I’m sitting here right now listening to The Preservation Hall Jazz Band and I am totally at ease. They aren’t the only group that does this to me and many other people I would assume. Any music can be relaxing in a manner of speaking. Anyone from Mozart to B.B. King can have someone in an almost catatonic state. What I want to know is what is it about music that makes a person so relaxed? Does some kind hormone release into your brain to mellow you out or what? I don’t fully understand why.
Endorphins or other chemicals that deactivate the stress response. I suspect you have conditioned youself to associate a relaxing time with music, therefore you have the “relaxing response” as soon as you begin to hear it. Sort of like Pavlov’s dog, there isn’t anything in the music that relaxes you, it’s just that you’ve relaxed so many times to music your brain confuses cause and effect and makes you relax whenever you hear it.
My music teacher at high school once told us about a little old lady, who had said something like “Nah, I don’t like modern music. Give me Mozart or Beethoven or any of the old masters any day. People who wrote music that you makes you relaxed”.
His comment to this was that Mozart and Beethoven would most probably have rotated in their graves had they heard it. They didn’t want people to be pacified by their music. They wanted to stir the audience up.
I agree. A statement like that should be retracted. The only reason I listed Beethoven and Mozart as relaxing music is because there are certain selections for me that enduce a relaxed state. Other pieces by them get me damn excited just listening to it. it’s the same way with B. B. King some of his pieces are great to sit back and relax and others are awesome to dance to. It only matters on your personal preference.