1940s also saw jazz develop in another direction through the creation of the new “Be Bop” craze. Be Bop is epitomized by the great musicians such as Charlie “Bird” Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Sonny Rollins. These musicians took Jazz to new heights of improvisation, loosening the adherence to harmony’s and rigid chord structures.

Unlike previous forms of jazz, Be bop was not designed for dancing but was seen more like an opportunity to showcase the musical expertise of the performers. Some of the great be bop recordings came about as the performers played off each other, each striving for greater excellence and improvisation. One of the greatest recordings of this period was “Jazz at Masey Hall” 1953 featuring Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker amongst others, it is a very good example of live jazz music. In the 1960s Be bop evolved into a form of “free jazz” with little if any adherence to conventional harmonies and chord structures. One of the best selling jazz recordings which characterized this new form was “A Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis.

Alas many of the great jazz performers led tragic lives, a seemingly very high percentage died prematurely, inevitably from drug and alcohol misuse. Unfortunately many young performers came to associate drugs with being a successful jazz performer so jazz developed a strong reputation for association with narcotics.

To play Jazz music successfully a classical background is definitely an advantage. To be a successful jazz player you need to be able to learn the chords and scales of the song. With this basic structure you can then improvise around these chords to give the improvised or jazz effect. However to be a great jazz musician a lot more is needed than formal training, successful improvisation is a difficult skill that appears to come easily to a rare few.

Jazz originated from New Orleans, America in the 20^th century. Its unique sound was created from the fusion of African American music styles with Western techniques and theory. Some of the musical elements that help define jazz are:

• Syncopation

• Call and response

• Swing

• Poly-rhythms

• Blue notes

• Improvisation

Overview

Its combination of styles can be attributed to many sources including:

• New England's religious church hymns

• Western Sahel

• West Africa

• Hill-billy music

• European military bands

After its inception throughout African-American communities in the early 20^th century, the jazz style spread during the 1920s, influencing many other styles.

Jazz, with its strong association with the blues, evolved while black musicians migrated into the cities. It was a time when there was still enslaved Africans in south U.S.

Many of the instruments played in dance bands and marching music during the turn of the century became the core instruments of jazz. Using the 12-tone western scale, these included:

• Brass

• Reeds

• Drums

Improvisation

The jazz genre can vary a lot and can encompass a wide variety of music. One of the key elements of jazz is improvisation. Improvisation was an element in African-American music ever since the early style of music developed. It is similar to the call and response element found in African-American and West African expression of culture.

This improvisation element changed with time:

Early folk and blues music was often based on a call / response pattern, with improvisation of an element of the lyrics and / or melody.

Dixieland jazz had musicians taking turn to play the melody, while other musicians would improvise a counter melody.

Swing lead to big bands playing arranged sheet music and individual soloists performing improvised solos. Musicians would not stick strictly to the original, but would try to incorporate a common theme or motif to tie the music together.

There are big differences when you compare jazz to the classical music form. In a classical form, the control is in the composer's hands with musicians playing music as it is written. The jazzform places more control in the musicians hands with the melody, harmonies and even time signature varying from the original.

Due to the varying nature of improvisation, jazz typically sticks to one tempo with no rubato. The leader will set the tempo and this tempo is kept for majority of the piece.

As the term "jazz" has long been used for a wide variety of styles, a comprehensive definition including all varieties is elusive. Some enthusiasts of certain types of jazz have argued for narrower definitions which exclude many other types of music also commonly known as jazz.

There have long been debates in the jazz community over the boundaries or definition of “jazz”. In the mid-1930s, New Orleans jazz lovers criticized the "innovations" of the swing era as being contrary to the collective improvisation they saw as essential to "true" jazz. From the 1940s and 1960s, traditional jazz enthusiasts and Hard Bop criticized each other, often arguing that the other style was somehow not "real" jazz. Although alteration or transformation of jazz by new influences has been initially criticized as “radical” or a “debasement”, Andrew Gilbert argues that jazz has the “ability to absorb and transform influences” from diverse musical styles.

Commercially-oriented or popular music-influenced forms of jazz are have long been criticized. Traditional jazz enthusiasts have dismissed the 1970s jazz fusion era as a period of commercial debasement. However, according to Bruce Johnson, jazz music has always had a “ tension between jazz as a commercial music and an artform ”.

Gilbert notes that as the notion of a canon of traditional jazz is developing, the “achievements of the past” may be become “...privileged over the idiosyncratic creativity...” and innovation of current artists. Village Voice jazz critic Gary Giddins argues that as the creation and dissemination of jazz is becoming increasingly institutionalized and dominated by major entertainment firms, jazz is facing a "...perilous future of respectability and disinterested acceptance". David Ake warns that the creation of “norms” in jazz and the establishment of a “jazz tradition” may exclude or sideline other newer, avant-garde forms of jazz.

