Music throws you off

Mark labrador, Staff writer

Music is a powerful art form that can bring
up emotions, inspire, motivate, and alter your
mood. More and more students are bring-
ing their headphones or earbuds with them to
libraries and study halls, but does it actually
help to listen to music while working. Despite
the common stigma attached to listening music
while working, it is still undecided if its effects
are positive or negative. A lot of research is go-
ing on to look into this, but the results havebeen
inconclusive so far.
The most famous theory in this regard is the
“Mozart effect” which basically links classical
music with better spatial-temporal reasoning.
It’s an actual fact that listening to music with six
beats per minute increases concentration. Music
styles such as classical and baroque can increase
your ability to focus.
A lot of students don’t seem to listen to these
types of music unless the teacher encourages or
explains to them it’s essential to what they are
learnings about. Nevertheless, it can have the
same effect if you listen to the music you enjoy
the most. It can actually make your brain more
active. However, music with a repetitive beat
can cause the brain to be less responsive due to
no changes in the music pattern.
Completing a task also seems to play a
critical role. Working on complex material that
requires you to engage all your focus on what
you are trying to understand may be hampered
by any kind of background music. Tasks that
require you to keep track of several pieces of
information at one time while processing them,
may be particularly affected by any kind of
background music or noise and are best done in
complete silence. Your personality also seems
to play a role on whether you will benefit at
all from listening to your favorite tunes while
working. Furthermore, we have seen that an
interaction of both factors, task complexity and
personality, may be in place.
The essential question depends on the
person’s point of view of course. Based on my
experience, listening to music while working or
studying makes me lose focus and concentra-
tion. Without music, I have a much better op-
portunity to engage in my work and understand
what is going on.
Since music these days is very manipulative
due to the strong language and sexuality behind
the songs they have the ability to distract you.
More importantly, students control electronics to
crank up the volume and type in the song they
want to listen to. Like most certain individuals, I
listen to music from my generation and I would
want to crank up the volume or change the song
but because of this, it creates a distraction and I
prefer not to listen to it while studying or work-
ing