Writing music for workouts

When writing music for a sport or type of exercise I should first consider what amount of concerntration, grace and skill are required, what amount of self-awareness and self-esteem are needed and whether or not I need to avoid high-intensity stress or be motivated by its presence. Taking such considerations has indicated to professor Kate Gfeller that music does make a difference in performances in sport classes. 97% of the sport classes commented that music improved their mental attitude toward activites, whilst 79% commented that it aided their pace, strength and endurance. 

To aid pace and coordination, a song should have the appropriate rhythm for the activity. For any workout the music should be preferred by the listener as to facilitate focus on the workout or sport. 

If I were to be choosing music to listen to myself for a workout or sport activity I should choose music that sets the desired energetic pace that I find enjoyable and that makes me feel stimulated. Doing this would improve the chances that through the process of something called 'Entrainment and Rhythmic Synchronisity' will give me the perception that time is going faster than it actually is. This would be a particularly beneficial technique for those brutal workouts.

Listen to playlists from 8tracks.com!

Click over to 8tracks.com and find playlists to suit your needs. Whether you need some background music to help you study, some sad music to make you feel connected, upbeat music to dance to or some workout music to do, well, your workout too, 8tracks.com users have made playlists to fit anyones needs!

Music and Concentration

I think everyone finds it hard to concentrate on their studies at some point in time if not every time they sit down and attempt to study. Seen as I am trying to find out songwriting techniques and their psychological impacts I thought looking at how music effects concentration and what kind of music we should listen to to enhance our concentration and studying results would be fitting. Hopefully, I will find some things out that will benefit me not only in my song-writing but also when I'm trying to do assignments.

I've often heard people express that playing classical music in the background helps one concentrate and study. I always trusted in this to be true due to the fact that most of these people were usually either teachers or characters from films or TV shows, yet never actually bothered to find out whether or not it was fact. On a similar note, people argue that music either distracts them or helps them concentrate. So what is best; listening to music whilst studying or studying in silence? Does it differ between people or is our concentration effected in the same way by the same type of music?

First off, I should remind you that listening to music activates a part of our brain called the "Nucleus Accumbens," which in turn triggers the release of dopamine. Dopamine is chemical that is released when we feel pleasured. If you feel pleasure when listening to music then this chemical will be released. Knowing this psychologists performed a study, published in the journal of Neuroscience of Behaviour and Physiology, on people, concerning whether or not music can help us complete tasks such as assignments faster. The study showed that a "person's ability to recognize images, letters, and numbers was faster when rock or classical music was playing compared to no music." To further studies on this area another part of the study showed that workers made fewer errors when listening to music and were happier. These two results indicate that when you are revising or wanting to learn something visual in as little time as possible you should listen to either classical or rock music and, if you are dreading such a task or you want to refrain from getting bored listening to some type of music will help you. 

In a similar study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, if you are an expert at what you do music will help you to work "more accurately" when music you like is playing in the background, conveyed by their study on surgeons who were tested on how accurately they worked when listening to music they liked, music that they didn't like and listening to no music whatsoever. On these occasions listen to no music at all was actually the least beneficial of the three scenarios. In other words, if you are an expert at something and you want to listen to music make a playlist of your favourite songs and do it!

 In contrast, when learning something new, such as a complicated maths equation or a historic timeline, listening to music will only decrease your performance as concluded by researchers at the University of Wales Institute. This is because learning something new is very demanding to your brain and I guess, though I'm not to sure about this, listening to music will demand brain power too which would mean that less power is left over for you to use for learning.

In comparison a study, performed by Sheela Doraiswamy, on students to see how their concerntration was effected in five different scenarios during a test showed that those that took a test in a quiet environment or with a audio track with three words repeated playing in the background scored better than those that took it with a audio track with a variety of numbers repeated playing and music vocals that students chose and didn't like playing. Doraiswamy also mentions research from the University of Dayton who found that students 'performed better at spatial and linguistic processing if Mozart was playing in the background.' This doesn't necessarily mean that classical music helps you concentrate, rather that instrumental music helps you concentrate. This writer (Doraiswamy) suggests students to listen to instrumental jazz, classical, or a movie score (namely the Social network soundtrack). What i've found from this research is that if you want to write music for someone to listen to whilst studying make it instrumental.

Furthermore, when making a playlist to work to pick songs that you know. Do not listen to new songs! Listening to something that you haven't heard before increases your dopamine levels and makes your task seem less interesting (though it probably is) than the music, resulting in the lose of interest and motivation to do complete the task.

"For logical subjects, like Math, music should calm the mind and help concentration, whereas for creative subjects, the music should reflect the emotion that the student is trying to express.”  - Dr. Emma Gray.

Dr. Emma Gray a clinical psychologist investigated exactly what I want to know. What effect does music have on studying? She found that choosing the right type of music for the subject you are working on "stimulates learning and enhances concentration," by comparing those that listened to music of certain genres compared to those who listened to no music whilst studying for specific topics. Here is a brief summary of what she found:

• To write music for math, music should be 60-70 beats per minute in tempo and should have a melody and tone range similar to that in classical music to allow the students to study for longer and retain more information. (These students actually scored an average of 12% higher on their maths exams due to this!)
• To write music for science, humanities and languages studies music should be 50-80 beats per minute in tempo to allow the brain to learn and remember new facts.
• To write music for English, Drama or art write in the genre of emotive rock or pop to enhance creative performance. 

In conclusion to this part of my research and listening to different playlists whilst studying myself I've found that different types of music help when applied to different scenarios, such as when I'm studying maths music with lyrics put me off but mellow instrumental music helped me keep concentration. I find that whatever I am listening to whilst studying needs to be in a playlist, if it isn’t I’m distracted from my work and I miss a bunch of time that I could have  been studying, trying to pick the next song. Furthermore I find that when writing essays I’m either better off not listening to music or listening to background music yet not pop, new or upbeat music. That’s just me though, I think it will differ between everyone.