One way to get around the definitional problems is to define the term “jazz” more broadly. According to Krin Gabbard “jazz is a construct” or category that, while artificial, still is useful to designate “a number of musics with enough in common part of a coherent tradition”. Travis Jackson also defines jazz in a broader way by stating that it is music that includes qualities such as “ 'swinging', improvising, group interaction, developing an 'individual voice', and being 'open' to different musical possibilities”.

Where to draw the boundaries of "jazz" is the subject of debate among music critics, scholars, and fans.

For example:

• Music that is a mixture of jazz and pop music, such as the recent albums of Jamie Cullum, is sometimes called "jazz".
• James Blunt and Joss Stone have been called "jazz" performers by radio DJ's, and record label promoters.
• Jazz festivals are increasingly programming a wide range of genres, including world beat music, folk, electronica, and hip-hop. This trend may lead to the perception that all of the performers at a festival are jazz artists – including artists from non-jazz genres.

Music has the scientifically proved power to offer great health and stress relief benefits. It is an amazing stress relief tool because you can use it in your daily life activities and attain many stress relief benefits on your own. One of the utmost music advantages as a stress reliever is that it can be used while you go on with your regular activities so that it really doesn’t take time away from your busy schedule. Here you can find some of the  ways you can actually use music to relieve stress and improve your every day activities.

Knowing all the ways in which music acts upon your whole body, you probably already clearly see the ways music may be used as a powerful relaxation and stress management means. Apart from the many physical changes music may bring it is also especially beneficial in relaxation and stress management because it can be used in the following ways:

Music and physical relaxation

Music may promote tense muscles relaxation, enabling you to easily release some of the tension you carry from a stressful day or even from a longer period of time.

Music helps in stress relief activities

Music can help you get “into the zone” mood when practicing yoga, self-hypnosis and it can help you feel energized when exercising, help stress disappear when you’re soaking in the bath tub and be an important part of many other stress relief activities.

Music and a Meditative State

As stated earlier, music may help your brain get into a meditative phase, bringing wonderful stress relief benefits with it. For those who consider being quite shy and  intimidating, music can be an easier alternative.

Music to Promote a Positive Focus

Music, especially up beating songs, may take your mind off what stresses you helping you feel more confident and positive thinking. This practice helps you release the stress and may even keep you from getting as stressed and agitated over life’s small frustrations in the future.

Music and self-affirmations

The perspective you have on the world and the type of self talk you usually use may also have a profound effect on your stress level. This is why positive affirmations that create more positive self talk are highly beneficial.

Music with affirming lyrics may bring the double advantages of music and positive thoughts, helping you to be surrounded by positive energies and more often look at the bright side, leaving stressful events behind more easily.

These are some of the reasons that music relaxation is among the easiest and most effective forms of relaxation available, and music is such a great stress management tool.

Here are some of the effects music has on your body and mind, helping you explain the success of music therapy:

Influencing the brain waves

It has been scientifically proved that music with a strong beat may stimulate brain waves to resonate in sync with the beat, with faster beats bringing sharper focusing and more alert thinking, and a slower tempo promoting a calm, meditative mood. 

In addition, specialists have discovered that the change in brain wave activity levels that music may promote can also enable the brain to change speeds more easily on its own when needed, meaning that music can bring long lasting benefits to your state of mind, even after you have stopped listening. 

Breathing and the heart rate

With alterations in brainwaves it appears another change in some of the body functions. Those driven by the autonomic nervous system, such as breathing and heart rate can also be damaged by the changes music may bring. Basically it means slower breathing, slower heart rate and an activation of the relaxation response.

This is why music and music therapy can help balance or prevent the harmful effects of chronic stress, strongly promoting not only relaxation, but overall health. 

A state of mind

Music is also considered to bring a more positive state of mind, helping to keep depression and anxiety at bay. This can be useful in preventing stress response from wreaking damages on the body and may keep creativity and optimism levels higher, bringing many other advantages.

Other music benefits

Music has also been discovered to have many other beneficial effects, such as lowering the blood pressure that can also reduce the risk of heart attacks and other health problems over time, boost the immunity level, ease muscle tension, and more. 

With so many benefits and such profound physical effects, it’s no surprise that so many people are seeing music more and more as an important instrument to help the body in staying or becoming healthy and strong.

