Acoustics: Use Music to Affect Your Mood, Energy, and Focus
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Music is a powerful tool that can shift your mood, energise your mornings, enhance your focus during the day, bring deep relaxation at night and so much more. It influences everyone, regardless of age or culture because it taps into the brain’s emotion centre that shapes our overall sense of wellbeing. Understanding how different types of music impact these states enables us to support our daily rhythms.
Morning Energy: Starting Your Day with the Right Soundtrack
Mornings set the tone for the day, and the right music can significantly impact your energy and motivation. Upbeat music with a tempo/speed of 120–140 beats per minute (BPM), engages the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), triggering the ‘fight or flight’ response that increases heart rate and energises the body. This response prepares you for the day by stimulating the release of adrenaline, promoting alertness and readiness. While these chemicals are often associated with high stress, they are essential in balanced amounts to make us feel sharp and energised.
Beta brainwaves, which operate between 13–30 Hz (Hertz), are also triggered by fast-paced music that is rhythmic. They become active when you engage in critical thinking and concentration.
To clarify, a Hertz is a measure of frequency, indicating how many cycles occur per second. In this case, it measures the electrical pulses of brain activity.
These combined body and mind responses can fill you with positive energy and focus for the day ahead – and who doesn’t want to start their day like that?
Some examples from YouTube are ‘Happy’ by Pharrell Williams or ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd.
To ensure you get a healthy dose feel-good chemicals, pick songs that resonate with you personally.
Lift your mood and energy by stimulating beta waves with upbeat music.
Daytime Focus: Enhancing Concentration and Cognitive Flow
Maintaining focus during the day can be challenging, but music may help. Instrumental music around 60-90 BPM can stimulate alpha brainwaves (8–13 Hz), promoting a state of relaxed alertness, ideal for productive work.
If you want to enhance beta waves for innovative or critical thinking, caution is recommended as fast-paced music can also be overstimulating making it challenging to maintain focus. One option is to listen to energising music just before engaging in complex tasks, rather than during them.
Theta brainwaves (4–7 Hz) are activated during more creative or problem-solving tasks. These can be encouraged by listening to repetitive, ambient music, for example around 60-70 BPM.
It’s important to note that stimulating one type of brainwave doesn’t mean others are inactive. As you have just read, music within the same BPM can support both alpha and theta brainwave states.
Just be aware, music with lyrics, high volume, or sudden tempo changes can distract your focus. Especially if you really enjoy it.
If you are struggling to concentrate, you might try some forms of classical music, and lo-fi hip-hop beats to help promote calmness allowing your mind to focus.
For those who find any type of background noise counterproductive (me included), silence might be the better option. It’s vital to find what works for you and your work environment.
Slower, simple instrumental music at low volume can help you block out distracting noise and improve workflow by stimulating alpha waves.
This doesn’t work for everyone; some people need silence.
Evening: Calming the Mind and Body
As the day winds down, transitioning to music that supports relaxation is crucial for both mental and physical recovery. Slow music at a tempo of 60–80 BPM activates the rest and digest response that calms the body, reduces heart rate, and promotes relaxation. While this BPM can also stimulate alpha brainwaves for calm alertness, evening music should be more tranquil with soft simple melodies and an ambient feel. This helps brain activity transition to delta (0.5–4 Hz) and theta brainwaves, which support deep relaxation and the early stages of sleep. Theta brainwaves are engaged during daydreaming and deeply relaxed states, including states of creativity mentioned earlier.
The BPM or tempo of music is just one aspect of how music can stimulate or calm us. Many other features come into play as well, such as a simple structure/melody versus a complex one, the use of major and minor notes, and more. As an example, alpha waves can be induced with a piece like ‘Weightless Pt. 6’ by Marconi Union, while ‘Golden Light’ by East Forest, stimulates more delta and theta waves, yet both pieces have similar BPMs. It’s worth noting that ‘Golden Light’ also incorporates nature sounds which, along with other auditory elements are topics worthy of deeper exploration in future articles.
When listening to calming music, the body releases dopamine, which is linked to pleasure and relaxation, while simultaneously reducing cortisol, the stress hormone. This balance fosters a peaceful state, ideal for unwinding after a long day.
Slow and soothing music with simple melodies will help increase delta and theta waves making it easier to relax.
How Music Alleviates Stress: The Brain and Body Connection
Music plays a significant role in alleviating stress through its impact on the limbic system, which governs emotional processing. Soothing music prompts the amygdala to signal a shift away from the fight or flight response, enabling a calmer state of mind. This process also engages the vagus nerve, a crucial part of our rest and digest process that furthers this response by slowing the heart rate and fostering a relaxed state.
The amygdala determines how we feel about music based on memories that are also stored in the limbic system in the hippocampus. This is why music tied to positive memories can lift our mood and reduce stress, whereas songs associated with negative experiences can evoke sadness or anger.
Personal Responses: The Power of Memory and Association
Our responses to music are deeply personal, shaped by unique memory associations and sensory makeup. A song that evokes a happy memory can activate neural pathways that release dopamine, enhancing feelings of wellbeing. However, a song that resonates positively for one person might not have the same effect on another, due to differences in personal experiences and familiarity. For example, you can see this at gatherings when different generations can’t relate to each other’s tastes in music.
The Iso Principle: Using Music to Move from Sadness to Positivity
The Iso Principle is a music therapy technique that transitions someone’s emotional state from negative to positive by matching their current mood with music and gradually changing it. This approach mirrors the empathy of a friend who listens to you and gradually helps lift your spirits, instead of demanding you cheer up. If they tried this, you would likely be even more upset. It’s the same with music. Here’s how to use the Iso Principle:
· Start with music that matches your current mood (e.g., slow, melancholic songs if feeling sad). E.g. ‘Someone Like You’ by Adele
· Gradually shift to more uplifting music, like ‘Viva La Vida’ by Cold Play
· Eventually move to more energising tracks, such as ‘Uptown Funk’ by Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars.
This gradual approach helps the nervous system transition smoothly from the fight or flight response to a rest and digest state, fostering a positive shift in mood without overstimulation. The key is choosing music you like.
Transition through the Iso Principle steps to help establish a positive frame of mind.
The Multifaceted Impact of Acoustics
Music is a powerful tool that can significantly influence mood, energy, and focus, but it is only one part of acoustics that impacts our sense of wellbeing. Even within music, aspects such as its use for motivation and confidence, as well as understanding qualities beyond BPM and volume, that can affect our behaviour and mood.
The sounds of our environment, whether rhythmic music, café white noise, or natural soundscapes, can shape our daily experiences. The broader impact of these varied sounds on our mental fortitude and resilience are topics for future articles.
For now, consider how you use or don’t use music in your day and start curating playlists to enrich your sense of wellbeing.
To learn more about acoustics and how the other senses influence your daily life, check out more articles at Nriched Living and follow Total Sensory Wellbeing on Instagram.
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