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How Ambient Music Helps Quiet the Mind
Bleeps and bloops quiet thoughts and allow for greater focus.
For as successful as Radiohead’s Kid A was, it is still a rarity to find any sort of ambient music entering the mainstream.
The 1975 — arguably the world’s biggest indie pop group — have dabbled with ambient tracks on their records, from the title track of I like it when you sleep, for you are so beautiful yet so unaware of it to Having No Head off their most recent album, but even then their most popular tracks tend to be the poppy ones.
And there’s good reason for this: Ambient music is weird. It’s off-putting, and maybe a bit uncomfortable. It’s experimental electronic music, and if you’re not familiar with the genre (if you can call it a genre), you might have a reaction similar to SpongeBob in the episode “Krab Borg.” You know, the one where Mr Krabs gets really into that song “Electric Zoo,” and his employees think he’s a robot?
Scientifically speaking, our brains are hardwired to enjoy music. The human brain loves patterns, and music falls solidly into that classification. Each repeated progression of notes, chords, and rhythms fits into that pattern, which causes our brains to release dopamine.
