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I have several snippets from different sources on this thread to give you a sense of what is out there on this topic.
From
http://www.soundtherapy.co.uk/research/musicresearch.php
"The findings show that when the pupils, all of whom had special educational needs (SEN) and emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD), were played Mozart orchestral compositions during normal science lessons there was a significant drop in all physiological parameters and a resultant improvement in behaviour (see Table 1). Observed co-ordination was improved, all pupils completed the set tasks neatly and quietly, their concentration span lasted throughout the forty-minute lessons and there was no attention-seeking behaviour.
The Musical Foetus?
At what age do musical capabilities first appear? Perhaps at birth or even soon after the functional development of the auditory system in utero. Peter G. Hepper, reporting in the Irish Journal of Pscyhology (1991, 12, pp 95-107), studied neonates 2-4 days of age who had been exposed to the theme tune of a popular TV program while their mothers were pregnant. When the same tune was presented after birth, the neonates exhibited changes in heartrate and movements. More remarkably, fetuses of 29-37 weeks gestational age also showed specific behavioral responses to tunes played earlier in pregnancy. In both experiments, behavioral responses were specific to the tune to which they had been exposed. These results would seem to indicate that the learning and remembering of a melody can occur not only before birth but actually before or at the beginning of the third trimester.
Music Alters Children's Brainwaves
There is great interest in the possibility that music produces reorganization of brain function, and that such change could be detected by analysis of the electroencephalogram (EEG, "brain waves"). Russian investigators have provided the first evidence of these processes in children. Writing in the journal Human Physiology (1996, volume 22, pages 76-81), T. N. Malyarenko and his co-authors played classical music one hour per day over six months to four year old children in a preschool setting. A control group had no exposure to music but simply the normal classroom sounds. The classical music group had an increase in a part of the alpha rhythm frequency band and, greater similarities ("coherence") between different regions of the cerebral cortex, most pronounced in the frontal lobes. Greater coherence is thought by some workers to indicate better "cooperation" among brain regions but others view it as typical of increased relaxation. A particularly noteworthy aspect of this report is that the EEG changes occurred in a passive listening situation, in which the children were not required to pay attention to the music. Whether the effects are specific to a particular type of music remains to be studied. Also needed are controls for mere exposure to novel sounds.
Does listening to Mozart Affect Spatial IQ?
In a previous well publicized experiment published in 1993, Rauscher and colleagues, of the University of California Irvine, reported that listening to Mozart (compared to relaxation instructions or silence) produced a brief but significant increase in performance of a spatial IQ task (involving mental manipulations of folded cut paper) in college students (Nature, 1993, 365, 611). This has drawn sufficient interest to produce at least one attempt at replication. In 1994, Stough and colleagues, of the University of Aukland, examined the effects of listening to Mozart, popular dance music or silence on a related test of intelligence (Personal. & Individ. Diffs., 1994, 17, 695). They found no effects. Thus, it would appear that the original report of Rauscher et al was in error. However, recently, Rauscher et al have replicated and extended their findings (Neurosci. Letters, 1995, 185, 44-47). In this study, they used the same task as in their first experiment but extended the types of listening experienced. Seventy-nine college students were divided into three groups: silence, Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos, K448, (the same piece that produced the positive results in the 1993 study) and a group that heard a minimalist work by Phillip Glass. Only the Mozart group showed a significant increased spatial IQ score. In further sub-studies, it was found that listening to a taped short story or dance music did not enhance test scores. Therefore, the facilitation of a measure of spatial IQ seems to be specific to some aspect of the Mozart piece rather than music per se or attending to a story. Although the failure of the Stough group to find an effect needs to be reconciled with these findings, the Rauscher et al replication and extension does provide strong support for their view that listening to Mozart specifically facilitates spatial reasoning.
Music and Memory
In 1982, researchers from the University of North Texas performed a three-way test on postgraduate students to see if music could help in memorizing vocabulary words. The students were divided into three groups. Each group was given three tests - a pretest, a posttest, and a test a week after the first two tests. All of the tests were identical. Group 1 was read the words with Handel's Water Music in the background. They were also asked to imagine the words. Group 2 was read the same words also with Handel's Water Music in the background. Group 2 was not asked to imagine the words. Group 3 was only read the words, was not given any background music, and was also not asked to imagine the words. The results from the first two tests showed that groups 1 and 2 had much better scores than group 3. The results from the third test, a week later, showed that group 1 performed much better than groups 2 or 3. However, simply using music while learning does not absolutely guarantee recall but can possibly improve it. Background music in itself is not a part of the learning process, but it does enter into memory along with the information learned. Recall is better when the same music used for learning is used during recall. Also, tempo appears to be a key of music's effect on memory.
Not all Music is Beneficial
An Australian physician and psychiatrist, Dr. John Diamond, found a direct link between muscle strength/weakness and music. He discovered that all of the muscles in the entire body go weak when subjected to the "stopped anapestic beat" of music from hard rock musicians, including Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, Queen, The Doors, Janis Joplin, Bachman - Turner Overdrive, and The Band. Dr. Diamond found another effect of the anapestic beat. He called it a "switching" of the brain. Dr. Diamond said this switching occurs when the actual symmetry between both of the cerebral hemispheres is destroyed causing alarm in the body along with lessened work performance, learning and behavior problems in children, and a "general malaise in adults." In addition to harmful, irregular beats in rock music, shrill frequencies prove to also be harmful to the body. Bob Larson, a Christian minister and former rock musician, remembers that in the 70's teens would bring raw eggs to a rock concert and put them on the front of the stage. The eggs would be hard boiled by the music before the end of the concert and could be eaten. Dr. Earl W. Flosdorf and Dr. Leslie A. Chambers showed that proteins in a liquid medium were coagulated when subjected to piercing high-pitched sounds."
