Do you have diverse musical tastes? Do you like country music, rap, classical, popular ’80s hits, and/or making your own compositions? Expanding your musical horizon has more of an impact on your learning than you would think.
When listening to a variety of music genres your mental health, mood, and concentration improve. For instance, everyone has their own ways of staying focused when studying. For some people that means playing light music in the background while they study. For others, they learn better when listening to hard rock, or none. Having a busy work environment in the background when studying, for some people, it can help them work faster because it improves their mood. For those who don’t listen to music when working can have the same impact, whichever makes them more comfortable and happier. Most importantly, choosing music that you are familiar with can help you stay focused, rather than a song you don’t know that can come off as a surprise
and distracting. Essentially, with the help of the technology that we have today, people decide for themselves which method works for them.
Besides studying for school, listening to music that people like releases dopamine levels, creating a happy emotion. Music cultivates many other emotions such as relief, for stress, anxiety, and other mental health disorders. There is no “wrong” music genre to listen to, but here are a few genres that can help influence your learning: classical, jazz, world music, and background noise. Classical music has proven to help with reasoning, test scores, and attention. Listening to jazz music reduces stress and, like classical music, can be useful to listen to when studying to improve focus. The next genre of music, world music, brings relaxation and an opportunity to listen to different instruments. The last genre of music is background noise, a genre that provides light sound if study spaces are too quiet and are another advocate for relaxation.
Overall, making your musical listening more diverse makes you smarter! Who doesn’t want that? From listening to music, you are better at identifying memories, minimizing mental health concerns, and relaxing.
If this article inspired you to play music, call us at the Jerry Evans School of music today (630.359.7725), or see our website and come in for a trial lesson!
