Music Response Essay

Music has remarkably influenced human being in various ways since the early ages. In fact, every known culture on earth has music throughout the course of their history. As for my own history, my encounter of music would be the daily drive to school with my father. Whenever he turns the radio on, songs were being played and unknowingly, my feet were then tapping with the rhythm of the upbeat song.

Since then, it has developed a sense of hunger in me, having to understand how music can significantly affect the human body and mind. In fact, it is questions like, how can music causes our body to react the way it is, to feel the emotions, and heal the soul and body?

With that curiosity in mind, several findings were carried out with my group

Simply by listening to a short music clip can easily stir emotions and feelings in a person. In other terms, our mood changes in response to the type of music we heard. According to one study in Missouri University (2013), various melodies were played to test for any improvement in the participants’ mood. Participants who listened to upbeat songs were found to be happier than those without it. In fact, upbeat songs help the release of “feel-good hormones” in the brain that elevates people’s mood and

From a study in Frontiers in Psychology (2013), suggests that sad music sparks two different kind of emotional response, namely, perceived emotion and felt emotion. The result revealed that people are perceived to be more emotionally darkening. While in actual experience, the subjects listening to the sad music feel more romantic, soothing, and less tragic than what they actually perceived.

A similar research can be found in Durham University in the United Kingdom and the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, published in PLOS ONE. The study, conversely, also showed that some people experience negative feelings of profound grief associated with sad songs. This is due to some memorable experience which can relate to their sadness, and at such, induced negativities. As a matter of fact, sad songs act as a companion for me to recover from interpersonal loss, that “knows” what I am going through. On other occasions, melancholy music can be heart-breaking when it is associated with traumatic