Music can affect us in different ways, but here are two I hadn’t considered before.
First, an article about Brain.fm and how it’s using AI to create music (or is it just sound?) designed to help you focus.
The science behind the ‘beats to study to’ craze
According to Woods, good focus music has no vocals, no strong melodies, ‘dark’ spectrum, dense texture, minimal salient events, heavy spatialization, a steady pulse, sub-30-200Hz modulation and above 10-20Hz modulation.
This is compared to an example of a more traditional approach to music that can help you work — the “lofi hip hop radio” playlist from YouTuber ChilledCow, described as “the type of tune you’d put on at a backyard barbecue: mellow beats with an analog flair.” When discussing Brain.fm, its ‘composer’ admits that:
All of his parameters for good focus music are understandably clinical. “These acoustic features I’ve been talking about, they’re things about sound, not things about music,” he admitted. “The world that musicians live in has key signatures, time signatures, major and minor keys. I haven’t been talking about that at all, but what this ‘lo-fi’ [channel] shows is those things can be enormously important.”
I think I know which I prefer, but it’s an interesting project nonetheless.
And for a completely different take on how music affects the brain, take a look at the artwork of Melissa McCracken. She has synesthesia and paints what she sees when she listens to music.
The artist who paints music
Basically, my brain is cross-wired. I experience the “wrong” sensation to certain stimuli. Each letter and number is colored and the days of the year circle around my body as if they had a set point in space. But the most wonderful “brain malfunction” of all is seeing the music I hear. It flows in a mixture of hues, textures, and movements, shifting as if it were a vital and intentional element of each song.
It’s all absolutely gorgeous, and the video Kottke links to really gets across her passion and talent.
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