While studying, have you ever found yourself making fun of that funky jazz beat playing in the background at Starbucks, singing along with IHOP’s oldies tunes or wishing you had brought your Walkman to the library to kill the silence?
Students express a variety of feelings about studying to music. Some just can’t stand it. Some can’t go without it. Some even carry their headphones with them everywhere, broadcasting to the whole campus what they’re listening to while walking between classes. And some don’t even notice it playing in the background at places like coffee shops.
Marketing and public relations junior Olivia Reed is one who never listens to music when studying and finds the music at coffeehouses very distracting. “These places should play solely instrumentals,” said Reed. “Any kind of jingle makes you want to start singing along.”
Stacy Hennessy works at CC’s on Highland Road. She said the coffee shop tunes in to either jazz, classical or holiday music from a Muzac satellite. The music is “part of a whole atmosphere that all ties in together” at the shop.
Hennessy said the store sometimes receives complaints about the jazz being too distracting or the classical being too boring and sleep-inducing. The workers will change the station at request and try to rotate the music equally.
Starbucks is another coffeehouse with hard-to-ignore tunes. Manager of Starbucks on Corporate Boulevard Michael Tillman said the business plays music “all over the board,” including alternative, soul, rock and a little country. He said the shop tries to keep it mellow with nothing too loud or abrasive.
“Students are usually so involved, they tune it out,” said Tillman. He said the biggest complaint regards the volume of the music.
But, not all students find music a distraction. Mass communication sophomore Ashley Arceneaux said she listens to music 95 percent of the time while she studies.
“It creates a more pleasant ambience for doing something that I would consider an unpleasant activity,” Arceneaux said. “Music tends to reduce my stress level when I’m feeling overwhelmed from all the information I’m cramming into my head the night before a test.”
Many studies, such as the Mozart Effect, are dedicated to researching how music affects studying. These studies confirm along with reducing stress, music also has the ability to help create positive attitudes toward school and to improve eyesight, hearing, concentration and memory, among other things.
A similar study called neuromusicology deals with how music affects the brain. Scientists researching neuromusicology discovered music trains the brain for higher levels of thinking. It claims college students who listen to classical music while studying absorb, retain and retrieve the information more easily than those studying in silence.
Several studies on music’s affect on studying say timing of music is the key element. They say at 60 beats per minute, music imitates the beat of an average heart, increasing relaxation of muscles, which in turn allows greater alertness and concentration. Baroque music is the most conducive with this time element.
If you’re going to study with music, a few considerations to keep in mind are to be considerate of others around you by turning down the volume, sticking with familiar music so you won’t try to listen intently, picking your music before you start to study to avoid wasting study time, choosing something instrumental or mellow (like Enya or John Mayer) and avoiding the radio since advertisements and talk shows can be overly distracting.