The transcription is about a book called "Wired for Music" by Adriana Barton, which explores the power of music in our lives. The book combines personal stories, medical studies, and research from neuroscience, biology, and anthropology. It discusses how music can have potent effects on our emotions, health, and well-being. The author also shares her own experiences with music, including her struggles with injuries and emotional scars. The book has received positive feedback and is being embraced by various groups, including music therapists, medical professionals, parents, and musicians. Overall, the book emphasizes the importance of intentional and mindful engagement with music.
You've just heard one of my favorite masterpieces of classical music. It's the second movement of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B minor. This masterpiece has an incredible power to articulate what emotions I feel when words often fail. It guides me when I feel uncertain and inspires me when I feel anxious. Every part of my life, past, present, and future, had, has, and will have a soundtrack to it. By this, I don't mean that music is just a background noise we listen to as we go through life.
Quite the opposite. Adriana Barton's book, Wired for Music, tells us that we can tune into music every day and still miss out on some of its potent effects. But if we pay attention, and if we listen to music intentionally, in the right doses, music can double as a mild antidepressant, painkiller, sleeping pill, memory aid, and enhance athletic performance while supporting healthy aging. This book is for music lovers everywhere. Adriana Barton tells us about the power of music by combining medical studies, discoveries by pioneering neuroscientists, and research from biology and anthropology.
She also tells us her personal story of studying the cello for nearly two decades, a pursuit she had to leave with physical injuries and emotional scars. In this interview, we talked about her writing process, how we can listen to music more intentionally, and how to practice music therapy. And since we are getting very close to the Christmas holidays, I have to say that this book is the perfect gift for a person who is passionate about music.
I hope you enjoy listening to this episode of Our To-Do Podcast, and let's begin. Adriana, thank you so much for coming to my podcast, and before we hit the record button, our conversation was getting really interesting, because you asked me how I found out about your book, and I told you that one of my previous guests recommended it, and that I work in the field of music, and you were telling about the story that how different people find your book.
Are there any interesting stories that, you know, that you have heard so far about your book, like how people find it, what may be the reasons? What I'm finding interesting is that many people from different areas are picking up on it. My book's only been out, it's called Wired for Music, a search for health and joy through the science of sound. It's only been out for just over a month, and I'm getting this morning, for instance, someone said it's blowing up in the music therapy world.
Then, meanwhile, I've been invited to speak to two different medical conferences to talk about music and the brain. Meanwhile, I'm getting interview requests to talk about what parents of children need to know about how music training, how to do it right, frankly, how to introduce children to music without having them go through some of the experiences I talk about in my book. So it's got this, then there's the health and wellness side of things, and musicians also are interested.
So I've been surprised to see the fairly different groups of people who have been engaging with my book already. That's really interesting to hear how many different people are interested in the effects of music. Could you please tell a little bit about your book, like on the broad terms, what is it about for the people who might not yet have heard about it? I call it a blend of science and story. So there is a memoir component where I talk about my very early introduction to quite a rigid system of classical music training, and then the effects of that on me.
I ended up having physical injuries, and I would say a bit of a mental health breakdown too eventually after 17 years. And then I was alienated from music for some time and had to negotiate a new relationship with music over time because it was something that was burning inside of me. I had to resolve this unfinished business with music in my life. So that's the surface memoir story. But there are also stories of our culture, and by our culture I'll say Western European societies.
There are many other cultures mentioned in passing, but that's the culture I know best. And then there's a neuroscience exploration, an anthropological exploration, look at history and music history. And embedded in all of this are health tips that are actually quite practical ways of using music to make our lives better. It is such a complex topic, and you are so good at looking at the music and the role it plays in our lives through your own lens.
I'm assuming some of your readers were connecting to certain parts of your own life, but at the same time, the art of using music as a therapy about our cultural element. So it is a book that touches so many topics, and it was so well written, you know, in the sense that it encompasses so much, and it's such a complex topic, and you approached it so well that it can describe everything in such a clarity, you know, I really enjoyed reading it.
Thank you so much. I will tell you that anyone who is close to me will tell me, will tell you that I didn't make it look easy. This was not an easy task to try and weave together a narrative with so many threads in a way that was readable or even enjoyable. People have said it's a page turner, which is not normally a description people use for a nonfiction book. So I'm very gratified to hear that.
But it's really, I've been making my living as a writer for 25 years. So I think that that combined with a lot of revision, and I also worked with a writing coach despite my experience as a journalist at Canada's national newspaper, despite my work as an editor, despite in magazines, despite all of that, I still decided it was helpful to get an outside consultant to help me tighten things and figure out a voice that would work for this material.
Because it was a lot of research, I did probably five or six times the amount of research that ended up in the book. And the book is already research heavy. So I'm seeing that for that type of book that reads smoothly and is, I really wanted it to be a good read and not just an informative read. And it takes a lot to make it that way. What was the first question you asked the writing coach? You said that you've been a writer for a really long time.
What was kind of concerning you? What was the first advice that you asked? I didn't actually ask for advice in that way with a question. It was more that I knew that this was a mountain I was going to climb. And I knew that as a journalist, I was used to writing pieces that were 700 words or a thousand words or tops, 4,000 words might be a very, very long piece. And I knew that this book would be about 65,000 words.
So it requires a different timeline and a different organizational principle than I'd ever worked with before. And I knew that I didn't have a background doing books, writing books. And I knew that also because the material was tender for me, psychologically, that going back there, I mean, I'm a very different person than I was in those scenes where I show you as a child and as a teenager, I'm a different person. I knew that going back there was going to be difficult.
