Month: February 2022

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Do you listen to music or Lyric?

My husband mentioned that he would not hear any music because all his concentration goes to the lyrics of the music. Interestingly. I am the opposite. I hear music but not the lyrics. Don’t get me wrong. I care about the lyric of the song. When I hear a piece of music for the first time, my brain is busy creating the score from the music. Since I have played the piano since I was three years old, I have a near-perfect pitch. Whenever I hear music I like, I like to recreate the music with my piano.

I tried to concentrate on the lyrics many times; however, I could never focus solely on the song’s lyrics. Having a near-perfect pitch works as a double-edged sword. The ability is good if you want to copy a music piece you hear, but sometimes I feel that this ability can prevent me from enjoying the music. When I listen to beautiful music, the orchestra’s pitch or singing can distract me from enjoying the music. On the other hand, my husband can pick up the lyrics even when in a foreign language. He again has similar problems as I do, and he will never process the song’s tune at all.

Our brains respond to lyrics and tunes independently. According to Besson, Faïta, Peretz, Bonnel, & Requin (1998), syntax, the structural aspects of language, and music harmony create similar brain responses. In contrast, the brain response is very different from semantically inappropriate words. Brain responses are the same for both lyrics or tunes until semantically congruous or incongruous words either in or out of key. Therefore, this finding demonstrates that we process lyrics and tune independently.

I may be keener to the song’s keys, and therefore, my brain dominantly processes the songs’ tune rather than the lyrics. On the contrary, my husband is keener to the syntax of languages; consequently, he dominantly processes the lyrics.

 

What is more critical, lyric or music, to be a good listener? Melody or Rhythms are a deal-breaker for music. Victor Hugo stated, “Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent.” A lyric without melody or Rhythm is a poem. If someone asks me the same question, I cannot answer.

I care greatly about the lyric’s content to refine the music I just copied. The expression of the music can change 180 degrees with how you interpret it. To analyze songs better, I try to understand the song’s lyrics. If I copy a piece of music from a video game, I fully complete the video game before I start copying the music to understand the lyric better.

I am curious whether lyrics impact our emotion or well-meaning if we can process them simultaneously. I cannot pay attention to lyrics; however, I write much better with background music, influencing my writing ability. So, I assume it would be an excellent experience to process lyrics simultaneously.

 

When I was digging into the research regarding music lyrics, I found an interesting article written by Tricia Fox Ransom, a songwriter who is graduating with a master of applied positive psychology degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She assumed that lyrics have a significant impact on well-being since she always felt the words of the music had a considerable influence on her state of mind. If her hypothesis were written, she could use the effects for better use, such as treating children with cancer or end-of-life care, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, etc. Before completing her capstone, she walked into the office of James Pennebaker, a leading researcher in language and emotional experience, to get his opinion. She was surprised that he did not think lyrics influence well-being. She admitted that she could not find any studies which confirmed her hypothesis. If Tricia’s hypothesis were correct, it would be fantastic.

Maybe lyrics do not affect well-being; however, they still add in-depth meaning to the music. I want to believe that we can communicate better with lyrics and music. When I listen to or read a poem, it makes me think about the words. On the other hand, listening to music makes me feel something. THE THEME NOW EXPRESSES A GREATER MEANING when I understand the song’s lyrics. Am I too susceptible to the music? I think that melody and lyrics have a symbiotic relationship, and they both gain enhanced emotional influences on us.

That is why I feel not ready to copy the music just listening to the song without understanding the song’s lyrics. To increase understanding further, I even complete the movies, games, books containing the music. This part of analyzing the contents of the lyric is preparation for creating a piano arrangement of the song. I did similar preparation for piano music I practice. When I was practicing Chopin’s Op. 10 No12., Revolutionary Etude, I spent days trying to obtain the music’s background to interpret the music better. I was trying to understand the composer’s message in the music.

 

It probably does not matter debating, which is more important for a song. There are people, like me, who dominantly process the melody over lyrics. On the other hand, people like my husband dominantly process lyrics over the melody. Research indicates that the brain could process the tune and words independently. Both lyrics and music are mediums of communication. Lyrics and music have a symbiotic relationship rather than a competitive relationship, and the ties even gain synergy. They help us to communicate messages better. They are practical tools to communicate with more significant emotional influences.

 

 

References

Besson, M., Faïta, F., Peretz, I., Bonnel, A.-M., & Requin, J. (1998). Singing in the Brain: Independence of Lyrics and Tunes. Psychological Science, 9(6), 494–498. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40063362

Ransom. T. F. (July 31, 2021). A Case for Lyrics and How They Impact Our Emotions. https://www.mappmagazine.com/articles/a-case-for-lyrics-and-how-they-impact-our-emotions

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Dealing with C-Tasks

When I was in my early 20’s, I was not great at doing micro-tasks, resulting in unwanted consequences. Because I was busy closing a quarter, I put aside renewing my car registration. On the due date, I was assigned a task that needed to be done that day, while I still needed to go to the registration office to renew my car registration. It generally took me 30 minutes to go to the registration office and renew my car registration. Unfortunately, the registration office had a technical problem on the day I went to the office, and it took me a few hours to complete the task. I had no choice but to wait while the office was fixing their technical problem because I had to renew the registration on that day. I ended up working overtime to recover my lost time.