From
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/rockm/satanic.htm
"Christian" Rock Music
Christian or Satanic?
...
(b) Dr. David Nobel, another medical doctor and an authority on music, has done extensive research on the value of music rhythms [score] corresponding to body rhythms. He writes that, "None of these qualities accrue to the rock sound. Instead, rock contains harmonic dissonance and melodic discord while it accents rhythm with a big beat. In fact, the anapestic beat [two short beats, a long beat, then a pause] used by many rock musicians actually is the exact opposite of our heart and arterial rhythms [thereby causing an immediate loss of body strength]."
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And my PERSONAL favorite for lunacy...
"http://www.biblicalperspectives.com/endtimeissues/eti_36.html
"This important fact is ignored by those who argue that rock music is just like any other form of music and thus it can be legitimately adopted for Christian worship by changing its lyrics. The truth of the matter is that rock music is different from all other kinds of music on account of its relentless beat. Changing the lyrics does not affect the impact of the music because the beat is still there.
In the light of this fundamental characteristic of rock music, let us ask: Can the driving beat of rock music be legitimately used to sing Christian songs? The answer to this question depends upon the effects of the rock beat upon the human body. If it can be proven that the rock beat has no physical, mental, and spiritual ill effects on humans, then there is no reasons to disapprove its use in Christian songs. On the other hand, if scientific studies indicate that the relentless rock beat alters the mind and excite the organism, then, it is evident that the use of rock beat in Christian songs must be avoided.
The Effects of the Rock Beat. There is a wealth of documentation produced by knowledgeable experts in the field of psychology of music, physiology of music, philosophy of music, and sociology of music, which explains the various negative effects of the rock beat on humans and animals. These experts examine rock music, not from a spiritual, religious perspective, but from social, psychological, and physiological perspectives. Since chapter 8 deals specifically with the effects of rock music, only few studies will be cited in this context.
Some studies indicate that an important reason why rock music affects the body in a way that is unlike any other type of music, is the unique character of the rock beat, technically referred to as "anapestic beat." The anapestic beat of rock music consists, as noted earlier, of a weak-strong sequence: da-da-DA. This anapestic beat stops at the end of each bar or measure. It is as if the music stops and then starts again, causing the listener to subconsciously come to an halt at the end of each bar. This is the opposite of the so-called dactylic or waltz-like beat (DA-da-da) which reflects the heartbeat (LUB-dub-rest) and other rhythms of the body.
Psychiatrist Verle Bell offers a graphic explanation of how rock beat causes addiction: "One of the most powerful releases of the fight-or-flight adrenaline high is music which is discordant in its beats or chords. Good music follows exact mathematical rules, which cause the mind to feel comforted, encouraged, and ‘safe.’ Musicians have found that when they go against these rules, the listener experiences an addictive high.
"Like unscrupulous ‘diet’ doctors who addicted their clients to amphetamines to ensure their continued dependence, musicians know that discordant music sells and sells. As in all addiction, victims become tolerant. The same music that once created a pleasant tingle of excitement no longer satisfies. The music must become more jarring, louder, and more discordant. One starts with soft rock, then rock ‘n’ roll, then on up to heavy metal music."."
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There is site after site after site with this garbage on it.
Most of them get much of their information from John Diamond,M.D.
His website is
http://www.diamondcenter.net/
I have one of Dr. Diamond's books. It rambles about such topics as the need to do the "thymus thump" (beating your chest in essence) to the dangers of "sanpaku eyes" (Japanese term about having the white of the eyes showing on three sides), to this anapestic beat stuff.
He himself lists his name as Dr. John Diamond, M.D., D.P.M., F.R.A.N.Z.C.P., M.R.C.Psych., F.I.A.P.M., D.I.B.A.K., . Now, M.D. means "medical doctor",
DPM is "doctor of podiatric medicine" (foot doctor), but I'm damned if I know just by looking what all that other crap is. I did a web search about that FIAPM thing, and apparently, this is so special only Dr. Diamond has this credential. The FRANZCP thing appears to be something like a Fellow Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatry.
Anyway, I think most MDs think Diamond's theories are "unorthodox".
So, is this anapestic driven rock music spawn of Satan?
Does this beat interfere with your heartbeat and make you weak?
Funny, but the song "Pour Some Sugar on Me" does make me think of some devilish things....maybe the anapestic beat IS the tool of Satan!
:)
You decide.
Ending note- The opposite of anapestic meter is dactylic...
http://www.cso.org/main.taf?p=5,5,3,1,30
"The true significance of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony is to be found in the notes on the page—in his distinctive use of rhythm and pioneering sense of key relationships. By the time it’s over, we can no longer hear the ordinary dactylic rhythm (a dotted eighth note followed by a sixteenth note) in the same way again, and—even if we have no technical terms to explain it—we sense that our basic understanding of harmony has been turned upside-down."
CodeWarrior
captdunsel
independentm...
jeffmorse752
