Original photo by rupixen/ Unsplash
Legendary reggae musician Bob Marley once said, “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” Turns out, science backs him up. According to a 2023 study by scientists at McGill University in Montreal, listening to your favorite music reduces pain by one point on a 10-point scale. Scientists asked a series of questions after 63 participants experienced pain while listening to either their favorite songs, relaxing songs picked for them, scrambled music, or silence. Once each seven-minute round was over, subjects rated the music’s pleasantness and how many “chills” — that goosebump feeling you get when listening to moving music — they experienced. Listening to preferred music, especially moving music, far outranked other scenarios, and participants ranked the pain as less intense and less unpleasant.
Oops, incorrect!
It's a fibNo, listening to classical music as a newborn (or fetus) will not make you smarter. This idea originates from a small 1993 study that found mild improvements in spatial intelligence among college students who listened to Mozart, but any effect on babies is a myth.
Although this particular study focuses on music’s impact on physical health, the medical world has long known the healing powers of music when it comes to the mind. Music’s ability to reduce stress and anxiety while improving cognitive ability and memory inspired a field of medicine known as music therapy, which has existed in some form since the late 18th century. So while listening to your favorite Beatles track or kicking back with some Beethoven won’t be enough to curtail serious pain, music can help mellow out the aches of everyday life.
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People who don’t like music have a condition called ______.
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People who don’t like music have a condition called musical anhedonia.
In 1865, a single chord changed Western music forever.
On June 10, 1865, at the National Theatre in Munich, Germany, audiences heard for the first time one of the most innovative moments in music history. Within the opening seconds of the opera Tristan und Isolde, Richard Wagner delivered a strange augmented sixth chord that’s known today simply as the “Tristan chord” — and it’s arguably the most analyzed chord ever. With this one chord and the dissonance that followed, Wagner upset the conventional rules of tonality and inspired future composers’ exploration of atonality. The chord, in itself, wasn’t an innovation — previous composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, and Chopin had used it — but the genius was in the way it was used. Traditionally, in Wagner’s time, tonal dissonance resolved quickly to consonant harmony. However, in Tristan und Isolde, which is based on a Celtic legend about two doomed lovers, Wagner uses dissonance and atonality to emphasize the pain of longing and unrequited love. Only at the opera’s conclusion — some four hours later — do audiences finally hear the chord’s resolution.
Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.
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