And so I wanted someone to sort of hold my hand along the way and someone who could also have, you know, the accountability partner, breaking down a book into little steps is the way to do it. And so I would meet with her every two weeks or so and have a progress update and maybe read some passages to her. This was a neat, one of the best pieces of advice she gave me. Her name is Marielle Shea, by the way, if she's online for anyone who's looking for a really good book critic coach.
She recommended that I read Rough Draft to her out loud, which was really interesting to do because it helped me make the book. I started thinking of the audience for the book right from the get go, that there was someone on the other side of these words. And also it was an oral, a kind of oral tradition book from the start. So when the time came for me to narrate my own audio book and for that, I actually had to audition.
Authors don't realize when they're writing that they might not end up narrating their own book. And so I was taken aback, but it made perfect sense when I did it because it's a very different skill, narrating versus writing. For me, though, because I read so many of the passages out loud along the way, that did two things. It got me used to doing that, but also it informed how I wrote sentences, because when you narrate or read out loud very back-ended, complicated sentences, you notice that when you're reading, you notice, oh, that is not a smooth way to tell a story.
And so I was very concerned with making sentences sound good and making them readable from the start. And that was very helpful in the narration process. I was grateful for that work that I'd done. And simplifying science is a challenge in itself. It's interesting, you know, like as you said this, it reminded me that one thing that I noticed in my favorite writers, if you like read their books first before watching a video on YouTube of their interview or the way they are in real life, do you feel that they write exactly the way they speak in real life? And you never know, do they attune their writing to the way they speak or is it working the other way around? Malcolm Gladwell, like I cannot say that he's my favorite writer, but like I read his books and I think like then I started watching his public speeches and I was like, he speaks exactly the way he writes, you know.
It is very interesting what you're saying. You hear the draft out loud and you look, hear the sentence and revise it. It's an interesting approach. I would say that I don't necessarily write the way I speak because for this book, I made very conscious decisions about the tone that I would use. And I wanted this book to, I wanted the science passages to be as much a story as the narrative personal passages. I wanted the science to have a story, to have intrigue, to have some tension in it, but also to be very readable and relaxed in the writing because there's so much in the book that I didn't want to take a highbrow, snooty literary approach.
I mean, I think literary writing is beautiful and I'm so often admiring of the poetry and the language and the richness. But for this book, I didn't want to distract or complicate overly because I wanted the book to be relatable to many different people. And I also think the way we read today, simplicity is appreciated. I don't want to simplify your work by just summarizing it to become years of work. But the way I could, if somebody asked me to summarize your book to someone, I would say that it is a book about connecting with music once again, reconnecting with music, you know, that we need to be more intentional with this important parts of our lives.
This is the book about that. Is my summary correct or am I, or is it my interpretation completely? I think that's very much the message. In fact, that's the reason for the title I chose. The title I chose, I had to champion it with my publisher because the publisher had other ideas that they felt initially would be more marketable. But I felt very strongly that this was the title I wanted because I want people to see themselves as wired for music, exquisitely wired.
And in the book, I talk about the very deep history in Paleolithic times from whence capacities for music that we all share might have emerged. I want people to own that. And I was delighted when I went to an art opening recently, the artist who I didn't know very well had ordered my book and he said, it hasn't arrived yet, but I am wired for music. That painting over there was painted to music and he really wanted me to know this.
And I just love that that's what he got just from the title alone, because that is my intention. So your description, although there's a lot more to it, is quite astute, I think. As I mentioned, I work as a music editor and one of the questions that I got during my job interview, I was asked like, oh, can you tell me why, what is music to you? Why is it important? And I said that, you know, music, I haven't met a person yet who told me like, oh, I don't like music, you know, I never listened to music, never liked a song in my life.
But it is the degrees of how we engage with music that matters. And like personally to me, you know, throughout my life, music played a really important role with engagement. Do you think that we are accustomed, like we're, as you say, wired for music, like each of us? Or are there degrees between people? You know, some people are more musical, more attuned to like music, while the others are not? Or is it equal to everyone? Well, you're very correct.
You're correct that almost everybody does love music. They love listening to music. And that's part of the wiring. It's a very small percentage, I'd have to check my notes, but it's something like three or four percent of people have a condition called musical anhedonia, which means they cannot experience pleasure from music. And it's considered a neurological condition. It's not the norm. There's wiring in the brain that is a bit different, atypical from the rest of us.
But that's a very rare condition. And then there are people who call themselves unmusical, and they call themselves tone deaf, or say, I couldn't carry a beat to save my life. And that's the sad part, because something like 17 to 24, again, I'd have to check the exact figures. But let's say 20 percent of people in Western European societies will describe themselves that way. But in fact, what the neuroscientists have shown is really only two percent of people are, quote, tone deaf, which means they can't hear the difference between a white note on the piano and the black note beside it, for example.
And even fewer people have trouble perceiving a steady beat in music. So that gap of less than two percent and roughly 20 percent is largely explained by culture. What would be the main reasons why is there such a gap between those two groups? Well, it's quite involved. So in Western European societies, starting more than 2,000 years ago, Christianity emerged. And prior to Christianity, we had in pagan Rome, music was embedded in every aspect of life. So funerals, dancing, you know, gladiator fights, parades, religious rites, political rallies everywhere you were, feasting, etc.
