The Emotional Connection

Music is very influential and most people today listen to some form of it.  Whether it's rap, rock, alternative, electronic, classical, jazz or pop, everyone has their own preference.  We all connect with the songs we listen to.  They make us a range of emotion like excited, depressed, calm, ect.  Some days you're in the mood for a sad song and other days you'd prefer to listen to something more upbeat.  I'm sure most of us have said "this song is too sad/slow for right now" before.  So how do we emotionally connect with music?

I stumbled upon an interesting article from the Scientific American that discusses this phenomenon.  The article talks about how we relate physical objects to common human expressions.  When we see colours we immediately associate them with emotions.  Commonly, red is anger, green is envy and blue is sad.  We have even adopted common sayings that correlate emotion with colour.  "They have the blues" or "they're green with envy" are common sayings.  the article goes on to suggest that perhaps music is about relating sounds with common human expressions.  Familiar sounds are what enable us to imagine different scenarios.

The fact that people can think and feel in terms of music is still quite a mystery though.  There have been several theories about the general topic, but none are absolute.  Obviously we understand how our brain chemically reacts to music, but the fact that we can think in terms of sound continues to fuel discussions.  Music has been around for a very long time and each individual interprets it differently.  Music has an impact on how we feel.  Everyone reacts to music in a different way though.

Music has even been used for therapy.  Professionals discovered a way to effectively use music to help people restore their emotional well being.

Everyone uses music to cope with certain issues.  We love to listen to it.  It fills our cars, homes and restaurants.  We can emotionally connect with just more than lyrics, so don't dismiss a certain genre.  Just because you can't relate to a certain genre, doesn't mean that no one else can. 

Take some time once in awhile to listen to your favourite songs.  It's important to be aware of your emotional well being and music can help you maintain a healthy body, mind and spirit.