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Does Music Affect A Person?

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Does music affect a person? Have you ever walked into a room when there was music playing while you were in a bad mood or an emotional frame of mind, only to find yourself humming or singing along to the music that was playing? Music affects the way we feel, and it can alter the current state of our emotional well-being just by listening to it. Often, in everyday life, people overlook the importance that sounds make in our lives. With all of the issues and tasks that an individual tries to complete during their busy day, it’s no wonder that we often do not take the time to examine something as simple as the sounds that surround us and penetrate our minds, or the affect in which these sounds have on our current emotional state of mind. Music has a peculiar effect on the human mind. Tonal qualities by themselves do not create any extreme mental activity, yet when we combine them together into music, it may create flashbacks of strong memories, making a person feel happy, sad, nostalgic, exited or even angry. There are two main positions on how music effects emotions on us. The first one is the cognitivist approach which describes the emotional response to music as a result from the listener’s cognitive recognition of cues within the composition itself. The other is the emotivists view which supports the idea of emotions being induced by music, where the emotional response to music comes as a feeling. (Krumhansl, 1997; Peretz, 2001) Music shows emotions through the

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