There was music in day in, day out, everywhere, and people participated. The Christian fathers, and this is, they are quoted as saying this, so it's not me making up a story. They are quoted as saying bugles and horns and trumpets are more suited for beasts and that one should not play in musical instruments, that they could lead you to sin, sinful acts and that rhythm, rhythm itself, rhythmic activities were sinful or the path of the devil.
And this was a very strong belief system to the extent that the only instrument permitted in churches was the human voice. And even then in church, music was stripped of harmony and rhythm. Gregorian chant is considered exquisitely beautiful by many people, but it is stripped down to the barest. It moves mostly stepwise, meaning one tone to the next, and it's in unison, which means no harmony. It was only sung by men and only in church. And that was the official music of the Roman Catholic Church for more than a thousand years.
And you could say, well, in church, what about weddings and parties? Yes, people would do that on the side, but it was frowned upon to be dancing vigorously with your hips, etc., that we're wired to do. We're wired to dance with our whole bodies to the extent in an MRI machine, if a person is lying perfectly still and listening to music, the motor region of the brain is activated because the body wants to move when it hears music.
So this tradition we have in concert halls of sitting perfectly still, motionless, not calling out, not joining in, is very strange and unusual for a species that's wired the way we are. And in many cultures, that's not how people interact with music. There's participation at performances. And also the separation, this formal separation between performer and spectator is not as rigid in other places in the world. So that's just a sketch in answer to your question. For others, too, there's this expectation of excellence from day one.
So small children are scarred for life when they're told not to sing in the holiday choir. They're told at times just to mouth the words and pretend they're singing because the choir director is more interested in perfection in the performance than nurturing a young child's musical experience. And children's vocal cords and vocal ability will develop at different rates, just like a reading ability. And if you shame a child early on, the research shows they're far less likely to engage in music of any kind for life.
And there are a lot of people who have been harmed that way musically, to the extent that they can't participate, they don't feel they can, they've suffered public humiliation. That's so sad, to be honest, like, because I went to musical school, and I, everything that you say about rigidity and perfection, made me like really dislike it. You know, I was learning how to play violin. And the day I finished the musical school, at the age of 16, 17, I told my mom, I said, like, let's burn all the sheet music, because it was like, it was exactly what it was.
As you described, it's about perfection. You can't make mistakes, you can't enjoy what you're doing. I think there was a sentence in your book that stuck in my brain, where you said, like, we don't play music, we work music. Oh, yes, I said, we don't play our instruments, we work them. Yeah, yeah, that's the sentence. Yeah. And it was exactly that. And it is. It is really sad. As I understand, when Christianity kind of got this rigid, centralized control over music, what is like allowed or not, and then obviously, kind of throughout history, and then in the end, when, like, you know, in the 19th century, kind of as the tightness, tight control over music and from church seeded, therefore, like, we've got more freedom to express the way.
If you don't mind, I will just clarify that, I mean, music came back in churches in rich ways, you know, with when the organs were allowed in as a, you know, massive pipe organs, and then polyphony, you know, the harmony was developed in the church as well, like it was stripped away, and then gradually introduced, but the church regulated which harmonies were allowed to be sung. So the rules of counterpoint, which you study in music school, are quite strict, the church would determine which harmony could move to the next, the progression of harmonies is and the interactions between them is counterpoint, essentially, and each century had different sets of rules.
So it's like playing chess. But I will, I will say that church music is very a rich tradition and became very elaborate. It wasn't just 200 years ago, as stripped away as it became in the Middle Ages, it became extremely rich, but in controlled ways, I would say. I also wanted to mention super important around the type of training you had, and I'm sorry, your training was your introduction to music was as strict as mine was, it sounds like I'm sorry to hear, because it's, it takes a while to get back from that.
The reason it's so unfortunate is that some of the main benefits from music come from how music stimulates the pleasure and reward circuitry in the brain. And that might sound like a fluffy thing, but it really isn't because it's from that mechanism that we get pain relief, and other benefits. So if you think about it, you imagine a child playing an instrument. If they're in a critical environment, an intensely critical environment, it's not the pleasure and reward circuitry that will be stimulated, it will be what is called the periventricular system.
And I don't know, maybe it's periventricular, I don't have the perfect pronunciation. But that system is even sometimes referred to as the punishment circuitry. And that's the circuitry that primes us for fight, flight or freeze, it fills us with pumps us with adrenaline and gets us ready to respond to a threat. And so the neuroscientists have shown that when that system is activated, it short circuits the pleasure reward system. So you're literally blocking the ability for someone playing an instrument to experience those pleasure and reward benefits in that type of training.
And it's also been shown that that type of approach, a critical approach, actually hampers learning. It's not the best environment to learn anything. That's really so interesting, you know, because I get kind of flashbacks and make connections to the past. Because after I graduated from the music school, I was really into rock and metal music. And after a couple of years, I think I needed to recuperate from the experience. I bought my first electric guitar and started learning playing guitar on my own.
And it was such a pleasurable thing because I was in control with what songs I play, what songs I learned, like how bad I play and how I'm going to perfect my playing, you know. That's fantastic. I'm so glad you found a way to do that. I think I never wanted to be a professional violin player or guitar player. It was all about pleasure. So I think that's the reason why once the rigidity of the school was gone, I had freedom to do what I wanted to do.
