Expert: David Froom - 4/28/2009

Question
I'm doing a science experiment on how music affects the brain. So far, I've planned out that I'm gong to have 15 fourteen-year-old's at my school, listen to music for a certain amount of time. I will then have them take a twenty question test. They music's whey will listen to will be rock music, classical music, and then no music. How long does it take for music to influence the mind? In other words, how long should I have them listen to the music before they take the test?

Answer
Hi,

This is a question for a cognitive scientist, not a musician.  I personally question this whole realm of research, and have never seen an article that described a convincing experiment.  But you can try.  You might try finding some articles on line or in a good library that answer your question about how long the music should go.  Or you could make that part of your experiment -- try 10 min., 20 min, 30 min. and see if that changes anything.

The real questions for me are:

What kind of tests are you giving?  Will they test anything other than test taking ability?  Is it possible to include an element of abstract or critical thinking?  Or creativity?

What rock music?  Black Sabbath?  Or Radiohead?  Or the Beatles?  Or the Police?  Something your subjects already know?  Or only some of them know?

And what classical music?  Mozart's late Piano Concertos?  Or early Mozart (like the violin concertos, which are sweet and clean, but not challenging)?  Or Wagner opera?  Or Beethoven?  If Beethoven, the 1st Symphony?  Or the 9th?  Or why not Mahler?  Or Bach?  

How would this be different if you played the Blue Danube Waltz?

And how will people listen?  With attention?  Or as background music to doing something else?

My personal suspicion is that active listening to challenging and complicated and sophisticated music of any kind will get the mind working.  And predictable music of any kind will be worse than no music at all.  

The problem is that each listener might define challenging differently.

I've sorry that I've raised more questions than I can answer  I think this is vastly more complicated than anyone wants to admit.  

David Froom