Is music really good for you? According to a John Hopkins Medicine article, “Keep Your Brain Young with Music” it can keep your mind more youthful. Listening to music gives your brain a total workout, just like your favorite high-intensity gym workout exercises your body. You can reap the same benefits by playing music, so dust off that high school band clarinet!
While scientists continue to discover all the ways that music affects us, they do know that “music is structural, mathematical and architectural. It’s based on relationships between one note and the next. You may not be aware of it, but your brain has to do a lot of computing to make sense of it.” It has been proven that listening to music can lower blood pressure, and reduce anxiety and pain. It can improve sleep quality, mood, mental alertness, and memory.
Take a look at Salina Public Library’s CD music collection and fire up your brain! It’s a great way to take music for a test run before making a purchase. You’ll find all kinds of music by musicians old and new in the collection.
And of course, if you want to bypass physical forms of music delivery and go straight to virtual methods, you can check out the free Hoopla app (for residents of Saline County).
The following musicians have birthdays in June, so try out some new-to-you forms of music on CD.
- Brandi Carlile, In These Silent Days
- Fleetwood Mac, Rumours
- Various Artists, Outlaw: Celebrating the Music of Waylon Jennings
- Jeff Beck, Emotion and Commotion
- Ariana Grande, Positions
- Kris Kristofferson, Closer to the Bone
Prefer to play your own music? Try out some songs in these books:
- 25 Most Requested Contemporary Christian Songs [piano/guitar/vocal], Sarah Huffman
- Rock Guitar: From Beginner to Advanced, John McCarthy
- Teach Yourself to Play Guitar, David M. Brewster
- The Only Basic Piano Instruction Book You’ll Ever Need, Brooke Halpin.
And don’t forget, we also have guitars in our Library of Things available to checkout!
As expected, we also have bunches of books on bands and musicians. When you need a break from singing along to your favorites, borrow one and catch up on the back story.
There now, don’t you feel more relaxed already?
About The Author: Lori
Lori is the Information Services Outreach Librarian at Salina Public Library. A native of DeKalb, Ill., Lori spent only one summer detassling corn for DeKalb AgResearch and made an impressive $2.35 per hour. She stayed in her hometown and graduated from Northern Illinois University with a B.A. and M.A. in art history. Lori moved to Kansas in 1990 with plans to get a Ph.D. in art history from KU, but that quickly turned into attending Emporia State University and receiving a second master’s degree in library and information science. She met a fellow library student named Nick and they married over spring break just before graduating. Lori enjoys reading about, looking at, and researching anything having to do with art or art historical matters. Every spring she encourages her 30 fruit trees to bear well, and gardens on her three acres in Saline County. She appreciates the style of the 1920s-40s, and can often be found knitting, cooking (and eating) delicious Italian food, obsessively playing Words with Friends or working a crossword puzzle. Lori can be reached at infoservices.lori@salpublib.org.
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