And look, in the end, you became a professional in music. You are a music-based professional nonetheless, which is really neat. I hope you enjoy listening to my conversation with Adriana. And before we will continue, I would like to tell you about my monthly newsletter called Genius and Inc. Every month, I send a list of my favorite books and their summaries. If you are a voracious reader and would like to find books similar to that of Adriana's and send your questions to the future guests of this podcast, you can join Genius and Inc.
through newsletter via link in the description. Hope to see you there. Let's continue with the rest of this episode. When my relatives were saying, like, with listening to the music, you will never earn money when you grow up. Today, I'm like, hello, you were wrong. I love that. I'll tell you that I toyed at one point. It wouldn't have worked as a book title. But I toyed at one point with the idea of calling it playing badly.
Because I thought, well, that would be kind of a gutsy way to deliver the message as well that there are benefits to playing music badly. Yeah, no. From my own experience, I play badly. You're absolutely right. It is really interesting how, like, you know, the identity of many kids, including when I was a teenager, is so defined by music we listen. Like, I was a rock kid. There are teenagers right now who enjoy hip hop and all their identities revolving around the music they listen and the genre.
But not many of them get engaged with actually getting this professional, not professional, but, like, getting deeper, learning how to play instruments, you know, learning about more about music. And it's really, I don't know if it is, I doubt that most of them had bad experience that I had at musical school. What do you think stops those kids from, like, saying, okay, let me get a, I don't know, degree or musical kind of training in order to understand deeper music that I like? But is there a reason why there is such a discrepancy between education and hobby? Well, there is a passage in my book where I talk about the stronghold that classical music has over music teaching and music training.
It really, that system has dominated how music is taught both in high school levels and in university levels. It's a dominant framework. And certain music educators now are trying to challenge that. And one is a fellow named Ethan Hine at New York University. He's written a book about how to teach electronic music to kids. And this is like a revolutionary manual, because it's very, very recent that it's even occurred to educators that there are other ways of teaching music and other types of music that could be taught.
And so slowly, certain researchers are saying, well, maybe there are lessons from hip hop that children could be taught. The idea of flip the script and create your own music instead of passively consuming it. But it's very early days. And there's also some interesting discussion happening around how bizarre it is to teach multicultural classrooms the music of 18th and 19th century white aristocrats, because that's what classical music is. And it's not relevant to a lot of children's cultural backgrounds or histories.
And it's time to include other approaches to music making and other ways of thinking about teaching music. And I'll give you an example. I'm very lucky because my son is 14 now. And at his school, he has this really enlightened music teacher who there are no band instruments in the room. He gets kids started out on taiko drums, which are the Japanese, the giant Japanese drums. And that's really fun because a lot of these kids have no music training or background.
It's very physical. It's like pounding. There's a choreography to that. And they work in groups. And sometimes they're pounding. The rhythms go where you pound the other, your friend's drum and then back to yours and your friend is pounding your drums. And it teaches rhythmic complexity and also group coordination. And then he has the children learn marimba, which is that African instrument that looks like a giant xylophone with the wooden keys instead of metal ones. And he has the children think about the parallels between these two different music traditions, the taiko tradition and the African marimba tradition.
And I find that so valuable and interesting that he's using this cross-cultural perspective in and also letting children learn on instruments that are quite the barrier to entry is quite low because anyone can tap a wooden key or pound a drum. And so and the kids love it. They absolutely love it. So that's an example of of new ways and different ways we can introduce children to music. Your son is very lucky. You know, I wish my teacher was as enlightened.
I wanted to ask you, like, it's kind of connected to my profession. Do you think that one other reason why we are not attracted to music, why we don't listen to music intentionally, better to say, is because of the technologies that we have right now, such as streaming services. You know, it's well, institutions, musical institutions that focus on the aristocratic music of 18th and 19th century on the one hand and streaming music streaming services on the other that kind of bombard us with music.
And they don't give us opportunity to enjoy it. But what's your take on technology? Well, I think that the technologies have given us ways of music, using music that we didn't have before. So, for example, before the Walkman, the Sony Walkman, nobody would go for a run listening to music. And yet sports psychologists and physiologists have shown that if you run in time to music, you will use less oxygen, about six to seven percent less oxygen to do the same physical performance or the same physical task, which is quite incredible that we now have music as a tool for running and improving running to the extent that some marathons ban the listening of music if you're competing, because it does give you an edge.
So that's interesting. But on the other hand, I would agree with you that we're constantly multitasking while listening to music rather than giving it our full attention. And I do think that there are some early work suggesting that music might be as beneficial to the brain and to our system as mindfulness meditation. I mean, there needs to be a lot more head-to-head research done, but there's some early suggestion of this. And in general, when they show benefits of music listening, people are listening with headphones in a quiet place with the eyes closed and fully absorbed in the listening experience.
And very few of us actually do that these days. I'll give you a little example from my own life. My husband finds a lot of benefit in meditation. And like all of us, he struggles to get himself to do it. And often, although it works for him, he struggles to stay in a routine. And so sometimes he'll ask me to do it with him in a buddy system. And I'm less keen on it because, well, you'll see in my book, my father was a yogi in a very extreme way.
And I have some baggage around that idea. So sometimes instead, I'll listen to music because I've done the research and I see the great benefits of mindful music listening. And I'll find that the time flies by. I feel relaxed, refreshed. I can be there for my husband, but do it a form of restoration or personal restorative practice that suits me and gives me some of the benefits of music that I've written about. Is there a way you choose the music that you listen during those meditation times? Is it something that is just spontaneous or is there kind of an intentional way that you choose the music? Well, here's a little trick to be useful in this way.
