How Playing Music Benefits Your Brain More than Any Other Activity

[magnum]

http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/29/music-brain-ted-ed/

"“Each note rubs the others just right, and the instrument shivers with delight. The feeling is unmistakable, intoxicating,” musician Glenn Kurtz wrote in his sublime meditation on the pleasures of practicing, adding: “My attention warms and sharpens… Making music changes my body.” Kurtz’s experience, it turns out, is more than mere lyricism — music does change the body’s most important organ, and changes it more profoundly than any other intellectual, creative, or physical endeavor.

This short animation from TED-Ed, written by Anita Collins and animated by Sharon Colman Graham, explains why playing music benefits the brain more than any other activity, how it impacts executive function and memory, and what it reveals about the role of the same neural structure implicated in explaining Leonardo da Vinci’s genius."

[TrumanCash]

Thanks for the video link, Magnum.

Playing music rocks! I get a natural high playing music, especially with other musicians. It's really more of a spiritual high, IMO.

It's even more fun if you compose your own songs and produce them. Right now I'm producing my second album and it's a blast!

TLC

[Citizen No2]

Here is a highly visceral example:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKDXuCE7LeQ




Regards.

[Carmody]

If I'm awake, the vast majority of the time, I'm listening to music. Usually music without vocals.

In my head, I'm also making it, or 'repeating' it. As a matter of fact, I usually can't shut it off, unless I really concentrate. For weeks. Usually I have to find something to listen to, just to shut the music in my head off, or to switch channels.

[barneythez]

Great video's, I forwarded them both.
thanks again.

[selinam]

If I'm awake, the vast majority of the time, I'm listening to music. Usually music without vocals.

In my head, I'm also making it, or 'repeating' it. As a matter of fact, I usually can't shut it off, unless I really concentrate. For weeks. Usually I have to find something to listen to, just to shut the music in my head off, or to switch channels.

Me too. I always seem to have a song in my head. :)

[Selene]

Einstein played the violin....

Cheers,

Selene

[DeDukshyn]

If I'm awake, the vast majority of the time, I'm listening to music. Usually music without vocals.

In my head, I'm also making it, or 'repeating' it. As a matter of fact, I usually can't shut it off, unless I really concentrate. For weeks. Usually I have to find something to listen to, just to shut the music in my head off, or to switch channels.


That's the key ... "music without vocals". Once vocals are added, the experience becomes more about pre-programmed emotional reactions to what is contained in the lyrics, and the experience that would be about feeling the subtle vibrations and their intricate play of resonances, as they truly are, become muddied by the pre-programmed reactions that vocals trigger. Music with vocals has a place, but not for everyday easy listening in my opinion.

[Carmody]

If I'm awake, the vast majority of the time, I'm listening to music. Usually music without vocals.

In my head, I'm also making it, or 'repeating' it. As a matter of fact, I usually can't shut it off, unless I really concentrate. For weeks. Usually I have to find something to listen to, just to shut the music in my head off, or to switch channels.

Me too. I always seem to have a song in my head. :)

I play change up, too.

Like changing the origins of a song.

just a minute ago:

I took the song to Glasgow, and started belting out the chorus (just the chorus) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXju9OqdWMY)like Groundskeeper Willie, from the Simpsons.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dc/GroundskeeperWillie.png

I spent 7 years singing in choirs, so I guess that applies as an 'instrument'. Kinda.

[Bubu]

on average I have 3 hours a day of listening and/or singing with the tune. How I wish I had learned to play at least one musical instrument:)
thanks to music thanks to musicians

[meeradas]

That's the key ... "music without vocals". Once vocals are added, the experience becomes more about pre-programmed emotional reactions to what is contained in the lyrics, and the experience that would be about feeling the subtle vibrations and their intricate play of resonances, as they truly are, become muddied by the pre-programmed reactions that vocals trigger.

Basically, yes.

I see exceptions to this, though.
There are singers who are 'just another instrument', which adds another [necessary - for them; debatable - for you] colour to the whole of what the artists want to express.
Thinking of / listening to Chino Moreno of the Deftones, and, haha, Mr Kidman of Meshuggah, as i write this [of course there are more examples, outside the noisy genres].

The above is especially valid for people like me - i normally do not understand any lyrics [even if it's in my mother tongue].