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“The power of music to integrate and cure is quite fundamental. It is the profoundest non-chemical medication…”  These words from famous neurologist and author Dr. Oliver Sacks, underline a fundamental truth often times overlooked by medical science.  Music can have a soothing and calming biological effect on a nervous brain and stressed body – and today thousands benefit from the therapeutic influence of song and harmony.

If your life is a combination of rushing from one dilemma to the next crisis while trying to maintain three wildfires and remembering to attend yoga class, you will most likely understand the importance of regular relaxation, but may be unable to properly implement it.  On the other hand, if you’ve forgotten the feeling of jumping into the deep end of an oasis after a crushing day at or in the office/car/house it may be time for a change.  Reduce the upkeep of a lifestyle that deducts a month from your life after every year.  Now recognize and employ, in your daily routine, the healing effect of music.  This is true both in the context of listening to music, or making some form of it by yourself.  As a musician of many years, I have observed the incredible effect that playing a few chords or notes has on an anxious person.

The organiser of a recent symposium on the understanding of the human musical experience was quoted as saying:  “We may be sitting on one of the most widely available and cost effective therapeutic modalities that ever existed.  Systematically, this could be like taking a pill … music seems to be able to change brain functioning to the same extent as medication, in many circumstances.”

For another expert in the field I’ll quote my wife: “I have no musical talent whatsoever, I cannot carry a note in a bucket, but I have managed to learn basic guitar patterns. I cannot play

When I was a teenager in the 90s, I was an aspiring indie kid, which wasn’t a small challenge in a small town in Essex, the heartland of techno and clubbing. Like every aspiring indie kid, I allowed the music press total control over my listening preferences, at the time this meant Primal Scream, Curve and the Teenage Fan Club were the idols of newspapers like the NME, the Melody Maker and VOX. I must admit I lost some interest somewhere around the time of CD singles, which certainly had something to do with my cynicism about commercial Britpop (but was also because CD singles were much more expensive).

It might seem obvious, but I think it is worth considering the potential for Mp3 downloads, if they mean people will find out for themselves what they want to listen to, by previewing and purchasing music tracks on an individual basis. Of course they are also much cheaper than buying CD or cassette singles, and offer great opportunities for newer artists to promote themselves. If you’re after whole albums, stores such as Mbop Megastore and ITunes allow you to find and download both classics and the latest releases, often at discounted prices, in the convenience of your own home. But for some reason, it’s taken me a while to latch on to Mp3 downloads maybe it’s because until now I’ve felt something was missing.

When I was 13, part of the appeal of buying music was going in to a record shop, seeing what other people were buying, and being able to get hold of tacky merchandise such as band t-shirts and posters. I knew what I liked, but part of the fun of getting music (or books, films, or whatever) was talking to people about it, looking at stuff. That’s why simply buying Mp3 downloads hasn’t really appealed.

But some music stores are now making the most of people’s interest in online communities, reading expert reviews, and having “wish lists” via social networking sites like MySpace. Online stores such

Twenty-four young, healthy test subjects lay quietly in a university lab, listening to carefully chosen music through headphones, as doctors and technicians hovered around them meticulously measuring their vital signs. The study concluded quickly and the subjects returned to their normal everyday lives. But as the researchers began sifting through the data, something new and interesting began to emerge.

We’ve known for some time that music is a powerful relaxation tool. Music can decrease anxiety levels, lower blood pressure and heart rate, and change stress hormone levels. It affects your respiration, reduces muscle tension, increases endorphin levels, and boosts your immune system. The effect of music is so powerful, hospitals around the world use music to reduce stress in patients waiting for surgery.

Now there’s fresh evidence on the power of music to affect our health. Researchers at Italy’s University of Pavia recently confirmed that music changes your heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure. But as they analyzed their data, they found something new, something no one had expected to find.

Dr. Bernardi and his colleagues were interested in expanding the use of music to reduce stress in medical patients. Here’s how their experiment worked: the docs recorded the vital signs of 24 test volunteers (12 musicians and 12 non-musicians) for five minutes. Then the volunteers listened to six different styles of music in random order. Random two-minute pauses were inserted in each piece of music.

Here’s what they found: fast musical tempos increased heart rate, blood pressure and respiration. Slow tempos reduced them. Pretty standard stuff. But then the shocker: the style of music and the volunteers’ personal musical preferences made no difference at all. The only thing that mattered was the tempo.

It didn’t matter if the music was classical, rap, techno, romantic or an Indian raga. Only one thing

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