C-tasks are tasks that do not add any value. Those tasks require little time to complete; however, they can cause unnecessary stress past the critical date. In the worst case, it can prevent you from achieving other tasks that lead to your important goals. For example, they may be paying bills and renewing your car registration. Since I received the renewal notice more than a month before the due date, I had more than one month to complete this simple task. It was because I procrastinated; I did not choose to complete the task on the day. On the day, I promised myself not to repeat the same mistake.

Even though c-tasks do not add value to your life, procrastinating causes unnecessary stress. A sense of urgency can trigger some level of the Fight or flight response, a physiological reaction against events threatening survival. The reaction begins in the amygdala, which triggers the secretion of cortisol and adrenaline. Cortisol is a stress hormone that increases blood pressure and blood sugar level and suppresses the immune system. Adrenaline can prepare you to fight if something threatens your survival, but excessive adrenaline has adverse physical effects such as anxiety, high blood pressure, and heart rate increase. Therefore, Excessive stress can increase cardiovascular disease risk. According to Steptoe and Kivimaki (2012), patients who experience acute psychological stress have coronary heart disease. Patients who experience long-term stress increase coronary heart disease and mortality rate.

Excessive stress not only makes you miserable but also makes you unproductive. According to Halkos and Bousinakis (2010), as stress levels increase, productivity and satisfaction of individuals decrease. Although, tolerance levels can vary among individuals (pp. 415-416).

There is nothing wrong with having some sense of urgency or stress, as it makes me more focused, and I try not to sustain some sense of urgency on my essential tasks. On the other hand, I do not see any benefit of having a sense of urgency resulting from c-tasks because they add no value to me. As Halko and Bousinakis (2010) pointed out, people’s stress tolerance levels vary among individuals. If you think you have a higher stress tolerance than others, it would be better to utilize its capacity to add value to you. I cannot stop thinking that wasting my energy to complete c-tasks is Muda, waste. Therefore, I try to get rid of C-tasks before they become critical and stressful.

Managing C-Tasks

Managing tasks start with identifying and categorizing the importance of the tasks and when you need to complete them. Without knowing the importance of the tasks, you cannot correctly identify c-tasks. Therefore, I categorize my tasks by the importance of the task. The degree of importance is determined by how much value the task will provide me. For example, studying for an accounting designation was a high priority; thus, an important task. I categorize tasks such as bill payments or car registration renewal as C. They are essential tasks; however, they do not add value to my life.

A: A high-value activity (High impact on my Goals)

B: A medium value activities (Medium Impact to my Goals)

C: A low-value activity (Low impact on my goals)

Then, I categorize all my tasks depending on how urgent they are. A task categorized as a one is due within 0-3 days, and a task classified as 4 is a task that has a due date in more than a few weeks. There is a time that we may have an urgent task on the date the duties arise. For example, during tax season, I had many critical tasks when the clients brought me the necessary tax receipts at the last minute. There is nothing I can do to control the occurrence of the tasks. I try to keep a substantial percentage of my tasks in categories 3 and 4.

  1. Due within 0-3 days
  2. Due within a week
  3. Due within few weeks
  4. Have time more than a few weeks

When I create a to-do list, I pay a lot of attention to my time to complete the tasks—the more urgent the task is, the more stress we have. The stress level does not matter whether I complete tasks A, B, or C. For example, it would be the same to me whether I am submitting an essential report due today or renewing my license registration about to expire today.

A tiny Urgent Tasks

If a task takes less than 15 minutes to complete, I complete them immediately if I have the time. Thus, most tiny urgent tasks do not make it to my to-do list. If I am in the middle of other tasks while they arise, I put the list on my post-it notes and try to do them immediately between more significant tasks. The key is to eliminate these tiny urgent tasks as soon as possible without multi-tasking since multi-tasking never works for me.

Conclusion

I do not wholly deny having some degree of stress to be focused on. However, I feel that stress caused by tasks that are not critical to your value is a waste. Instead, I use the stress capacity to add value to myself to gain more satisfaction in my life. Therefore, I decided to identify c-tasks and manage them. Ever since I started controlling c-tasks in my early 20’s, I became more productive.

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References

Halkos, G. and Bousinakis, D. (2010), “The effect of stress and satisfaction on productivity”, International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 59 No. 5, pp. 415-431. https://doi.org/10.1108/17410401011052869

Steptoe, A., Kivimäki, M. Stress and cardiovascular disease. Nat Rev Cardiol 9, 360–370 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrcardio.2012.45