✘ Tune in or zone out: conscious listening, mindfulness and health tech apps
- Music labels in the music therapy realm - designing the next generation of instruments - music vs. Advil - neurodivergence and complex genres
Hi,
I’m very happy to introduce a new contributor - Sarah Hicks. She’s a fabulous conductor and a great advocate around mental health and wellbeing in our industry. Here, she’s writing about the counterintuitive way that many health tech apps approach mindfulness. Enjoy!
Love, Maarten
As mindfulness and meditation have been mainstreamed, the influence of music on mood and mental states has increasingly been a part of the larger cultural conversation and digital sphere. Whether a curated playlist or a health tech app offering, the current proliferation of content created under the “wellness” umbrella seems to point to a demand for music that supports our mental health.
A quick scan yields an abundance of apps providing content under a “music for wellness” category - Hummly, Calm, Endel, Spiritune, etc. Perhaps in a reflection of our times, these platforms skew towards stress relief, relaxation and sleep, although with a good dose of lo-fi for focus or soft beats for walking meditation. Some apps take it a step further, with bespoke AI creations to support or alter current mind states, giving the listener a sound experience that is tailored to their unique situation.
Having spent time on many of these apps, I can attest to the benefits of some soothing binaural beats or “Mindful Wind” when there is too much on my mind. However, when it comes to the concept of supporting mindfulness, I am less convinced.
Tuning in to ourselves
As a long-time Vipassana meditator, I fully appreciate the sense of stability and calm awareness that can come from a mindfulness practice. Mindfulness itself is essentially a state in which we are fully embodied and engaged in the present moment as it unfolds. As meditators we consciously cultivate the skills that help us attain this engaged awareness, which in turn allows a clearer understanding of our minds and emotions. Tuning in to ourselves is what begets a mindful state.
Health tech apps seem to indicate otherwise. Hummly tells us to “Take a daily mental vacation”. With Spiritune you can “feel better, just by pressing play”. Spoke makes “looking after your mind as easy as listening to your favorite music”. The takeaway - zone out, or at least find a way to chill with the least possible effort. And while there is nothing wrong with using music as a quick fix for anxiety or even as ambient background for a meditative walk, it is the notion that simply listening to a track constitutes mindfulness that I question. To be clear, I am not directing my line of inquiry to content that includes overlays of spoken word guidance, which seems a useful introduction to basic concepts and insights - although that in itself does not represent a holistic mindfulness practice.
Because that’s what it is - a practice. If one is to rely on mindfulness music content to help us attain a state of calm awareness, what happens if we find ourselves without access to it? If our ability to find space for our emotions and to quiet our minds is contingent on listening to a focus track, are we cultivating mindfulness? Between the Alpha Waves and AI-created sound journeys, it seems like brain hacking - or whatever constitutes the least conscious effort or friction - is presented as the path to enlightenment, or at least temporary emotional wellness.
Tuning into music
What if, instead of blissing out on bespoke beats or a soothing soundscape, we learned to really tune into music, especially of a complex nature? As a classical musician, my bias is naturally towards symphonic music, but the notion holds as true for Esperanza Spalding or a Star Wars soundtrack as it does for Stravinsky. Music embodies mindfulness, in the sense that we cannot hear a note until it is played, and so by default it grounds us in the moment as it is happening, which in turn is the foundation of mindfulness.
When we engage with music by actively listening and being aware of the present as it unfolds, we are cultivating not only mindfulness, but also practicing a skill and creating our own neural pathways. The very act of conscious listening can help us access open awareness and develop the tools to take care of our minds. Perhaps one of the aforementioned platforms would consider expanding their meditation content to use music this way, or to create new music expressly meant to be the focus of a mindfulness/meditation practice rather than the background to one?
Human nature would have us skipping down the path of least resistance, but we learn and grow when we are challenged, and when we do the work of establishing our own best practices and adaptive coping mechanisms. The current crop of apps may be useful tools for preliminary forays into awareness and emotional regulation. However, active listening and conscious effort, rather than passive consumption and a mental vacation, can lead us to a more mindful place.
LINKS
Warner Music partners with MediMusic, marking its first music therapy deal (Mandy Dalugdug)
“The collaboration, which marks the record label’s first music therapy deal, aims to harness the power of music to ease pain, anxiety and stress through clinical trials of personalized playlists. MediMusic utilizes AI and machine learning to create evidence-based playlists tailored to individual patient needs.“At WMG, we are focused on finding new ways for our artists and music to be used for good, to benefit society, and to empower an ecosystem of partners with similar goals,” said Michael Baines, VP, Digital Strategy and Business Development, WMG.”
✘ Playlists curated to reduce hear rate and cortisol and increase release of oxytocin? Sign me up. While startups are embracing AI-generated music (and thus avoiding licensing fees), WMG and other labels are banking on the emotional punch of songs we know.
These Innovative New Musical Instruments Represent the Future of the Field (Rebekah Brands)
“Held annually by the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Music, the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition is a unique forum for some of the most cutting-edge developments in the field. It celebrates the ingenuity involved in designing and engineering brand-new instruments that represent the future of music. Jason Freeman, the music school’s department chair, noted that while the competing creations are accessible and easy to use, “they still reward that deep engagement over time, so that your relationship with the instrument grows the more you invest in it”.”
✘ I’m partial to the YUAN - the combinatory permutations seem endless. But there’s definitely an appeal in the direct relation of sight to sound of the Sonograf. In either case, it opens our minds not only to the unexplored ways we can create sound, but to the more fundamental concept what we can consider music.
Listening to moving music may reduce pain, study says (Nicola Davis)
“We can approximate that favourite music reduced pain by about one point on a 10-point scale, which is at least as strong as an over-the-counter painkiller like Advil [ibuprofen] under the same conditions. Moving music may have an even stronger effect,” said Darius Valevicius, the first author of the research from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Researchers say our preferred tunes can not only prove to be powerful painkillers, but that moving music may be particularly potent.”
✘ Not that I think that music should become our medicine cabinet, but an additional healing modality for our bruised spirits is never a bad idea.
Harmony in Chaos: How BPD Influences Music Tastes (Rafał Lawendowski)
“Recent research reveals that individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) exhibit distinct music preferences, favoring reflective and complex genres such as classical and jazz over intense, rebellious ones.”
✘ If music can impact our perception of mental states, it makes sense that our mental states can impact our perception of music.
MUSIC
I was introduced to Polish pianist/composer Hania Rani through her contemplative minimalist score for “On Giacometti” and have lately had her 2023 album “Ghosts” on repeat. Exploring both stillness and sweeping momentum, there’s an oceanic feel to her musical ebbs and flows, enveloping at times hypnotic. It has gotten me through many a frustrating flight delay…