A brief session of group chanting can boost positive mood more than guided relaxation, according to a randomized trial with 66 Australian adults, 41 of whom had dysfunctional breathing and 25 normal respiratory function. Both chanting and relaxation improved flourishing, social connection, and reduced negative mood, with greater and more consistent benefits for those with breathing difficulties. Non-attachment, autonomy, and breathing function improved similarly across both groups. The authors suggest chanting and relaxation offer psychosocial and breathing-related benefits, particularly for people with dysfunctional breathing, though reduced statistical power to detect group differences means the findings warrant replication.
An eight-week Mindfulness for Singers course increased mindfulness levels in vocal students compared to controls. Teachers identified 61% of eligible participants as having completed the mindfulness intervention. Students reported positive effects on lessons, practice, and performance, including more focus, attention, body awareness, improved singing technique, enhanced socio-collaborative relationships, reduced performance anxiety, and greater expressivity and enjoyment. The findings suggest that mindfulness training is highly beneficial for singers and should be made available in music conservatoires and university music departments.
Triplet rhythms and other fast, repeated patterns with stepwise pitch movement are associated with sensations of rotation in listeners. An analysis of crowd-sourced musical excerpts found that compound meters are more common in such music than in Western music generally. An Ecological Theory of Rotating Sounds (ETRoS) proposes that loudness fluctuations in music mimic the acoustic patterns of rotating sound sources. Two experiments showed that perceived rotation increases with tempo and is weak for binary rhythms. Patterns with loudness stress matching rotating trajectories were rated as more rotating than typical Western patterns, but only when pitch also moved. The results offer moderate support for an acoustic-ecological explanation.