Music as a media

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

-Berthold Auerbach

Every day, everywhere, music is around us. No matter we want it or not, it is there. When we walk on the street, when we exercise, when we eat, when we are sad or when we are happy, music stays with us, but we will not be fed up with it. It becomes the essential part of our lives. As it is a vital part of our lives, it affects us tremendously.

Music comes to people more emotionally and it reflects our culture along with its lyrics and melodies. Music helps people when they are exhausted emotionally. Throughout certain songs, people found relief. Also, sometimes, people get inspired because of the content of the song, well written piece of music or just because fascinating musicians. Lastly, music can reflect the culture and the people who belong to the culture. 

Music has a great effect on stimulating people’s emotion. An exciting song can make people excited with its fast beats. A dark song can make people depressed with its gloomy melody. A sad song can make people even sadder.  Also a calm song can make people calm down and relaxed.  Music makes people more alive by stimulating the emotions of people. Various genres of music let people have diverse emotions that allow the world to have many different people with countless emotions. Those emotions create active interaction among individuals as they understand and embrace other’s feeling. Moreover, as the quote in the beginning says, “Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life,” and this is true as we let our concerns and fatigue go along with music. Thus, music does stimulate our emotion.

Secondly, we get inspired from music. Music can give us ideas as the contents of songs are delivered to us as we listen to us. Some songs talk about the social issues, conflicts and things to be heard and fixed by people. This makes people to take action and try to solve the issues and conflicts. Also, when a music piece is well written by a maestro, people are captivated by it that inspires musicians to try to become one.  Furthermore, there are many famous musicians who have overcome their unpleased conditions, such as a female pianist who has only 4 fingers, another female pianist who does not have fingers on her right hand, also one of the best saxophonist Kenny G has asthma. Despite their unfortunate conditions, they overcame their weakness and inspire others with their passion and love towards music as behalf of music. 

Lastly, music is a way of reflect the culture and people of the culture. Some music contains current social issues and things that people want to change such as inequalities. For example, many black musicians especially rappers talk about inequalities. Also some musicians convey their messages about misunderstandings about themselves.

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Why does Music Make Us feel?

 Why does Music Make Us feel?

This article talks about how music affects emotions of people. It says speech does not make us cry even though we can understand what it says, but music can make us cry even though it is in different language that we cannot understand. Also, it talks about how happy music makes people happier and how sad music can exaggerate melancholy frown. 

It also talks about “Why music is nice to listen to?”. The reasons is, because we listen to music as we watching something for example the author listening to French instructional programs and he found it pleasure because people were shown with their expressions and behaviors. This is what he thinks and tells in the article about how music can stimulate our emotions.

At first, I agreed with his idea about music is more powerful than speech in stimulating people’s emotions. From my experiences, I do not like speech that is really long and it does not really make me feel anything but boredom. However, I love music that I listen to for a long time and actually feeling something from songs that I listen to. Happy song have made me feel better and encouraged, and sad song have made me think a lot, and driven me to a deep emotion. At least for me, music is influential enough to stimulate my feeling. 

As I read the article, there was a thing that I do not agree with the author that is music is effective because there is visible image with music. Visible images do have effect in making music more effective; however, without visible images music is effective enough to make people feel many emotions. Also, sometimes visible images are effective because there is music that helps to explain and make people focus on the images.

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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-does-music-make-us-fe

Due to advances in medical science, situations of excruciating pain with no hope for recovery brought new ideas and debates about a peaceful death – called euthanasia. Euthanasia is an act that results in the earlier death of the patient than would otherwise occur. It is generally an alternative to reduce pain, but in regards to ethical considerations, euthanasia is just an extenuating circumstance for murder. Therefore, the question of its acceptability should be approached with caution.

