The Healing Powers Of Music
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by: Jack Wogan
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Word Count: 441
Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 Time: 7:55 AM
While, arguably, music gives us all aesthetic pleasure, for a long time, it has been performed, in principal, for religious or ceremonial purposes. With romanticism, though, it was somehow humanized, being perceived rather as an emotion conveyor. And with the replacement of classical music with popular music as favorite with audiences in the second half of the twentieth century, music has become first of all a form of entertainment.
But apart from all these purposes, music can be used also for healing people, improving their physical or mental help. This therapeutic effect was noticed already in the seventeenth century by Robert Burton, who wrote an entire book about the power of music in treating people affected by melancholia and depression. Our century brought the final proof as to this, when doctor Michael J. Crawford showed that music improves the condition of schizophrenic patients.
Music is, however, even more potent than that, being effective in solving not only mental or spiritual troubles, but also quite physical ones. If Beethoven was able to create musical pieces in spite of his total deafness, this was possible because the deaf are able to feel music through the vibrations produced in their bodies. This means that music can be used for treating sensory impairments, too.
Though music therapy is known to work by building a relationship between the patient and therapist with the aid of music, music can have also a direct effect, rhythm, melody and harmony being accountable for reducing pain, stress, helping one to forget problems or remember them, in order to get liberated, etc. Of course, the pieces have to be selected carefully, according to the condition to be cured. You couldn't expect a schizophrenic patient to feel better, if you make him listen to Black Sabbath's 'Paranoid', with all that ring modulation. But someone feeling claustrophobic could certainly feel better, if listening to Jean Michel Jarre's 'Oxygene', with that sense of vast, open space, clarity and lightness. Therefore, the perfect match between the condition to be treated and the piece of music used is a must. You'd surely not give some asthma pills to a patient suffering from heart disease.
So, if you are interested in using your music as therapy, too, why not visiting Sounds Great Music, where you can select some effects pedals able to impart your sounds a curative note, such as compressors for stabilizing the volume and eliminating harshness, or reverb units, able to create gentle, audible replicas of your thoughts, so that to populate your solitude or to relieve your stress provoked by focusing for long hours at work?
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You can purchase some stunning effects pedal from Sounds Great Music if you want to enhance the quality of your music.
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