The Importance of Music in Our Life

Why music is important (essay)

Have you ever spent three hours studying but still can’t remember anything? You panic because tomorrow is the day of your examination. Have you ever stared at your clock at 3 a.m. but still can’t fall asleep? Your eyes look like a panda’s the next day and people stare at you. Or have you ever fallen out of a friendship? Your heart aches from the pain of losing a good friend. If you answered yes to any one of my questions, in this essay I will share the secret of the importance of music. What is the secret? The secret is that music can help you to focus while studying, reduce stress and anxiety, and even heal emotional wounds caused by a broken friendship.

Kendall Devlin, an author for Live For Live Music, says that listening to music directly influences the outcome of our hormones and cognitive functioning. In simple words, that’s mean music can affect our memorizing skills and our brains activities.

Good morning everyone. Today I would like to talk about the importance of music in our lives. I would like to share three main benefits which are, music can strengthen your memory, music can help you to sleep better and music can help you to heal.

Let’s get right to the first point, which is music can strengthen your memory.

Five years ago when I was in secondary school, I was struggling to learn, I can’t remember what the teachers were teaching in the class. Bahasa Melayu was the most difficult subject for me. I can’t answer questions given by teachers, my classmates were laughing at me and because of that, my other subjects deteriorated. Every day my depression grows like a snowball, it just kept rolling and become bigger until I couldn’t take it anymore. I even thought about quitting school life. But then my tuition teacher suggested that I listen to Mozart music or some form of classical music. My first thought was how could Mozart music help me to remember things? But because I was so desperate, I gave it a try.

Surprisingly, when I listened to Mozart for the first time, the rhythm just blew my mind. The symphony flowed from my ears to my mind, covering up my whole body. After that, I eventually realized that listening to Mozart helped me a lot to learn; I felt it was easier to study Bahasa Melayu and also I was more able to answer questions. My results got getting better and I didn’t feel as stressful as before. But how can Mozart’s music help me memorize things? According to “Five powerful ways music can Improve your memory”, from TakeLessons.com, a number of neurological studies have been conducted using music by Mozart. The result is called the Mozart Effects. Scientists discovered that listening to Mozart before doing a task improves the subject’s ability to solve it correctly. For instance, when Mozart’s music is playing in the background, you can solve a question better. Our cognitive abilities are enhanced when listening to Mozart and classical music in general. Also, there is the Vivaldi Effects. According to some studies, listening to Vivaldi’s music can boost both attention and memory. Even though there has a “Four Seasons” version, but the music as the most successful with memory-boosting is “Spring”. Maybe it is because Spring trigger our brain chemical to feel happier and have more energy to do things.

Therefore, based on many studies done, listen to classical music has a definite impact on memory and attention. However, you don’t have to listen to classical music just to get a higher score on tests, you can also enjoy the music at the same time while you are studying. Listening to classical music can be a pleasurable past-time.

Next, my second point is music help you sleep better.

Having a nice sleep can help you feel powerful in the next day, refreshing your energy so that you can work accurately or you can learn better in school. Otherwise, not enough sleep can make you feel tired and can’t focus on doing things. The needed of sleep is really important for your health even your life, the consequences of poor sleep quality may cause you to die because you can’t pay attention around you.

Insomnia, for those who are suffering from sleeping problems, they won’t feel strangeness about this word. People with insomnia, they need some hypnotics to help them sleep or they will keep awake at the night. Even though sleeping pills may work functionally to help you fall asleep quickly, but when it comes to a long-term use are not recommended. According to “understanding the side effects of sleeping pills”, there have a lot of side effects that can affect you at the next day, such as a headache, mental slowing of attention, difficulty keep balancing your body or you will also have unusual dreams. Luckily, there has another saver for you to sleep better and has no side effects at all, that is music.

Without a doubt, you can listen to your favorite playlist to sleep, but music with slow and soft tunes are recommended. Because music can slow your heart rate, breathing, lower blood pressure and also relax your muscles. These biological changes are the same as when you are falling asleep. Music with no words is better for listening to sleep, pick like classical, jazz, and folk music tend to work well and easy to listen. But there is one type of music I want to share with you guys, it called Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, in short, called ASMR. So, what is ASMR? ASMR stands for an experience feeling of relaxation and tingling sensation that is euphoric. It starts in the back of your head, moves down through your spine and your limbs. ASMR commonly trigger by soft, or accented voices, ambient sounds or certain soothing sounds that we can hear it usually. The purpose of ASMR is relaxing your brain and to overcome your insomnia. You can find it on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes and normally some of the audio segments are longer than one hour, so you can keep listening until you drift off.

Next time you can’t fall asleep, pick up your headphone and stick it into your ears and set a timer on it to turn the music off. The audio should not be too high because it will injure your ears and may cause you deaf. Music is a treatment to help you fall asleep but sleep without it. But if you feel uncomfortable of wearing headphone, you can try a device called “pillow speaker”, it will make you feel exactly like the wave of sound is surrounding you, relaxing your brain to sleep. So according to my studies, soft and low tunes music can help you fall asleep easily.

Lastly, one more reason why music really important for your life is that music can help you heal, not just heal you’re mental and physical.

According to DR. Michael Friedman, an author for psychologytoday.com, he researches show that music has the ability to reduce your pain, anxiety, depression and make you feel happier just to listen to your favorite music. Listening to music can block out distractions, including as you feel going insane to do your assignment or feel upset about breaking up with your boyfriend or girlfriend. Studies show music can release something chemical called dopamine which can make your brain to feel peaceful and calm. As I mentioned before, music is proven to affect our body system which heart rate, breathing, also physically calm the pressure. DR. Michael Friedman also mentioned that when music is playing, music can affect the heart system of our body. Also, studies show that playing the drum is also a healing activity and bring benefits for you. Many mental health problems are linked to our body’s immune system. Therefore, playing the drum is one of the activities can give your joy, lower anger levels, and depression.

In the other way, studies from Austria’s General Hospital of Salzburg in 2008, found the usage of music as a treatment to heal the patients. Amazingly, these music therapies did help them to recover injury faster, the music gives the body’s immune system a boost. Music therapy is used to aid in physical discomfort by improving respiration, lowering blood pressure and improved cardiac output. Which is good that music therapy is a way for you to heal faster and it is free for everyone. According to the studies of music therapy, music effect on cancer patients as well, music therapy that can improve their mood, reduce pain and reduce anxiety.

Therefore, music has the ability influence our mind and body, many people in recovery from addiction have made music therapy become a part of the need of their lives and it has a lot of evidence to back it up. When you in a bad mood, learn to use this powerful tool to heal you not just mentally also physically, or music can help your recovery faster, form your soul to your body.

In conclusion, music is really playing a great role in our lives and its bring many advantages. Maybe you listen to music just for fun, reduce stress, or just a tool for you not feel bored while studying. But without a doubt, we can’t live at a life without music. Music affects us in many different ways, can boosting our memory, solving the problem of insomnia and improving our mental and physical health.