Music
Music has been shown to have theraputic effects on people, especially classical music. An interesting set of stats that I recently came across:
Absolute Pitch (identifying a note w/out hearing a reference tone):
- 1 in 10,000 - "normal people" have this talent
- 1 in 10 - professional musicians gifted with this talent
- 1 in 2 - people born blind that have this gift
Alzheimer's patients can see memory recall improve through classical music stimulation. Apparantly, the structure of the music engages part of our brain that forms pathways critical to thinking processes and accessing memory (synapsis? neurons? Oh yeah, you knew you learned these words for a reason!)
Comments (8)
Ha ha, I'll be 29 later this year.
I'm 40 and still listening to a lot of music. From the good ol' stuff like CCR, Eagles, Steve Miller, Cream & Pink Floyd (before the breakup), to New Age (Kitaro, Coyote Oldman, Deuter), to Blues (Tab Benoit, Eric Lindell, Keb Mo), to Goa/Trance (Infected Mushroom, Tosca, Doof), to 'new' stuff (Lifehouse, Train). Check out the tracker if you want...http://www.last.fm/user/Styro/
Being one of those 1 in 10,000 \"normal\" people, I don't know if it's a talent or a curse. There's absolutely nothing more horrid than sitting beside a singing friend who can't carry a tune if it was handed to him in a bucket. It's akin to fingernails on a chalkboard.\r
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It also kept me from being able to get better roles in high school and college theatre because they \"needed me\" in the main chorus.\r
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On the lighter side, it annoys the hell out of my wife. I guess it has SOME use.