First of all, it has to be music that you love because it's music that you don't love. You're not reaping the maximum rewards from the stimulation of your pleasure and reward circuitry. So that's really important. It's also great news because you don't need to listen to some paid for soundtrack from an app. If you have music that you love, that's probably going to be better for you. Second of all, there is research showing that if you listen to music for that, I'm talking about that purpose in particular.
If you listen to music that's at about the pace of a resting heart, so 60 to 70 beats per minute, that will actually slow down your breathing and your heart rate and your cortisol levels the most. And there are playlists that are organized by beats per minute, or you could create your own. You could take one of those playlists or several of them and tag the songs that you like most at that beats per minute level and then put them into a playlist for yourself.
So that's a little hack that you can use to get that restorative benefit. I have a separate playlist. It mostly, for some unknown reason, consists of classical pieces that have a really meditative effect on me. You know, they slow down the pace of my thoughts. And I always try to listen to it intentionally. I can't listen to it on the background when I drive a car, when there is something that I have to focus on something else rather than music.
Is there like a harm, like, can music be harmful, let's say, in certain ways that we consume it? Let's say, if it is, when it becomes, I think you used the sentence to describe this as an audio wallpaper. I think it was from auditory wallpapers. Do you think there is a harm like having this auditory wallpaper on the background? Well, I have an entire chapter, as you know, called Bad Vibrations that looks at this question. If music, I mean, in medicine, usually every therapeutic tool also has some risks or some downsides, the risk benefit analysis.
And so if music is potent, can it be harmful in any way? I look at that in a chapter. And but in terms of auditory wallpaper, there is some suggestion that listening to music while doing focused work is drawing your attention away. It does require cognitive resources to process music. And if you need your attention to be focused on math problems or a difficult report that you're trying to write or something that requires focus, it's probably not helping you to have music playing in the background.
However, if you're doing a repetitive task and you're chopping onions or you're driving long distance on the highway without a lot of intense traffic, it might help keep you awake or keep you relaxed or keep you stimulated enough that you don't doze off. It sort of depends on the context. I've noticed like in throughout the years, like when I was a teenager, I could do my homework with the music on the background. But right now, it's just it, as you say, like consumes a lot of mental energy when you have it on the background and I can't focus on it.
It's really interesting that you say that because they even did a study showing the cognitive drain of listening to music in different age groups. And they found, just as you say, that the younger people, the multitasking demands of hearing music in the background didn't affect performance in the task in the study as much as it did for older people, I guess. I can't remember the exact age of 50s or 60s. That's absolutely true. And writers like Stephen King, the horror novelist, he's famous for having written to heavy metal.
But I've seen reports with him saying that he no longer can do that for the very reason you're saying. And I certainly can't write to music. I wish I could. Maybe if I could experiment with something that's simpler music. But so far, I haven't succeeded. I need to have quiet because I have to hear the words in my head. When I'm writing, I hear the words in my head. And if music is playing, I can't process both.
It's an imaginary narration going on in my head while I'm writing. And I can't do that if music, partly because I'm very attuned to music, having trained my ears so much over the years, I'm hearing all the timbres and all the overtones and all of that, you know, it's very distracting. I was thinking actually about this, why I can't multitask, listen to my favorite music and focus on work projects or something, because I used to enjoy it so much.
My mom always complained, said, how can you listen to System of a Down while you're doing your homework? How is it possible? You know, I wanted to ask a little bit about music as a therapy, because most of the questions that I've received from my listeners and readers was about this. First of all, when we are sad, you know, we, I tend to listen to very melancholy music, but it helps me to get out of it.
And is there like, is it dangerous to listen to sad and melancholy music when we feel down? Does it keep us in the same kind of sad or depressed mood? Or is it actually beneficial? What does science say in this situation? There is more and more research in that area. And at first, or, you know, for many years, psychologists thought that that was maladaptive, that listening to melancholy music when you're depressed could be a form of wallowing and keep you stuck, just as you said.
But when they started to research this, they found that, in fact, people described sad music as helping them process the experience and then come out of it. And people would describe listening to sad music as soothing, calming, uplifting. And it kind of makes sense because when you're down and someone says, cheer up, you know, you feel the person is lacking in empathy, that they don't understand your situation, that they don't care about what's actually going on for you.
And sad music when we're depressed meets us where we're at. It helps us feel seen and heard like a good friend would. And then sometimes there might be some tears, some, you know, tightening in the throat. Perhaps you might cry a little, and that can give the body a cathartic release and a feeling of, ha, I got through it. It also reminds us, the sad songs, that these feelings are universal and there can even be beauty.
There's a new book called Bittersweet by the author of the book Quiet, and she talks about these more difficult emotions do have a role in the human psyche, in the human range of emotions, and we can't always push them away. Sometimes we need to sit with them and allow it to wash over us. And that's what sad music does in a very pleasurable, often way. People do report pleasure from sad music. So that's one thing. And then the other, I just saw a report this week, actually, looking at why listeners would want to listen to, quote, trauma tunes, lyrics and music that explores the artist's traumatic experiences.
And the researchers found that, again, traumatic material in music helps people consider and reframe the experience, process the experience and come out of it with perhaps a different emotional reality. So I hope that answers the question. Yeah, no, definitely does. It is articulation that we sometimes, sometimes we feel sad, but we don't know how to articulate our feelings and what is better than, let's say, poetry and music combined together. Someone, Susan Cain, the book that you mentioned, Bittersweet, she talks about Leonard Cohen and how important music and poetry of Leonard Cohen was for her.