Using music therapy

With all these advantages that music carries along, it would only come as natural that music therapy is growing in popularity. It is often found as part of stress management programs or used together with exercises and it is used in a large variety of health care settings with very good results in both short-term conditions and more serious long-term ones.

The Classical period in Western music occurred from about 1730 to 1820, despite considerable overlap at both ends with preceding and following periods, as is true for all musical eras. Although the term classical music is used as a blanket term meaning all kinds of music in this tradition, it can also occasionally mean this particular era within that tradition.

The Classical period falls between the Baroque and the Romantic periods. Probably the best known composers from this period are Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, and Ludwig van Beethoven, though other notable names include Muzio Clementi, Johann Ladislaus Dussek, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and Christoph Willibald Gluck. Beethoven is also regarded either as a Romantic composer or a composer who was part of the transition to the Romantic; Franz Schubert is also something of a transitional figure. The period is sometimes referred to as Viennese Classic, since Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert all worked at some time in Vienna.

Main characteristics of music in the Classical period

• Lighter, clearer texture than Baroque music, and less complicated; mainly homophonic – melody above chordal accompaniment (but counterpoint is by no means forgotten, especially later in the period).
• An emphasis on grace and beauty of melody and form; proportion and balance, moderation and control; polished and elegant in character with expressiveness and formal structure held in perfect balance.
• More variety and contrast within a piece: of keys, melodies, rhythms and dynamics (now using crescendo and sforzando); frequent changes of mood and timbre.
• Melodies tend to be shorter than those of Baroque, with clear-cut phrases and clearly marked cadences.
• Orchestra increases in size and range; harpsichord continuo falls out of use; woodwind becomes a self-contained section.
• The harpsichord is replaced by the piano (or fortepiano): early piano music is thinnish in texture, often with Alberti bass accompaniment (Haydn and Mozart), but later becomes richer, more sonorous and powerful (Beethoven).
• Importance given to instrumental music – main kinds: sonata, trio, string quartet, symphony, concerto, serenade and divertimento.
• Sonata form develops, and becomes the most important design – used to build up the first movement of most large-scale works, but also other movements, and single pieces (such as overtures).

History of the Classical period

The Classical style as part of a larger artistic change

Beginnings of the Classical style (1730-1760)

The early Classical style (1760-1775)

The middle Classical style (1775-1790)

The late Classical style (1790-1825)

When Haydn and Mozart began composing, symphonies were played as single movements before, between, or as interludes within other works, and many of them lasted only ten or twelve minutes; instrumental groups had varying standards of playing and the "continuo" was a central part of music-making. In the intervening years, the social world of music had seen dramatic changes: international publication and touring had grown explosively, concert societies were beginning to be formed, notation had been made more specific, more descriptive, and schematics for works had been simplified (yet became more varied in their exact working out). In 1790, just before Mozart's death, with his reputation spreading rapidly, Haydn was poised for a series of successes, notably his late oratorios and "London" symphonies. Composers in Paris, Rome and all over Germany turned to Haydn and Mozart for their ideas on form.

The moment was again ripe for a dramatic shift. The decade of the 1790s saw the emergence of a new generation of composers, born around 1770, who, while they had grown up with the earlier styles, found in the recent works of Haydn and Mozart a vehicle for greater expression. In 1788 Luigi Cherubini settled in Paris, and in 1791 composed "Lodoiska", an opera that shot him to fame. Its style is clearly reflective of the mature Haydn and Mozart, and its instrumentation gave it a weight that had not yet been felt in the grand opera. His contemporary Étienne Méhul extended instrumental effects with his 1790 opera "Euphrosine et Coradin", from which followed a series of successes.

Of course, the most fateful of the new generation would be Ludwig van Beethoven, who launched his numbered works in 1794 with a set of three piano trios, which remain in the repertoire. Somewhat younger than these, though equally accomplished because of his youthful study under Mozart and his native virtuosity, was Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Hummel studied under Haydn as well; he was a friend to Beethoven and Schubert, and a teacher to Franz Liszt. He concentrated more on the piano than any other instrument, and his time in London in 1791 and 1792 saw the composition, and publication in 1793, of three piano sonatas, opus 2, which idiomatically used Mozart's techniques of avoiding the expected cadence, and Clementi's sometimes modally uncertain virtuoso figuration. Taken together, these composers can be seen now as the vanguard of a broad change in style and the center of gravity in music. They would study one another's works, copy one another's gestures in music, and on occasion behave like quarrelsome rivals.

