“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, joy, and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful.” – Plato.
If one good thing came out of the year 2020, it was that I was able to listen to significantly more music.
Music has always been an important part of my life, from my younger days of driving around with a subwoofer in my car blasting rap with my friends to sitting alone desperately trying to find that next song that I can put on repeat.
Recently, I have noticed that two things I love the most, music and traveling, go hand in hand. Whether creating a playlist for a long drive or finding something everyone involved can enjoy, I have become obsessed with finding the perfect soundtrack for the moment.
The more I travel, the more I realize that sometimes it is better to let the moment pick the song, as nature and new experiences will often do so without you even realizing it. This obsession got me thinking, “How do certain scenes embody certain sounds”?
According to University of Central Florida researchers, music impacts brain function and human behavior. The frontal lobe, the largest and most important section of the brain, is used for decision-making, planning, and thinking.
Listening to music enhances these functions. The temporal lobe is the most essential part of our brain regarding music. It allows us to process sound, as words and language are interpreted via the left side, and music is heard through the right.
By understanding how our brain functions, you can directly correlate this to how music affects our everyday lives. Contrary to popular belief, it does not matter what kind of music you listen to; it just depends on your musical background.
This could be why songs you grew up hearing your parents listening to or other meaningful songs from your childhood still stick out to you more significantly than others.
Not only can music enhance important parts of your brain, but it can also improve your overall well-being. Studies have shown that listening to music can improve memory, help with depression, boost your immune system, and make you smarter, stronger, and a better communicator.
This is why we turn to music for a sense of relief when we are feeling down. If you play someone’s favorite song, parts of their brain will light up and activate a feeling of happiness. Why is that road trip playlist so necessary? Because music helps motor skills and enhances cognitive ability.
“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” – Anthony Bourdain.
When you look at the effects that traveling has on the human body, you begin to find some similarities to music. Other than the excitement you get leading up to a vacation or a trip to a new place, traveling improves brain function. It does so through a generation of dendrites, extensions that grow from brain neurons, and their link to new experiences.
Dendrites aid in transmitting information to different areas of the brain, meaning the more dendrites your brain produces, the better your brain functions.
While traveling can cause stress and create new obstacles, your brain still generates new dendrites as you devise a plan to overcome something unexpected, such as a canceled flight or a broken-down vehicle.
Yes, your brain will still produce dendrites without traveling, but going somewhere you have never been before, a foreign country or deep in the mountains, is an easy way to improve brain functionality in a healthy and meaningful way.
Now that we have proven that music and traveling can benefit the human body, let us focus on how certain scenes you can only get while traveling embody certain sounds. I like to think of it as creating a soundtrack for the environment that you are in.
Or it is letting the environment create the soundtrack for you. We all have that one song that, the moment it comes on, can take us to a particular memory or place. When I think about this concept, it brings me to the Maggie Rogers documentary, “Back In My Body.”
In the short documentary, Maggie Rogers speaks about spending time in Alaska as a 19-year-old and how being there helped her through obstacles in her life. She claims she wrote the song “Alaska” to show gratitude for the land and her experiences.
It is almost as if walking through those icy streams enabled her to create her “soundtrack.” She let the environment, a place she has never been before, influence her by taking it all in. Being in Alaska helped her overcome two years of writer’s block.
“Everything here is big. It’s just overwhelming. But it does the most graceful job of making you feel so tiny. When things are that big, it makes you wanna do the things you love.”
My girlfriend and I planned a camping trip to Vermont a few months ago. We love music and the outdoors, so creating a playlist for this trip was essential.
I had never been to Vermont before, so I could only base my musical expectations on pictures and what I imagined it would be like. Leading up to the trip, I began searching for songs that I thought would be fitting for the setting we would be in.
I call this “doing my research.” We chose to camp at the foothills of Green Mountain National Forest in a small town called Woodford. I looked at pictures of the city and the surrounding areas to help me work on the playlist, but I struggled. Before I knew it, the trip had arrived, and my playlist was only 14 songs deep.
It wasn’t until our second day in the campground, surrounded by thick forest and a lake, that I started gaining traction on this playlist. The scene spoke to me. I woke up and unzipped our tent, and the crisp mountain air was particularly chilly for an August morning in Vermont.
Before we left, part of my research led me to believe that this would be where waking up and enjoying a hot coffee in the woods would be the most relaxing thing on Earth. The title “mountainside coffee” came to fruition. It was simple but perfect.
That day, the playlist doubled as we hiked around a lake and sat on fallen trees with nothing around us but nature to influence our thoughts. Mountainside Coffee wasn’t created by choosing random songs I liked; my experience in the Green Mountains of Vermont created it.
To fully understand the setting and the appropriate sound, I had to be there and pay attention to my surroundings.
About two months ago, a group of us decided to fly to Denver and take a road trip through the Black Hills of South Dakota. We would end up covering over 1,100 miles in six days. The six of us packed into the car and drove to our first stop, Scottsbluff, Nebraska.
We all have very different musical interests but usually agree on certain songs. This time, after learning from my experiences in Vermont, I decided against making a playlist for this trip ahead of time.
My girlfriend, who has the most extensive musical knowledge and background I have ever encountered, was in charge of picking the songs throughout the car ride. It was a daunting task, but it created some memories I will never forget.
We approached Scotts Bluff National Monument as the sun went down, and the sky turned pink, purple, and orange. As we approached our destination, beautiful rock formations started popping up alongside the road, and the sun began to duck behind the monument.
After a long flight and a longer-than-expected wait to get a rental car, the scene was one of relief, a sense that everything was going to be worth it.
The song “Nature’s Joint” by (((O))) came on the queue, and my friend, who primarily listens to rap, immediately took notice. He said, “I could not picture a more perfect song for this setting.” Deep down inside me, I could only smile as I knew that the scene was picking the music for us.
So before you go on your next trip and start worrying about creating a playlist, stop and think about the setting you will be in. Wait until you are settled in and let your surroundings speak to you.
Music and traveling can activate parts of your mind that you might not have ever known existed. You will be surprised, as the right song can come out of nowhere and make all the difference.