And it is articulation of those sad feelings that music provides us. You know, it has a very powerful effect. And it kind of reminds me also of the great-granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy. In one of her interviews, she said that she was really depressed at a certain point of her life and nothing helped but music. She said music literally saved her. It was part of a debate. Unfortunately, she didn't go deep and didn't say, like, you know, how exactly.
But I thought that moment when she said it, I was like, that's so interesting that only music. Yeah, no, definitely does. It is articulation that we sometimes, sometimes we feel sad, but we don't know how to articulate our feelings and what is better than, let's say, poetry and music combined together. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point.
And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point.
And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point.
And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. And I think that's a really interesting point. While we definitely need... While we definitely need... I would never suggest music as a replacement for cognitive therapy, I would never suggest music as a replacement for cognitive therapy, talk therapy and antidepressants. talk therapy and antidepressants. But not everyone responds to talk therapy. But not everyone responds to talk therapy.
I mean, talking through your trauma or talking through your depression I mean, talking through your trauma or talking through your depression is something some people can do very comfortably, is something some people can do very comfortably, but other people can't. but other people can't. And that's a place that talk therapy might not reach in the same way. And that's a place that talk therapy might not reach in the same way. Or maybe it can be combined.
Or maybe it can be combined. We talked about how you use music as calming therapy. We talked about how you use music as calming therapy. We talked about sadness and how athletes listen to music. We talked about sadness and how athletes listen to music. We talked about sadness and how athletes listen to music. Is there other ways how we can practice intentional listening of music? Is there other ways how we can practice intentional listening of music? Is there other ways how we can practice intentional listening of music? Is there other ways how we can practice intentional listening of music? Is there other ways how we can practice intentional listening of music? Is there other ways how we can get out of this auditory wallpaper Is there other ways how we can get out of this auditory wallpaper Is there other ways how we can get out of this auditory wallpaper and be more engaged in our listening habits? There's been really incredible research looking at music There's been really incredible research looking at music to soothe acute anxiety.
to soothe acute anxiety. And this work was done in hospital settings and surgical wards. And this work was done in hospital settings and surgical wards. And music has been studied head-to-head with Valium-type drugs. And music has been studied head-to-head with Valium-type drugs. And music has been studied head-to-head with Valium-type drugs. Not in one study, but literally dozens of studies. But literally dozens of studies. But literally dozens of studies. And the esteemed Cochran Collaboration, And the esteemed Cochran Collaboration, which is a global organization focusing on evidence-based medicine, which is a global organization focusing on evidence-based medicine, they've done four separate reviews they've done four separate reviews looking at the evidence for music looking at the evidence for music and acute anxiety in surgical patients.
and acute anxiety in surgical patients. And they've given music thumbs up for that purpose. So if you can treat acute anxiety So if you can treat acute anxiety in that type of hospital setting, it should be good as well for pre-flight jitters on an airplane it should be good as well for pre-flight jitters on an airplane or the nerves before you have a big performance to do or the nerves before you have a big performance to do or that kind of thing.
I wouldn't extrapolate and say that music could solve I wouldn't extrapolate and say that music could solve a problem with phobias or PTSD a problem with phobias or PTSD simply like that, no. But acute anxiety in those jittery situations, it's a tool we have that we can rely on it's a tool we have that we can rely on at any time. Did this study find a particular type of music Did this study find a particular type of music or the way they use the music that our listeners might apply themselves that our listeners might apply themselves when they feel anxious? Well, as I said before, choosing music at a slower pace Well, as I said before, choosing music at a slower pace and music that you love, those two factors will probably give you the best results.
those two factors will probably give you the best results. In one of the studies, these studies aren't always so specific about the type they often give listeners a choice and it might be something like classical or new age or music that the researchers would consider calming but it is quite individual what a person finds calming and the element of choice does seem to increase the benefits of music. In one of the studies, the surgical patients listen to music for 30 minutes the night before the surgery and again, 30 minutes before the surgery and again, 30 minutes before the surgery and that definitely showed quite a remarkable benefit.
and that definitely showed quite a remarkable benefit. And about the concentration, is it the same when we want to concentrate? Do we also choose a slow-paced music Do we also choose a slow-paced music over the higher-paced or are there recommendations different? Well, for concentration, music in the background isn't so recommended. music in the background isn't so recommended. Because then you're getting into multitasking and taking cognitive resources away from the work you're trying to do. away from the work you're trying to do.
But certainly, high-paced music will rev you up. Your heart rate will go up and actually your brainwaves will entrain or synchronize with the beat of whatever music you're listening to. It sounds made up but it's actually true. Brainwaves do entrain or begin to synchronize to the steady rhythm in the music. You have different frequency bands in your brain. Not all brainwaves will do the same thing but there's a general pattern that emerges. If you want to rev up or pep up your whole system, including heart rate, etc., then you want to listen to fast-paced music.
Many writers use music to create atmosphere around them. I've heard that Aaron Sorkin, when he feels this writer's block, he just gets into his car and goes on the highway and puts his favorite music and then comes back and he feels he listens to music to create the atmosphere he wants to write about. What is this about writers being so connected to the atmosphere of music? Is it also connected to our brainwaves and how it affects it? I don't know if that's been studied.