The crucial differences with the previous wave can be seen in the downward shift in melodies, increasing durations of movements, the acceptance of Mozart and Haydn as paradigmatic, the greater and greater use of keyboard resources, the shift from "vocal" writing to "pianistic" writing, the growing pull of the minor and of modal ambiguity, and the increasing importance of varying accompanying figures to bring "texture" forward as an element in music. In short, the late Classical was seeking a music that was internally more complex. The growth of concert societies and amateur orchestras, marking the importance of music as part of middle-class life, contributed to a booming market for pianos, piano music, and virtuosi to serve as examplars. Hummel, Beethoven, Clementi were all renowned for their improvising.

One explanation for the shift in style has been advanced by Schoenberg and others: the increasing centrality of the idea of theme and variations in compositional thinking. Schoenberg argues that the Classical style was one of "continuing variation", where a development was, in effect, a theme and variations with greater continuity. In any event, theme and variations replaced the fugue as the standard vehicle for improvising, and was often included, directly or indirectly, as a movement in longer instrumental works.

Direct influence of the Baroque continued to fade: the figured bass grew less prominent as a means of holding performance together, the performance practices of the mid 18th century continued to die out. However, at the same time, complete editions of Baroque masters began to become available, and the influence of Baroque style, as the Classical period understood it, continued to grow, particularly in the ever more expansive use of brass. Another feature of the period is the growing number of performances where the composer was not present. This led to increased detail and specificity in notation; for example, there were fewer and fewer "optional" parts that stood separately from the main score.

The force of these shifts would be abundantly apparent with Beethoven's 3rd Symphony, given the name "Eroica", which is Italian for "heroic", by the composer. As with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, it may not have been the first in all of its innovations, but its aggressive use of every part of the Classical style set it apart from its contemporary works: in length, ambition, and harmonic resources.

Classical influence on later composers

Musical eras seldom disappear at once; instead, features are replaced over time, until the old is simply felt as "old-fashioned". The Classical style did not "die" so much as transform under the weight of changes.

One crucial change was the shift towards harmonies centering around "flatward" or subdominant keys. In the Classical style, major key was far more common than minor, chromaticism being moderated through the use of "sharpward" modulation, and sections in the minor mode were often merely for contrast. Beginning with Mozart and Clementi, there began a creeping colonization of the subdominant region. With Schubert, subdominant moves flourished after being introduced in contexts in which earlier composers would have confined themselves to dominant shifts (For a fuller discussion of these terms see Tonality.). This introduced darker colors to music, strengthened the minor mode, and made structure harder to maintain. Beethoven would contribute to this, by his increasing use of the fourth as a consonance, and modal ambiguity – for example, the opening of the D Minor Symphony.

Among this generation of "Classical Romantics" Franz Schubert, Carl Maria von Weber, and John Field are among the most prominent, along with the young Felix Mendelssohn. Their sense of form was strongly influenced by the Classical style, and they were not yet "learned" (imitating rules which were codified by others), but directly responding to works by Beethoven, Mozart, Clementi, and others, as they encountered them. The instrumental forces at their disposal were also quite "Classical" in number and variety, permitting similarity with avowedly Classical works.

However, the forces destined to end the hold of the Classical style gather strength in the works of each of these composers. The most commonly cited one is, of course, harmonic innovation. However, also important is the increasing focus on having a continuous and rhythmically uniform accompanying figuration. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata would be the model for hundreds of later pieces – where the shifting movement of a rhythmic figure provides much of the drama and interest of the work, while a melody drifts above it. As years wore on, greater knowledge of works, greater instrumental expertise, increasing variety of instruments, the growth of concert societies, and the unstoppable domination of the piano – which created a huge audience for sophisticated music – all contributed to the shift to the "Romantic" style.

Drawing the line exactly is impossible: there are sections of Mozart's works which, taken alone, are indistinguishable in harmony and orchestration from music written 80 years later, and composers continue to write in normative Classical styles all the way into the 20th century. Even before Beethoven's death, composers such as Louis Spohr were self-described Romantics, incorporating, for example, more and more extravagant chromaticism in their works. However, generally the fall of Vienna as the most important musical center for orchestral composition is felt to be the occasion of the Classical style's final eclipse, along with its continuous organic development of one composer learning in close proximity to others. Franz Liszt and Frédéric Chopin visited Vienna when young, but they then moved on to other vistas. Composers such as Carl Czerny, while deeply influenced by Beethoven, also searched for new ideas and new forms to contain the larger world of musical expression and performance in which they lived.

Renewed interest in the formal balance and restraint of 18th century classical music led in the early 20th century to the development of so-called Neoclassical style, which numbered Stravinsky and Prokofiev among its proponents.