From BBC news –

Playing music to hospital patients on ventilators helps them to breathe more easily, findings show.

Experts at the Cochrane Library say music could be better than drugs to calm patients during forced ventilation.

In studies involving more than 200 intensive care patients, listening to music reduced anxiety and helped slow patients’ breathing rates.

More work is planned to determine if the type of music played is important.

One day, I asked my class how many of them would give up listening to music for their entire lives for a million dollars. I had no takers. Now, you might get a different result from a different classroom. Certainly that was unscientific.

However, I believe that music lengthens our lives, gives intensity to our emotions and enriches our thought. How to measure that drives me crazy. I ask music teachers why music is important. The principle result of this exercise is that music teachers avoid me.

I am biased. My utterly huge You-Tube collection of music is testament to my focus and my willingness to spend hours looking for a song a solid indicator of the importance of music in my life. (Hunting down Wadsworth Mansion’s song Sweet Mary was that last one I’ve worked on.)

A lot of the music I listen to is bad music. It’s garage band stuff from the mid sixties and early seventies. But it helps me remember when I was young and everything was possible.

Currently I listen to Aqua and BWO (Bodies Without Organs) as well as my old stuff. I told my class I didn’t want the my musical taste to end with The Loving Spoonful’s “Do you Believe in Magic.”

Maybe you’ve seen a study I haven’t. Don’t send the one where babies in the womb benefit from classical music. I tried to explain this to an overseas reader with little success, and now that I think about it, it’s just not that convincing.

But if you know something about the benefits of music I don’t, charge in here. Write huge comments. I’ll publish them. Let me know what this stuff is all about.

Why is it important to me that I listen to two or three songs in the morning before I go to work? Why do I feel like I did so long ago when a once familiar song is played? Why does any of this work, drums, guitar, etc. Why do they affect people?

If you can, tell me.

James Pilant