If I were to guess, based on the research I've done as a journalist, I would say that music can take us into... It acts as what they call a flexibility primer. It's one of those things that allows us to imagine many different possibilities. Even embedded in a piece of music, your brain has the choice to focus on the drums, or focus on the vocals, or focus on the horn playing in the background, or experience it as one wash of sound.
There's some interesting psychological research done, and I cite it in the book, around these flexibility primers. Jazz would be an example of that. If you want to get out of a cognitive rut, music is a great tool. That's something Einstein did a lot. In fact, his wife, Elsa, talked about how he'd be working away at a mathematical problem, and he'd scratch a few things down on a piece of paper, stop, and then go to another room, and plink on the piano, and then come back, and often come up with new solutions to what he was working on.
He didn't in public ever give music credit for his breakthroughs, but the people around him, including his children, saw him using it that way. It reminds me of a biography of Einstein written by Walter Isaacson, and he mentions the importance of violin and of music in general, how violin and music helped Einstein to get out of the mental rut. That's very interesting. I wanted to ask you about the book and the writing process as well. You already mentioned it in the beginning, but I was wondering whether the person who sat down to write the book and the person who finished the book, are those two different people? Has anything changed in your relationship with music after you finished the book and it was published? That's a great question.
The writing coach I worked with, Marielle Shea, told me at the beginning that writing a book was a transformative experience. At the time, I didn't really know what she meant, and I thought, oh, that's just something a coach is going to say or a book coach will say. In fact, she was absolutely right. In my case, I had to go back and revisit painful times in my life and early times in my life and think about the adults around me and what their reality was, think about broad threads of history, think about what medical research has shown.
I went in my garage and pulled out a box that had some keepsakes from that classical music time, and there was the program, the shiny program from Carnegie Hall with my name on it inside, my name inside in an orchestra section. I still had that and that brings out emotion. Then I had my report cards from the conservatory, this thick paper stock embossed and then I see no comments, just letter grades. You perform music and you're given a letter grade.
Sorry, not a letter grade, a number grade. You're given a number after pouring your heart out in a juried performance exam. I mean, that meant something to me to see that years later. I saw my diaries and saw that even at the age of 12, I wrote in my little diary, I want to be good as a cellist but most of all I want to have pleasure playing music. I knew that that wasn't happening and that there was something wrong with that.
In the writing and going back at the I wouldn't have looked at those things or thought about all those connections if I hadn't been writing a book. The book had me reflect on my life in that early time instead of thinking of it as something that happened to somebody else because I'm an adult now and I have a good life. Instead of burying all that and compartmentalizing, I was able to integrate it into who I am now and make peace with the teachers in my mind who did things with me that didn't feel right and that I had hard feelings towards.
I was able to see them as part of a much broader system and see that their motivations were good and that they wanted the best for me. They just did that the way the system required. So there was a lot of transformation in the end. I assume it is like it's always good to integrate the parts that we try to forget to make it part of ourselves and move forward as I understand that was your experience.
Was there a surprising thing from a scientific or any kind of part of the book that you discovered while you were writing? Something that surprised you in the field of science or in a personal story of someone else? Were there pleasant surprises there that you found while writing? There were very many and I couldn't sum it up. I couldn't nail it down to just one or two, but I can give you some examples. First of all, broadly, I was amazed by how studied music has been and how much more there is to know about the effects of music in the body and the brain.
There is more being discovered all the time. For example, Parkinson's. This is research conducted in Toronto, Canada. They followed people with Parkinson's for something like three years and they found that the people who were part of a dance class once a week, their Parkinson's progressed at a slower rate than the Parkinson's people who are age-matched and matched in other ways at the beginning of the study. Being part of a physical experience once a week actually changed the progression of Parkinson's.
Clearly, those advantages would go away if the people stopped the dance class, but there were all these layers of benefit to that one activity in people with Parkinson's, which is wonderful and remarkable. There are quite a few studies like that that are cited in the book that I found wonderful and surprising. Another was this study published in BMJ, which is a very respected medical journal, looking at surgical patients who were unconscious during their surgery, so they were under general anesthetic, and half of the patients had earbuds and were listening to music and the other half had earbuds and weren't listening to music and the surgeons had no idea who had the music on and who didn't.
At the end of the results when the numbers were crunched, they found that the people who had heard music while under general anesthetic had less pain after the surgery and faster recoveries and required less opioid pain medication than the people who had the earbuds without music. That's incredible. These people have no memory of listening to music while undergoing surgery, yet it helped them in very important ways. That was just two things that pulled out of my head, but there are many, many other things like that in the book that you can't make up.
I get annoyed with pseudoscience around music because the real science is remarkable enough. You don't need to overblow it or inflate it because the parts that are well studied and documented are already astonishing. A couple of years ago when I just started my newsletter, I recommended Oliver Sacks' Musicophilia in that newsletter. I wrote it and sent the newsletter, and a couple of months later I received an email from one of the readers, and I mentioned in the description of the book that Oliver Sacks also mentions about Parkinson's patients about music therapy.
This reader of mine said that her grandfather, I think, had Parkinson's and she read the newsletter and her mom found a music therapist. She said that it helped and she thanked me for sharing that book. Those stories that you mentioned about Parkinson's and the rest are really heartwarming about music and its incredible effects on us. Speaking of Oliver Sacks and books, I always ask my guests if they could I know this is a broad question, but could you recommend some books that caught your attention, that you like, anything that you believe our listeners would enjoy reading as well? It could be fiction, could be nonfiction, everything that is close to your heart right now.
