“If music be the food of love, play on,” Shakespeare.

“Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence,” Robert Fripp.  To me, music is much much more than filler.  It doesn’t fill my silence.  It fills my heart.

A vivid first memory I have is Happy Birthday being sung in my honor.  The serenade brought chills to my three year old spine.  Not realizing the significance of birthdays yet, I remember thinking, “Why are they singing to me???  I don’t know, but I LIKE it!!!”

Music feeds my soul.

My kids used to groan when I’d pop in a bluegrass cassette.  Bluegrass always gives me an immediate pick-me-up.  (Now a local bluegrass band in our town is attracting college kids by the droves.)  An orchestral song on my Pandora station, Epic Soundtracks, brought me to tears the other day.  For this low-libido lady, Beale Street Blues can influence my randy nature.

It isn’t lyrics that put me in a certain mood, it is the instrumental music.

Music is personal.  Tastes vary.  It affects individuals differently.  I have an acquaintance who doesn’t experience music on an emotional level.  Which is hard to fathom, but I realize we are all drawn to different things.

It’s long been intuitively known that fun music makes a happy crowd.  1955 movie, Ma and Pa Kettle in Waikiki, Pa’s deemed a genius when he pipes in a jazz tune to the floor of a pineapple processing plant and speeds up production.  1995 University of Illinois study shows that workers listening to music on their personal devices were more productive.  Studies in the UK led by Anneli B. Haake showed workers were less stressed and more focused when listening to music on the job.

Do you, like me, have a strong emotional response to music?  Could there be a scientific correlation between music and our mood, specifically libido?

According to a study published in, “Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences” journal, 2001, by Dr. Anne Blood (Massechusetts General Hospital) and Robert J. Zatorre (Montreal Neurological Institute), strains of music can favorably stimulate the same parts of the brain as food and sex.

This study measured 5 men and 5 females who chose one piece of music that, “consistently elicited intensely pleasant emotional responses, including chills.”

Subjects listened to their piece and underwent a PET scan to measure cerebral blood flow.  Heart rate, electromyogram (EMG) and respiration depth were also evaluated. A baseline for each subject was determined using a piece of music similar to their choice, however, not ‘chills’ producing.

“The pattern of activity observed here in correlation with music-induced chills is similar to that observed in other brain imaging studies of euphoria and/or pleasant emotion.”  (orgasm?)

In other words, the brain’s pleasure centers that are turned on by food or sex were also turned on by the intense pleasure of music.

YES, there is a correlation between music and our physical/emotional response.  I think for low libido ladies this measure of science is lyrical information.  Hit your favorite music streaming station early in the day to juice up the brain for some lovin’ with your honey.   Music truly is the food of love.

Side Note:  Harley Davidson, Feb. 2013, isn’t so convinced of music’s benefits.  They have recently banned all music on the production floor citing LACK of focus for their workers.  Safety first for Harley Davidson.

How do different genre’s of music affect your mood?  Would you have guessed music could influence you like this?

Find my personal suggestions, over 2 dozen music selections, for Bedroom Soundtracks at Pearltrees.com.

For more music/brain info, please see this fascinating article:  What Happens to Your Brain under the Influence of Music

For some fun bedroom playlist ideas see:  A Marital Intimacy Playlist