If you’re like most people, your car radio is tuned to the same two or three stations day in and day out, and you download similar genres of music time after time. This summer, resolve to shake up your routine and stimulate your senses.
Spending time on a plane or a train? Download something cool and intriguing. Driving the kids to sports practice? Treat your family to a new and unexpected musical genre and turn mundane road time into a harmonious experience.
Clinical studies show that music can foster personal well-being, spiritual awareness, and even flashes of brilliance. When asked about his theory of relativity, Albert Einstein said, “It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception.”
Tunes can also help heal us emotionally. “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness,” wrote poet Maya Angelou.
Music for Meditation
The next time you meditate on your yoga mat or relax in a tub full of bubbles (if you don’t, you should!), listen to Thomas Moore’s “Music for the Soul” or Poulenc’s “Salve Regina.” Or try the soundtrack from the movie Unfaithful or new-age music like Ray Lynch’s Deep Breakfast.
Dare to embrace Oliveros’s work called “Deep Listening.” It was recorded in 1989 underground in a cistern with a 40-second delay that creates a relaxing echo effect. Other tops picks in the “soothing music” category are Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto,” Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue,” and Gerry Mulligan’s “City Lights.”
Explore unique artists like Tom Waits, David Gray, Ray LaMontagne and Wilco; the Eastern European folk-style band Beirut; Klezmer tunes; the cabaret-punk stylings of World/Inferno Friendship Society and Gogol Bordello and “spiritual adventure” music that was recorded in the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. (To hear new musicians, visit amazon.com, enter the artist’s name in the music search box, choose any album, then hit “listen to samples.”)
If you catch yourself on the usual radio station or downloading predictable music, do the unexpected and change your tune.