It's great that you ask that because I was just thinking of writing a blog post on my website called AdrianaBarton.com looking with a list of other things to read on this subject and I haven't finished the blog post so I don't have all the titles perfectly lined up in my head. Certainly it's required reading to read Oliver Sacks' musicophilia as well as Daniel Levitin's seminal book, This is Your Brain on Music. I'm sure you've read and heard about that.
It depends on which angle you're interested in. I certainly like the book called The Music Lesson by an American musician. It's sort of like a Carlos Castaneda type book but applied to music. There's a mystical teacher but the point of the book is how to get out of our own heads when we're learning an instrument and learning music. It's very entertaining in how it's written but it has these truisms and these wisdoms embedded in it. Another book, if people are interested in more of the therapeutic aspects is called Rhythm to Recovery and that's written by a very respected practitioner from down under who trains therapists in using drums and other percussion instruments to help people who don't respond well to typical psychological approaches.
It's a slim book. It's really simply written and the exercises could be used by anyone, the exercises in it. Then another one would be... Do you remember the name of the practitioner? Simon Faulkner. Rhythm to Recovery. Another book would be if you want to know about the Evolving Animal Orchestra is written by an incredible Dutch researcher and I don't want to mangle his name. I think it's pronounced Henk-Jan Honing and he looks at musical abilities in animals and how they are similar to humans or different from humans and those discoveries shed light on human musicality and show in fact how incredible our musical perceptions truly are because while some animals show some musical capacities, none are as formed as the human capacities as far as we know and that's a really neat book and very well written, easy to read as well.
There are others on my list that I can't think of off the top of my head. We can add your blog post once it will be published. We'll mention all the books that you've mentioned right now and we can add the blog post and our readers can go ahead. I want also to ask if there are any new projects that you're working on or anything that our listeners might be tuning in and expecting from you in the future? I will certainly be writing another book.
I have an idea but it's very much early days. This idea is about two weeks old so I don't feel ready to talk about it publicly. It's still as I said early days with this book just published last month so I'm invited to many conferences and many podcasts. Thank you for this invitation and still on my book tour. I'm not in the writing process yet for the next project but certainly there will be more. When I asked this question of course knowing that this book that we were discussing was published a month ago there wasn't enough time to embark on another project.
We'll be looking forward to this book because it was so brilliantly written for music. It really touched my heart. Thank you so much. That's really wonderful to hear. Where would our listeners find you? Is it Twitter, Instagram? Is it better to go to your website? I am on Twitter. I'm quite active on Twitter and there I post. I mean I'm promoting my book on Twitter but I also post a lot of health issues. A lot of them are Canadian focused because our healthcare system is struggling at the moment.
I was for many years a health reporter at our national newspaper so these issues still interest me a lot. I do post quite a bit on Twitter about health and my book. I'm also on Instagram. On Twitter it's Adriana Barton at Adriana Barton. On Instagram I'm Adriana Barton author and I've just started using Instagram more recently so I don't have tons of followers but I'm trying to use the medium more because it's a good visual medium.
I am on Facebook as well, Adriana Barton Writes. I have a personal Facebook which is Adriana Barton and then more of a writer one that's Adriana Barton Writes. I forgot to mention, yes I do have a little beginner blog. I don't post a lot but people can follow my blog AdrianaBarton.com I have a thought. You asked about new projects. People want to know more about my personal story somehow and I'm surprised. I wasn't even going to include it.
It was really just early readers and my publisher who found that it would speak to people and that they were right. I've thought of maybe doing a photo series on my website with showing photos that relate to the material in each chapter and I might release it chapter by chapter because I've traveled a lot in my life to places that not everyone has had a chance to go to and I have photos of musical environments and I might do a bit of a visual journey of my book at some point and I may if I get around to it, try and create playlists based on each chapter because I found and this was neat to hear various reviewers who have covered my book said that they've read the book and they found themselves putting it down and then going to listen to the music I referred to and then coming back to the book and I never imagined the book would be used that way but if I get the time it might be fun to create a playlist chapter by chapter so people can listen to what I'm talking about in an easy package.
I would definitely listen to that playlist. I would definitely follow it on Spotify. I know that I'm quite sure that you've heard about the author music critic Alex Ross and he's a legend and all of his books, the rest is noise, a book on Wagner and the third one I always forget the third one but each of those books had playlists on Spotify and it was really interesting and engaging with the book to listen to the playlist and all the pieces that he was talking about so I would definitely subscribe to your playlist as well.
Please let us know and to all our listeners first of all thank you so much for sending the questions to Adriana and also all the links and books and future projects, everything will be on Adriana's page on my podcast so you can find all the references, Instagram, Twitter, website, blog, everything will be there. Adriana thank you once again so much for this interesting conversation and coming to my podcast. It's really a pleasure to talk to you and hear your enthusiasm for music and to hear about how it's affected your life.
I actually would love to learn more about that so maybe we'll correspond in the future and thank you so much for reading my book and for your warm words about it. Thank you. Thanks once again. I hope you enjoyed listening to my conversation with Adriana. You can support our podcast by leaving a review. By this you will let algorithm gods of Spotify and of Apple podcasts know that our podcast is worth listening to. I would be very grateful.
Once again, thank you all for tuning in and listening to our video podcast. This was Vasi Karmenikas and I will see you in the next one.
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