"Whereas the
extant canned music companies proceed from the basis of regularizing
environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncrasies,
Ambient Music is intended to enhance these. Whereas conventional background
music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and
thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these
qualities. And whereas their intention is to `brighten’ the environment by
adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks
and leveling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms) Ambient Music
is intended to induce calm and a space to think". The
previous passage is taken from the liner notes of the Brian Eno album
"Music for Airports / Ambient 1". Ambient is a term coined by Eno to
describe the genre of music that is "as ignorable as it is
interesting". It should not be mistaken with environmental or incidental
or "elevator" music.
I am pretty sure that in one class Ray said that
listening to music is not a good idea if you want to perform a task that
requires a lot of directed attention like studying or writing reports and while
I have long suspected it, I still felt really confused and overwhelmed... You
see: I can't study without music, and it's been like that for a long time...
Does that mean that I've been doing it wrong all this time? Is there a way for
me to defend my habit and the whole music-listening-while-studying experience?
I think we can all agree that music affects us all
differently and that different types of music provoke different emotions,
feelings and mind states. Music genres are somewhat confusing categorizations
and most of my favorite song and albums do not even fall under one genre, but
they are useful in analyzing and studying similar musical pieces so we can talk
in the same language. I could mention Heavy Metal and you have an image of what
type of music a song of that genre might be. You might even associate certain
bands with the genre.
We already agreed that music is not recommended for
studying. But if you NEED to listen to music while studying, is there a genre
of music that is better than the others?
Well of course! This piece is called Ambient Music for
a reason. So let's go back to Eno's passage and dissect the 3 qualities of
Ambient Music that make it the quintessential music for students:
- Ambient Music is intended to
enhance acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncracies
While traditional environmental or incidental music is used as a companionship to something else (a film, an art exhibit, an... elevator), ambient music has to stand on its own. It has to have some character, it does not have to be completely ignorable (while it needs to be as ignorable as possible). Where environmental music often is accompanied by visual stimuli, ambient music must let our mind "paint" the picture and locate us in an imagined environment. So it helps activate the brain with soft fascination that is not distracting but is calming and soothing.
While good ambient music has to have some idiosyncrasies, it should not have many. It should not paint the picture, it should let the brain paint the picture. This is important. The picture will be formed only if the brain decides to form it, not because it is forced by obvious references: in ambience, subtlety is the key. The best example I can find is in Eno's proto-ambient album Another Green World's cut "The Big Ship"... So you read the song's title and you think of being in a really big ship in the sea, right? So what do you imagine before listening to it? Maybe the sound of the wind, the waves breaking in the sides of the ship or a few birds cooing. But isn't that too obvious? Wouldn't your brain jump immediately to this ship scenario?
- Ambient Music retains these qualities of doubt
and uncertainty
The song chooses to drop the obvious sounds and
references and each element of the song on its own has nothing to do with water
or the sea or even ships. But you can close your eyes for a while and in a way
feel the salty breeze in your cheeks or see an orange sunset in the horizon...
or not. It could just as well pass right through without you noticing it. It
could be gone in a second.
- Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space
to think
So it all comes down to this. Ambient is music that
presents soft fascination and allows the mind to restore but not too much. It
is not music to meditate, nor an extremely fascinating work of art that you
could get lost on. It allows for a duality of being fascinated by the beautiful
worlds it creates and just being environmental music that passes you by. It
allows for the brain to focus and for the brain to relax.
Reference
Eno, Brian (1978), Music for airports / Ambient 1, PVC 7908
I think the idea of not listening to music while studying is related to direct attention and involuntary fascination. Perhaps listening to music will steal your attention easily from your reading, thus you will end up using more energy: to read and to listen to music, simultaneously. Moreover if the music has lyrics in the language that you understand, and if you are familiar with the music, probably you will end up using more energy to sing along rather than study. As a result, it will make you tired faster than just doing one task at one time. I believe it's not impossible to study/ work while listening to the music, but it requires much more effort, hence give you more and sooner direct attention fatigue.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as you said, perhaps for some people there are better genre of music to listen to while studying. Probably for them, particular kind of music works just like the cricket on the back ground, or the sound of the waves and breeze as the back sound. For me, this kind of music will help me to directed attention to work/ study if in the background there is actually louder unpleasant noise.
Nevertheless, I still prefer to work in silence as it's easier for me to directed attention and help me avoid direct attention fatigue as I am less overwhelm from the omnibus attack of "attention seeker".
I think this subject is super fascinating! It explores two somewhat contradictory notions regarding directed attention:
ReplyDelete1. It takes directed attention to inhibit involuntary fascination, and thus involuntary fascinations are detrimental to studying because they strain attentional resources.
2. Involuntary fascination can be restorative to attention.
Based on my understanding, involuntary fascination is distracting while trying to complete an activity, but can be restorative as a break from that activity. However, is this true in all cases? Is ambient music simply less distracting than other types of music for the reasons Nicolas mentioned? Or could it actually be restorative, even when trying to do something productive like studying? The research we've examined in class seems to point to the first option, but perhaps this is an area that could use extra research.
Also, I have heard that studying while listening to music helps you retain more information. I think this goes along with the "what fires together, wires together" concept. So listening to music while studying may make it easier to recollect information later, but it's only effective if you are listening to that same music when trying to remember the information. Based on this, it may be beneficial to listen to music while reading something that you will eventually write a paper on. You can listen to the same music while writing the paper as you did for your initial reading, making it easier to recollect what the reading was about. This may also be beneficial for strengthening your mental map of a subject if you listen to the same music for each reading on a topic. However, the negative impacts on attention may outweigh the benefits if you are studying for a test, since you likely won't be able to listen to the same music while taking that test.
I think Nicolas's post and these replies pose some interesting questions: Can ambient music facilitate focusing/using one's directed attention and be restorative at the same time? I would likely say no since restoration depends on one resting the mechanism of directed attention. But it's possible that ambient music provides less distraction (involuntary fascination) in the form of repeated melodies and lyrics, which in effect provides a supportive setting for directing attention.
ReplyDelete