Debate about euthanasia has been popular since 1975, with the issue of Quinlan. Karen Ann Quinlan was a 21 year old woman, who was in coma for 3 years because of the addiction to alcohol and drug. Quinlan’s father tried his best to save her and did not refused to pay for expensive medicine. However, as the doctor declared her as “practically dead” person, her father wanted to give her an opportunity to die peacefully. Against the demands of her father, doctor refused to disconnect the life support and legal conflict ensued. The courts decided in favor of Quinlan’s father and allowed to take off life support. Against all expectations, however, Quinlan did not die but sustained 9 years longer, as if trying to prove that she is not “practically dead.”

In another case in October 2005, Salvatore Crisafulli emerged from a 2 year coma, claiming that he had retained consciousness throughout his illness and could hear conversation around him. He said that he cried in desperation and darkness when his doctor sentenced him to death. Crisafulli’s situation exemplifies the ultimate loneliness and frustration of comatose patients who cries in darkness.

Today, decisions regarding euthanasia are left in the power of families and hospitals. Unconscious patients are suffering from the cruelty of caregivers while future patients with incurable diseases will be euthanized instead of searching for a cure. Now euthanasia is not about the right to die honorably; rather it is a reluctant burden for the unconscious patient.

An analysis of the issue of euthanasia requires a reexamination of the roles doctors and families play in making such a serious decision. First of all, one must consider whether it is proper for doctors to assist suicide, since their mission is to cure and help patients. Regardless of the patients’ will, doctors are directly or indirectly helping patients commit suicide. They should not be coerced into disconnecting life support and letting a patient die in absolute loneliness. As for patient’s family, they have no right to disregard the patient’s will. In the past, euthanasia was necessarily decided by the will of families, however, families are not equal to patients themselves. It may be easy for a family to let a patient go because of the immense financial burden and uncertainty as to the patient’s possible recovery. But on the other hand, it is not easy or acceptable for a patient to die simply to alleviate monetary problem.

Morally speaking, there is no difference between murder and euthanasia. Whether the self-destruction is committed individually or aided by others, the result is same: death. Although euthanasia is, by definition, “mercy killing”, it is still murder if the patient has no will to die and suicide if the patient shows the desire to die. Therefore, even if there is very little possibility to survival, we should not compromise with the evil desire for an easy exit.

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Community service can be a valuable part of the college experience. If you were to devote one of year of services to a volunteer project, what would it be, and what would you hope t accomplish? (Goucher)

I think volunteer work or project is good as its purpose is helping others. To be honest, I have not done volunteer work a lot. I really do not have huge and fancy plan because I do not know what to do and how to do first. However, if I have to plan and do volunteer work, I know I will do something that could help the community that I belong to. It is because I know about my community more than I do about other area of the world. 

Community service does not really have to be done in a big way such as going to Africa to help people. Rather than that, knowing and helping people and environment around us. Helping should be consistent, because helping once is easy but being consistent is tough. Also, people who need aids should be helped for a long term. It is because I think helping should make them to live independently eventually. However, spending so much money to go to other country and do some work is not idealistic at least for the point of my view. Moreover, there are heaps of organizations and people who know a lot better than us about those other areas.  Also, if we cannot know and help people around us, we will not be able to know and help what people need who are in other areas. Rather than trying to do something that is unrealistic or hard to start, we should start and do more realistic and easy to start. 

Thus, if I plan to devote one of year of services to a volunteer project, I would plan that benefits people and the environment where I live. At this moment, I live in India. It is my first country that that showed me the real world. I have always seen and lived in decent or great qualities of standard of living. Yet, I have complained so much, but after I came to India and saw so many people suffering from poverty. I have never seen people live on the street. I have never seen people drinking muddy water. I have never seen people begging because they have not eaten for a few days. Most of them were children and they should be studying but sadly they cannot afford education and they do not have time to be loved. Then I realized that I was such an unappreciative person and I felt I should work for kids who need love. For this reason, I would plan to help the kids wherever I will be. There are a lot of kids who are loved but there are also a lot of kids who need to be loved. In my old day, I used be happy when older people spent time with me doing various things. Thus, I will work in the orphanage for my volunteer work. There are orphanages almost everywhere, and the kids in orphanages need love. Also, educating them is another important thing for my project. It is because they have to go out of the orphanages when they become certain ages. In order to work or do something to survive, they need to be educated.

