Alexander D Peterson

Honors 394, Professor Pierce

12 March 2018

Final Reflections — The Undeniable Power of Music

Throughout the course of these past ten weeks, the power of music has become
exceedingly apparent to me, and I have a new perspective on many aspects of my daily routine.
When I initially wrote my short response to “Is music powerful?” at the beginning of the quarter, I
focussed almost entirely on how music can make people feel connected to one another and
also connected to their own past. After having just taken a “Film in American Politics” class, I
emphasized how music in old movies can reflect feelings of an era. After taking this class, I still
believe these are true, but my perspective on the various ways music accomplishes these goals
has widened considerably. In addition, I learned a lot more about how music interacts with the
brain, from preborn babies to those in the latest stages of life.

Many of my favorite memories of this class involve class activities; I have never been in
an environment in college where everyone was expected to sing on multiple occasions. I felt
that every time the group participated in a “hum bath,” performed a group dance, etc, we grew
closer together as a group. There was clearly something very socially bonding about sharing in
one another’s musical abilities. I believe this inherent effect of communal musiking was only
amplified by the fact that in our modern culture, singing around people we do not know very well
can be seen as a very vulnerable activity, which also tends to bond people together.

In my experience, this bonding effect can even take place when two people are in
different rooms. As I conducted my research on improv by soliciting college students at UW, I
found that I became emotionally closer to many of the participants after they had recorded their
musical improv alone in the sound booth. In one particular instance, a girl with whom I haven’t
talked in several months emerged from the sound booth and started joking with me and asking
me questions as if we had been much better friends. Perhaps this effect has something to do
with the fact that “they took time out of their day to ‘invest’ in this person, thereby bonding them
closer,” but I also believe that getting into a musical mindset “for” someone else is a very
personal activity, which makes people feel safer around one another over time.
 Music in my life has now become more than listening to what makes me happy or feel
intense emotion. I constantly listen to the soundscape around me for cues about what culture I
may be experiencing or how the music is impacting my thoughts without me even knowing. I
have become much more aware of how music improves my mood when I immerse myself in
singing or tapping along to it, so I often play music when I seem to be feeling upset for no
particular reason. Music has also been a teaching tool for me throughout the past many years:
first as an explicit lesson for children with developmental disabilities and now as “memory keys”
when I am teaching people unrelated topics. For example, when helping my little brother study
for his History of Washington State test, I often made songs out of key facts to help him retain
the information. These seemed to help a lot with his recall.

One question I have been considering for much of the term is my personal definition of
music. I believe that my definition has actually narrowed over time. At first, I considered music
any sound that someone deems intentional. I wanted to include the songs where people just
played beach sounds with a beat in the background or sounds intended to engender an
emotional response. However, the power of music, in my opinion, must be held in higher regard.
Music has been shown to be a cultural bonding agent, healer of the brain, spur of long-inactive
minds, emotional comforter, decision reverser, and so much more. Because of this, I would
prefer calling something music only if it has both an emotional effect and also one or more of
these mentioned effects on human beings. Hearing the sound of the drop of water, for example
might very well elicit an emotional response on the psychological plane as one remembers
times in their lives when water sounds were more common, but this would be like calling an
accidental drop of red paint on a white floor a painting. While some may indeed still argue that
this drop is a piece of art, I believe it does a disservice to our conception of art’s transformative
power in our world. In the same way, I have broadened my definition of just “pretty sounds” and
have narrowed my definition of music.

Aside from music’s impact on cultural groups, my personal life, and the class dynamics, I
was continually fascinated by the scientific aspects of music. Our brains are hardwired for
music, and participating in music uses different regions of the brain than language alone. I was
surprised to learn that music could even help people walk as they rehabilitated and stepped to a
beat. Music could even unlock memory and reanimate Alzheimer patients. The clinically
therapeutic application of music seems to be devastatingly underutilized in modern society.
 Into the future, I hope to incorporate more instrument playing when I want to have a
better mood going into social interactions. Playing guitar for half an hour before school, for
example, could be a very beneficial way to “ground myself” before facing the stressors of the
day. I have also been sending my best friend “daily music exercises” for her to try — anything
from music in a foreign language to singing to one’s self throughout the day. She has reported
feeling much more positively about her own music personality even after a few weeks of this,
and I am hoping to incorporate more intentional music activities in my life as well. With so much
impact and power at my disposal through music, I feel an excited obligation to share it with
others and myself to the fullest.