more than half of respondents answered “Yes”. I was surprised at this result because there were a lot of people who listen to classical music than I expected. However, 42.9% respondents do not listen to them.
Figure 1 The first question
Figure 2 The second question
Lastly, I asked “What do you think about classical music?”. The result is shown in Figure 3 below. Respondents who had good impression was 51.4%, who have bad impression was 31.3%.
Especially, I was attracted to “sleepy” because it occupied a high percentage.
Figure 3 The last question
I interviewed some people “What classical music do you know?” A lot of music was known, and the most familiar music is “Unmei”, “Beto7” and “Daiku”. Actually, the real names were
“Symphony 5”, “Symphony 7” and “Symphony 9”. These were written by Beethoven, so I guess the most familiar person is Beethoven from my questionnaires. However, the world of the classical music is so wide, and he is only one part.
2. Relation between music and brain
Classical music stimulates the right brain, and it does not make the left brain work.
According to Mr. Kurotani, there are a broca’s area in the left brain, so the left brain plays a role of linguistic understanding, utterance, calculation, logical and analyzing thought. On the other hand, the right brain plays a role of the field of the art because of intuitive and overall¹. As a result, we always use only the left brain and when we are tired, we should stimulate the right brain by listening to music and the left brain takes a break. But any music may not be suitable. According to Bihada-Mania, If we listen to music with lyrics, the left brain reacts. That’s why classical music is much suitable. Furthermore, classical music causes alpha waves like natural sounds, for example twitter of little birds, flow of river, wave in the sea and so on². According to Quality Life Express, an alpha wave is one of the brain waves.
The range is from 8 hertz to 14 hertz. We can relax by this wave. Table 1 is shown below. That is the kind of brain waves and effects³.
Table 1 The feature of the brain waves
https://www.qle.co.jp/brawav.htm wa ve s 2 β ~ γ 0 Hz R e co g n itio n ,F o re ca st wa ve s 1 4 ~ 3 δ Hz P re ca u tio n ,C o n ce n tra tio n wa ve s δ ~ 1 4 Hz R e la xa tio n ,C re a tio n θwa ve s 4 ~ δ Hz S u b co n scio u sly,M e m o ry
wa ve s 0 .α ~ 4 Hz U n co n scio u s
3. Let’s study with classical music
The purpose of this chapter is to introduce some ways of study with classical music. There are good influences if we study listening to classical music. The music which is suitable for a situation is different from other music. Mr. Nakashima stated about four situations. First topic is about how to excite the purpose. This way is different between men and women. Man’s motive power is pleasure and they can correspond to broad, so the best suitable music is symphony. On the other hand, a woman’s motive power is stability and confidence. It is important for them to be pile up the sympathy, so the music abundant in emotion is good. Second topic is memorization. The memorization efficiency rises by more than one movement and remembering according to the melody. Third topic is concentration. If you want to make concentration continue, you should listen to the music of the fixed tempo and with a little intonation. Last topic is logical thinking. Auditory stimulation tends to reach the brain directly. If we spend a lot of times to listen to classical music and remember the melody, we can enhance the logical thinking skill⁴. I want to recommend some classical music which is suitable for these situations. About the first topic, the music which I recommend to man is “Shostakovich’s Symphonie 5”, and to woman’s is “The last letter from Murdoch”. It has story of Titanic. In the second topic, I recommend “Radetzky March”. The third topic’s suitable music is March of Sousa. I think it is good to memorize with walking around your room. The last is “Tchaikovsky’s symphony 4” and a lot of Tchaikovsky’s music. His music has magnificence, so I recommend his music.
Conclusion
I could know the good influence of classical music. If classical music has a good influence for study, we should use it more. But it may be different from person to person, so some people may not believe about this thing. I want you to try to do it while you are studying. And about some people who answered “sleepy” in my questionnaire, I wanted them to be interested in classical music first, but I found that listening to classical music makes people relax, so I hope that they use classical music to
have a good sleep and rest. However you use it, if classical music has a good influence on people, that is the best. I’ m glad if I could link classical music to people.
References
1. Kurotani, T. (2002). E de wakaru nou no hataraki [The workings of the brain I know with pictures].Tokyo:
Koudan sha. 152.
2. Bihada-Mania. (n.d.). The relaxation effect of the classical music is wonderful, Retrieved December 17, 2016, from http://bihada-mania.jp/blog/4401
3. QLE.co.jp. (2016). Brain waves, Retrieved December 19, 2016, from https://www.qle.co.jp/brawav.htm 4. Town work magazine. (2015). Is it effective in a concentration rise and the memorization power improvement? The classical music recommended to study, Retrieved December 17, 2016, from https://townwork.net/magazine/life/18133/