In this new documentary film from the LiveLab at McMaster University in Canada, PhD researcher Dana Swarbrick created an experiment to explore how audience participation changes the impact of a concert experience. In education, we sometimes include audience participation in our concerts, but it may not be as significant as in a concert by adult […]

The question “Does singing and listening to music during pregnancy help my baby’s brain?” and the answer are both complex and evolving. We do know that our auditory processing network is active before birth, probably in the final trimester, and that just after birth, babies use their music processing network to understand their mother’s speech […]

Age-related hearing loss, it doesn’t sound very good. However, it is something that almost every person as they age will begin to experience. With hearing loss comes not only the lowering of our ability to hear the nuances in sound and some specific sounds altogether, but it can also lead to a withdrawal from conversations […]

When we listen to music, we can experience many levels of engagement – from very intense emotions to no identifiable emotions at all. Researchers have looked very closely at this phenomenon to understand if it is certain characteristics of music that elicit an emotional response, if it is a totally individual experience, or if it […]

Here is a question we get from parents all the time – should I let my teenager listen to music while they study? First of all, what is the greatest concern for parents – that their child will be distracted, will not complete their study tasks or that they are just goofing off during the […]

Music learning is studied in two basic ways with children – as a tool to understand and enhance typical brain development and a tool to improve delayed brain development that has been impacted by environmental or medical factors. These latter factors could be living in challenging circumstances due to loss of hearing from an accident […]

Researchers have wondered if “listening to comforting music, as a response to a social loss experience, provides a sense of empathic company as indicated by reduced loneliness and heightened empathy.” Is a pandemic, such as the one we are living through at the moment, a form of social loss? If we look at social media, […]

Have you been listening to music as you get your daily exercise in during COVID-19? Have you found yourself changing your music choices during this troubling time, maybe to lighten your mood or help you focus more on your exercise and less on these uncertain times? Here is a bit of a left-field article for […]

This is a brilliant article worth a full read, but here are some highlights for you from one of BBBs favourite researchers Professor Sarah Wilson from the University of Melbourne. “When we study singing, we don’t just learn about singing,” she says. “We learn about things that make us uniquely human and gain insights into […]

Streaming services are getting a great workout during this period of lockdown. We are watching TV and listening to music more than we ever have before, as we deal with the stress and uncertainty of the COVID-19 world. Become a member for access to more resources like this one This article gives us an excellent […]

What do you get when you put Orff, Jazz and a group of elderly non-musicians together? The answer is, happier people! This randomised study, which means the participants were not necessarily interested in learning music, saw 45 people aged 62 to 95 (healthy or with cognitive impairment) attend an intensive music training program composed of […]

Why do we prefer different types of music? Why isn’t there just one type of music that everyone likes? The answer may be that we only get connected with our true selves, the part of our brain that is full of our thoughts, through music that we choose for ourselves. “The listeners’ preferences, not the […]