I've Always Known This, Somehow.....

from www.livescience.com

Why Music Gives Us the Chills
By Corey Binns, Special to LiveScience

posted: 20 November 2006 02:30 pm ET

For a willing music audience, the art of drawing emotion from notes is classic.

Composers play with subtle, intricate changes and rates of change to try and elicit emotion. In recent studies, scientists found that people already familiar with the music are more likely to catch a chill at key moments:

When a symphony turns from loud to quiet
Upon entry of a solo voice or instrument
When two singers have contrasting voices
People covered in goose bumps also tend to be driven more by rewards, and less inclined to be thrill- and adventure-seekers, according to research conducted at the Institute for Music Physiology and Musicians’ Medicine in Hanover, Germany.

"Our results suggest that chills depend very much on our ability to interpret the music," said Oliver Grewe, a biologist and musicologist at the institute. "Music is a recreative activity. Even if it is relaxing to listen to, the listener has to recreate its meaning, the feelings it expresses. It is the listener who gives life to the emotions in music."

The researchers' latest findings are currently being reviewed for journal publication, while their previous research has been published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

Music can do more than just give you goose bumps. A melody can:

Ease labor pain
Reduce the need for sedation during surgery
Evoke strong memories
Lessen depression
Listening to your favorite hits can shift your breathing pattern and speed up your heart rate.

Shivers down the spine even show up in brain scans, according to research at McGill University. As chills grow in intensity, bloodflow increases between areas of the brain associated with euphoria-inducing vices like food, sex, and drugs.

In the near future, the German research team plans to further study the central nervous system's reactions to music that gives fans the chills.

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I rarely mix my musical writing with my more esoteric beliefs, but if I have learned anything in this lifetime, it is that music is a special thing, to this planet, to this species.
Music is a form of mathematics, translated to sound. That same math rules colour- and thus hertz (vision) can become megahertz (sound). I refer the listener to a piece by Manneheim Steamroller on the album Seven. In it, the composer took the colours of the rainow, coverted each to a note, gave each note an instrument, and effectively played the rainbow. Don't tell me things are not interconnected-I know better. Crops circles translate to the diatonic scale- again: music. Who will finally play them, and what will the sound created do, to us and this world, and our horrid self-centered perception of this blue-green speck of solar dust?

It is said by the Hindus that to create the Universes, Bramha breathed out a single word- AUM. The cascade of that mighty combination of three sounds still tumbles thru the stars. We are not equipped to hear it, but we DO feel it, and react to it. It is no coincidence that the sounds made by tibetan singing bowls played well sound exactly like recordings made by NASA's Voyager probes of the vibrating rings of debris around planets in our own solar system. What further journeys await us as we reach further, both in and out of our known world.

I challenge the reader to listen with a more open ear, to all that is around her/him.
Here's a starting point.

http://neuroacoustic.com/nasa.html#Uranus

I believe in D.I.Y.

and I am lucky enough to have two bands in my world right now that exemplify why DIY should be done. For those who don't understand, DIY, to me, refers to a time in the
'80's when record companies wouldn't give a lot of people a chance, and bands learned how to go about producing their own records. It was a kind of challenge to the system back then, but now, it just makes sense. Cutting costs, not signing your life away and still managing to get your music out there requires the average group to stop looking for that huge front from a company and get on with the business of making music. and I can tell you- there are tons of amazing musicians out there, creating astounding music very much worth the true listener's time. If you are satisfied with the pablum served up by the radio and tv world, quit reading. If you yearn for something more, stop reading about it and get out there listening!

Seriously.

no one is going to hand you the truth about the good music being made- you have to get out and go listening for it.

Incidently, if you live up in the Chicago area and missed catching Buttercup recently, out on their first tour, well, kick yourself. That's one of the two amazing D.I.Y-ers I was talking about. Del Castillo is the other, for those who haven't figure that out about me yet.

What has spurred this sudden fervor of mine? New CD from Joe Reyes, one of the guys in Buttercup (among many other things.) I've sat listening to it while driving to or from work, and am just astounded with his talent. He's an introspective pop songwriter with influences as wide as Frank Sinatra and what I think could be Nine Inch Nails. He sounds like how I imagine George Harrison could've been, had he had a stronger voice. Yet there's a blues guitarist, a rockstar, and a poet, all kinda mixed in. This fellow's work is worth every effort you might take to check on it.
I am shattered that he may never be a household name, but glad at the same time, because he lets him reach a little deeper than he might if he had to write on a schedule for a corporate machine.

I dunno if Joe has this CD up for sale online anywhere yet, but listen to his EP at his myspace site and then bug the heck out of him for the full length CD. It's called "Colour and Sound", and will it will draw you in, make you misty and put a smile on your face, all at once.

thanks, Joey.

www.myspace.com/joereyesmusic

http://cdbaby.com/cd/reyesjoe2