Music is Important - Music Brings Focus

Music is Important

I have music playing in my head.

Ever since I was a little boy, I would hear musical lines and melodies and rhythms playing in my head. Taken from the environment, taken from natural sounds, taken from conversations and ideas around me, I would pursue those musical and lyrical ideas and start stinging songs about them. And I would sing pop songs and get stuck on “earworm” melodies (although I have a perfect solution to getting stuck on a song - ask me when you see me next), and drum on the table until mom made me stop. And again. And again. I just have had music flowing in my head and I can pull down Samuel Barber or King’s X or Future at any time easily. I’m “musical”.

But not everyone has music just playing on a mental tape in their head and those people are called “weird”. Just kidding, but you like to have music playing when you work. Oh, how you kill me but I get it. Music is important and if you don’t have it, you want to hear it. I have come to understand that music helps you to focus on something as the brain locks into something familiar and comforting. My blog talks about this often and the science backs it up. But my comfort is internal and I work well in silence.

Do you love silence and work better with no music? Further study forming here.

For the sake of today’s blog, I’ll just stick to the MUSIC BRINGS FOCUS theme and say that no matter what your style or genre or artist (can you really work to that music?), we all need a focal point for our brain to concentrate and music causes me to focus on it rather than my work. So, I am that musician that focuses for many hours a day in silence. Strange. Music moves me greatly and I respond quickly when I do hear it. I become more sensitized maybe. It has been said that music is as much about the space as the notes. I agree.

The silence you see in me is offset by the mental tape and space I enjoy inside me.

Take a quiet break sometime too and maybe, just maybe, put in some earbuds (person sitting next to me at dinner).

#kensteorts