Most people would tend to have their own favorite relaxing music playlist, but did you know how your playlist of relaxing music could help enhance your wellbeing, mental alertness?
A study had investigated whether listening to relaxing music would help reduce mental fatigue and maintain performance after a continuous performance task. 36 participants (age between 18–22 years) participated in the study and they were randomly assigned to either a music group or a non-music group. The music group performed a one-hour cognitive task that required mental focus and attention while listening to relaxing music. The other group performed the same task without any music.
The participants reported about their feelings of mental states (such as alertness/concentration, energetic, etc) through a standardized questionnaire. Electroencephalography (EEG) data of participants in both groups were collected when the cognitively fatigue-inducing task was carried out. EEG records the activity generated by the brain via sensors placed on the scalp surface. It measures electrical activity generated by the synchronized activity of thousands of neurons (in volts) and in a way offers a view into cognitive, affective, or attentional states of being. If you are starting to feel intrigued and wish to find out more about how the brain functions, check out this super readable article on what is EEG for non-technical folks (myself included).
Okay, so getting back to the exciting bit about what the findings say on how listening to relaxing music would help reduce mental fatigue. Data from this study had shown that alertness/concentration of the participants in the non-music group had reduced astoundingly by about half (53%) after an hour of cognitively demanding task. On the other hand, the group that had listened to music felt that their alertness/concentration had dropped by only about 12%. The study had shown that listening to relaxing music during a cognitive task may make people feel less mentally fatigued and maintain high productivity. Although this is thought to be so by many people who listen to music while working on tasks that requires mental focus or attention, the quantification of what are the positive effects has always been somewhat vague unless findings from such studies are more commonly known or shared around the community.
I hope by sharing the findings of this study with Wellness Chums readers, it would encourage readers who are already listening to relaxing music while working to continue doing so (round of claps and applause for your remarkable efforts!). You may also like to find out about the specially curated list of relaxing music for Wellness Chums fans at the end of this post or listen to the equivalent playlist at Spotify. If you have still yet to hop on board the listening to music while working movement, now’s probably the best time to start creating your own playlist of favorite relaxing songs with Spotify, or use other online music streaming platforms that are more familiar to you.
The study was titled “Effects of Relaxing Music on Mental Fatigue Induced by a Continuous Performance Task: Behavioral and ERPs Evidence” and was led by Wei Guo, Shanghai University of Sport in 2015.
Check out other Wellness Chums’ post here if you like to stick around and go on a virtual museum or art gallery visit: Discover how a half hour art gallery visit could improve your wellbeing.
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Relaxing Music Specially Curated for Wellness Chums Readers
1. Weightless (1 hour) by Macaroni Union
Weightless achieved a relaxation score of 73%, as well as 6% increase on the relaxing effects of a massage. The song’s secret is its rhythm. It slows gradually from 60 to 50 beats per minute, resulting in a matching slow-down in the listener’s heart rate. This process takes about five minutes for it to start, hence the reason for it being a lengthy one hour song! You can hear it in Spotify too.
2. Airstream (1 hour) by Electra
The link above brings you to Youtube. If you prefer listening to Airstream in Spotify, here’s the link.
3. In My Time (53 mins), an album by Yanni
This relaxing album was also well featured in the Verywell Mind blog. The songs in the album are beautifully played on the piano with orchestral backup and do not have any vocals. It has a calming, contemplative and uplifting quality to it. This is one of my personal favorites which you can listen on Spotify too.
4. 101 Smooth Jazz Mellow Mix (Continuous play) by Get Me Radio!
101 Smooth Jazz Mellow Mix is a radio station by the emerging Get Me Radio platform. It is not on Spotify and is ad supported, but offers a good continuous listening of relaxing non vocal Jazz music.
I simply love this online radio station. Many relaxing music genres under the wellness station that you can listen to all day, leaving it nicely in the background for work or study. My favorite is the pilates genre which I have it on during the morning drive to work too.
6. Kitaro Radio (50 songs, 3.5 hrs) by Spotify
This is a wonderful collection of relaxing music by Kitaro. I have it on a loop on most days with other favorite songs in my playlist for work.
7. Ambient 1 Music for Airports (48 mins) by Brian Eno
Ambient 1 Music for Airports was conceived by Brian as background sound for airport lobbies, replacing the usual piped-in saccharine strings and smooth MOR frostings. This sound track is the near perfect piece if you are looking for relaxing music that happily stays in the background. You can stay focus on tasks that you would be working on in the forefront. Here’s the link to this sound track in Spotify.
8. I Giorni (6 mins) by Ludovico Einaudi
An Italian pianist and composer, Ludovico has written numerous film soundtracks. This piano piece, with its repetitive motifs and steady tempo, evokes a dreamlike state with moments of light and brightness. Listen to it at Spotify.
9. Stopover at Djibouti by Anouar Ibrahem
A Tunisian oud player and composer, Anouar is a widely acclaimed innovator in his field, fusing Arab classical music, folk music and jazz. This sound track seems almost meditative in a very relaxing way whenever I have it streaming in the background with Spotify as I work on heavy mental lifting stuff on the laptop. Hope you would find it enjoyable too.
I really enjoyed the last three songs which are quite a gem as they are not widely known yet. These three songs were first featured in an article by Dr Elizabeth Coombes, Senior Lecturer in Music Therapy, University of South Wales.
Happy listening to all this specially curated playlist of relaxing music!
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