Source: University of Toronto
Good evening dear Steemians! Today I'm sharing a bit about the effect that music has on our body at a physical and emotional level. I must note that what I'm writing comes from my own experience as a musician, artist, and an engineering and philosophy student, and not from dedicated academic research.
I hope you enjoy this post!
Why music affects us so much?
Music is also a channel for artistic expression. It allows us to transmit poetry in songs, epic stories through symphonies and sonatas that remain relevant for hundreds of years.
I'm sure that you may evoke from your memory the first three notes of Beethoven's 4th Symphony or the ones from Für Elise; in that same manner I could assume that you are familiar with the Star Wars Imperial March or Misirlou's surf guitar, main theme of Pulp Fiction. Examples are many, but the underlying reason is the same.
We all have different tastes when it comes to music. Some prefer jazz, others prefer rock and so on until we go over each possible combination of genres and non-genres. But, why some people prefer certain types of music? It is necessary to ask ourselves this if we pretend to be musicians or artists. It is clear that, because it is art, we have a license to do whatever we want, and from that create a determined style, but a holistic artist can analyze trends and currents in which his or her creation will delve in.
What's logical is to think that bitter people like metal, intellectuals like jazz, party-goers like house techno or pop, and so on… But it is not simple logic, it's physics!
Vibrations and resonance
When the guitarist hits a string, or when a pianist hits a key which then makes a hammer hit an internal string, or when a sax player presses down his keys and blows a B flat the same always occurs: The air inside a resonance chamber, usually made out of wood or metal, starts vibrating. Each note has a determined frequency. The modern standard for tuning music instruments (in ancient times there were many others) is to tune the A after central C to 440 Hertz or vibrations per second. The faster the string vibrates, the sharper the note. When you increase a guitar string's tension, the frequency increases because the string gets shorter, and we'll eventually get to a B, a C, a D, E, and so on until we get to the next A, an octave higher.
If a piano or guitar string is tuned to A after central C in standard tuning, when you hit it it will vibrate at 440 Hz, but a question surfaces: What prevents other things from vibrating at that same frequency?
If you tune two strings to the same note, these strings resonate. If you hit one, you'll see the other vibrate without even touching it, just by being caressed by the air surrounding it. This air fits so perfectly within the string's tension that it makes it vibrate, or if you want to look at it differently, it makes it dance.
Image Source: Logan Gendizzle / Science Alert
The same occurs with the music we listen to, but at a complexity level that's a thousand times greater. There may be songs that hook us up from the second we hear them, as there might be others that we just can't stand despite being so catchy. It all depends on how the song is designed and on how it “vibrates” with whoever is listening.
How far do vibrations go
But, what part of us is it that vibrates? Well, everything! The air in our lungs, the blood in our veins, the fibers of each of our muscles. That is why music is so powerful because it manages to resonate with us to transmit a message. You may hear a song whose lyrics you don't understand, but it may resonate with your body and your ideas, causing a deep impression.
This concept goes beyond what we can comprehend. Authors such as G.I. Gurdjieff and Hermann Hesse saw that music, besides math, might be the language of the universe.
According to superstring theory, the fundamental elements that constitute reality are strings that are as long as Planck's length (about 10^−33 cm) vibrating at resonating frequencies. Each superstring has a unique resonance or harmonic, and depending on this resonance, the fundamental particles of the universe start to appear, such as the boson and the fermion. One of them is the gravitron, a probable contestant that could explain the origin of gravity; this particle should come from a superstring vibrating with a wave amplitude equal to zero.
Just like waves in a pond, a guitar chord puts the air to vibrate, and visualizing this is key for a professional musician. Music travels through the air and electric currents; then it bounces, reverberates and becomes distorted with the environment.
Image Source: Modern Day Mystic
The next time you attend a concert, take a moment to think how music comes from the brain of the musician, passes through its body, then to playing the instrument onto the air, or through electromagnetic fields, to then become amplified and move the air at the speed of sound, until it reaches your ears and luckily, your heart.
I hope you've enjoyed this post and that it allows you to think about the wonder that is music, which seems to go beyond our humanity to become part of the hidden languages of existence.
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