My goal for my project is letting children feel that they are loved and have ability to stand alone eventually. I believe if this happens, they can help others as they were helped and this will make consistent aids from more number of people with more organized way.         

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 Music is used for many reasons, because it is one of the most powerful ways to tell people about something. People know that conveying their message with music is more effective than delivering a message only by words. Also music can be spread a lot easier than most of other Medias. Music is easier to be heard and to access. That is why people use music to make their points or trying to make changes in the world. 

There are so many songs that talks about conflicts in the world such as war, poverty, unfairness, inequalities, etc. Music cannot stop these completely, but why people keep on using music as a way of solutions? It is because it is powerful tool that can make these things to be better. We do not realize how negatively those things affect on us. However, by telling us the information and letting us know the problem which may reduce the negative expected results from the conflicts by preventing more problems. Also, the messages of the music are delivered by famous musicians; the effect will be much influential. Such as 21 guns by Green Day has made people know the seriousness of war and try to make a peaceful world. In addition, throughout music, we can help people who are suffering from poverty, or an expected natural disaster. For example, the song “We are the world” was produced to help the poverty in Africa, and it contribute greatly because of the famous musicians had participated in. Yet, the biggest reason is, this music has told, and woken people about people suffering from poverty in Africa. Moreover, a few years ago, there were dreadful earthquakes in Haiti. Again many famous musicians have gathered to help Haiti. They told people in the world about how much Haitians were suffering and how miserably the earthquake ruined their lives throughout their music. It was a great success in helping Haitians. 

Also, music can make people more united. For example, there are national anthems for every single country in the world. Why is that? It is because that the national anthems can encourage the patriotism of the people of the nations. Also, it gives a feeling of similarity with people who sing it together. Additionally, in Korea farmers sing a labor song while they are working, because that makes people feel less tiring and encourage them to work with its hopeful lyrics and dynamical rhythm.         

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Andrew Love, Tenor Saxophonist for the Memphis Horns, dies at 70 

Andrew Love, a tenor saxophonist who as half of the Memphis sound died on 12^th of April 15, 2012 at his home in Memphis because of complication of Alzheimer’s disease.

Memphis Sound has introduced 83 gold and platinum records with instrumental buoyancy. Love, was tall black guy and his partner, the trumpeter Wayne Jackson was short white guy. They met at Stax Records in the mid 1960s and they became a singular musical force. The Memphis helped form classic records like Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds,” and etc. Also, Memphis Horns received a lifetime achievement Grammy.

One thing that I felt after reading the article was that Love was so blessed because he did something that that he loves till he died and that was music. He started playing the saxophone since he was in ninth grade till 70 years when he died. That is a lot of time and also he was famous and acknowledged by his ability. Even I want to be a musician as a singer. Singing is one of my favorite things to do and I want to improve it. I thought about becoming a singer, and I concluded that it would be really nice because singing is what I like and it can be my profession.  It is hard to be famous as a musician as there are so many other talented musicians. Even Love must have practiced and tried to develop his ability in order to achieve his goal. Now, he is one of the excellent musicians that people know and will be remembered. I know I am not good enough, but still I try to improve hoping I will become better so that I might have a chance. 

Another thing I learned from this article is I have to be good at and try best for something that I want to do as an occupation. The reason that I felt in this way was everyone wants to be acknowledged in their area of profession and Love was good enough to be acknowledged by Grammy Awards, and working with famous musicians like Elvis Presley. In fact, this applies to everything, I should try my best for the things I want to achieve because if try there are higher possibilities of achieving it and if I do not, it is almost impossible to achieve my goal.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/14/arts/music/andrew-love-saxophonist-with-the-memphis-horns-dies-at-70.html?_r=1&ref=music