• Question: Can you link music to science, with the waves of sound and also how music helps people to relax

    Asked by anon-223331 to Valerio, Sreejita, Sam, Kate, Anastasia, Adam on 19 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Sreejita Ghosh

      Sreejita Ghosh answered on 19 Nov 2019: last edited 20 Nov 2019 10:30 am

      Hey Music is as much art as it is science. The musical instruments follow the laws of Physics, wrt sound conduction. John Deacon of Queen had made the band’s own amplifier (Deacy amp) using his electrical engineering skills. There’s even a branch of engineering called sound engineering.

      Musical inputs “received” by our brain have different effects on our neurons. Also, did you know some people are creating music with the brain waves?

      I had watched this video when I was in my Bachelors and this inspired me to shift my focus to neuroscience and brain imaging related research (just before I became a data scientist). When there is a calm music we feel less stressed and our neurons relaxed which makes us feel less agitated and more relaxed.

    • Photo: Adam Wootton

      Adam Wootton answered on 20 Nov 2019:

      I actually used to teach on a course that talked about the Physics behind musical instruments. There’s a special property of musical instruments called ‘timbre’, which really describes how an instrument sounds. You could play a C on a piano, a trumpet and a piano and even though they play the same note, they all have their own unique sound. We can analyse the sound waves that these instruments produce and see their own unique patterns to try to understand them better.

Comments