An Early Morning Music Lesson

Music may well sooth wild beasts, and it can do other good things as well. This fairly obvious observation came as an accidental lesson during a morning workout. While listening to music on an MP3 player, one cut (Cerulean Skies, Maria Schneider Orchestra) in particular was really engaging, and when it ended I noticed the pulse rate display had gone down considerably. Couldn’t leave it alone.

A Correlation Between Noise And Blood Pressure

In February 2008, Reuters did a piece on a study of the effects of airport noise One conclusion was that airport noise increases blood pressure, which probably is not Nobel prize material. A lot of newspapers around the US picked up the story, which in turn generated other related stories on the effects on blood pressure from things like lawnmowers, garbage disposals, even snoring. However, none of the articles I reviewed were very specific about certain details, like the nature of the noise that can cause an increase in blood pressure.

Noise: Good And Bad

Noise is noise, and at some point can cause physical damage, and not only to the ears. Noise that influences blood pressure doesn’t have to be inherently loud as such, so the negative physiological effect on blood pressure must be related to its constituents. For a given loudness, coherent noise from, say, a jet plane’s engine, grates on our senses, while the surf line at the beach is relaxing. Coherent noise is usually made by a mechanical action, and is often called black noise. In contrast, the surf’s sound is reasonably random, and like most other sounds in nature, like the pattern of raindrops on a hard surface, is called white noise.

How Does Black Noise Raise Blood Pressure?

The short answer is: No one really knows. It’s one of the Mysteries Of Life. There are a lot of theories, and most of the ones I’ve seen have to do, ultimately, with resonance. Black noise increases it because of its coherent, accumulative nature, while white noise decreases it because the randomness acts as dispersing agent. What the resonance is within the human physiology is unknown. That may be Nobel prize material.

Music: A Form Of White Noise

Actually, music is more complex, having both coherence, like a repeating melody, and randomness, such as counter point. The complexity is a result of the Law Of Cosines, one consequence being that four frequencies are actually present when two frequencies are mixed (the original, their sum and difference), and there certainly a lot of frequencies involved. This effect is taken advantage of in how orchestras are arranged physically, and the assignments of musical parts to the various sections of an orchestra. Not surprisingly, the soothing effects of music have drawn the attention of serious
medical researchers

What Does It All Mean?

Probably nothing, other than general advice to listen to music you like, stay away from people who snore, spend as much time at the beach as possible, and always use a noise canceling headset when at the airport.