Music hath charms

Psychobabble talks to plants

By John Groom

June 2004

Psychobabble is a column to explore the twilight zone of hi-fi. That strange place where the improbable meets the impossible, the fussy meets the obsessional, and the physical meets the psychological.

In the late 60s I was keen to do my MA thesis on talking to plants. Somehow I lost my courage and ended up in the safer territory of intellectual disability. Nowadays we know that plants benefit not just from nice talk, but even from the impact of prayer. It goes without saying that music will also have its part to play. There were no surprises when it was suggested that plants react better to classical music than to heavy rock.

People, as I have discovered, are a bit more complex than plants. My favourite piece of dinner music is a CD of John Fields’ piano nocturnes, which I find very restful. I was quite shocked when an Australian friend came to dinner and was bored - even irritated - by the music and asked for something more ‘lively’. In fairness, there is music that others find enjoyable that just gets on my wick - most modern electronic compositions for example.

If it don’t fit

The obvious question becomes whether it is all subjective. As early as the 1950s psychologists suggested that it was all to do with familiarity and dissonance. When music is familiar we first feel comfortable, but with too much exposure we risk boredom. If, however, there is a big gap between what we hear and what we are familiar with it becomes dissonant. When we find the right gap between what we are used to and the new, then we feel excited.

I have suggested, in previous columns, that one of the reasons we change our equipment or fiddle with it is to try and keep the experience with just the right amount of freshness.

Another example of this process is classical music, which has become more ‘risky’ over the years, moving away from the familiar chord structures. For this reason I tend to think of ‘classical’ music stopping in the early 1900s - those are the harmonies that I have become used to.

Whatever gets you through

In the last few decades, with the development of brain scans, there could be an even more scientific approach to the question of how music affects us. By studying which area of the brain is stimulated and what brain waves are enhanced we can tell more precisely what is happening. Music - of the right sort - has indeed been shown to help us relax, concentrate better or be more creative etc.

Often this boils down to Baroque music, Bach or Mozart, probably for the reasons outlined above. Someone has even suggested that enjoyable music may replicate body sounds such as the heartbeat. The most radical version of this I have heard of is that the best way to get a newborn infant back to sleep is to put the vacuum cleaner on. It must be pretty noisy in the womb if that is what it sounds like! Anyway on a more mundane level I have managed to get my GST done by listening to Mozart’s violin works.

For all occasions

As this is a column for exploring some of the more obscure edges of music I wonder for example what would be the best music to drive the neighbours crazy. The one that did it for me was a neighbour who had an album of 12 versions of Ave Maria that he put on full volume and on repeat through most of a Sunday morning. No prizes for guessing what his problem was.

I have personally driven my neighbours to breaking into my house when I went away for the weekend and left the Densen burn-in CD on repeat at a reasonable volume. On a lighter note I wonder what the best music would be for snuggling up close, late at night? Perhaps people can email in ideas and I will let you know if they work.

There are stranger things

Over the years in this hobby I have learnt to suspend my judgment about a lot of things, but there are some things that I still struggle with. Recently I have been influenced by Feng Shui and the idea that a home can build up positive or negative energy. I have a friend who clears the energy in the house by ringing a Tibetan bell, and another who clears his office of negative energy by playing Gregorian chants overnight. I can’t begin to explain these, but I suspect there may be something in them.

Music at the end of the day is just a series of vibrations and I am just a product of the ‘flower power’ generation.

Other Psychobabble columns

John Groom is a psychologist working in private practice on Auckland's North Shore. John has over three decades experience in both hi-fi and psychology.

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