What Happens in Your Brain When You Create Music?

One writes what one hears within one, not without.Leonard Bernstein, composer and conductor

Music spurs all sorts of emotions. For example, music can make us feel calm, excited, happy, or curious. But what actually happens in the brain when we listen to music, play an instrument, or create a new piece?

Scientists have used brain scans and other tools to address these questions. Their research shows that music does not use just one part of the brain. Different brain systems work together for hearing, movement, memory, emotion, planning, and creativity.

Listening to Music

When you listen to music, your brain does more than simply hear sounds. It can recognize patterns, respond to emotions, and react when something in the music is enjoyable.

For example, Steven Brown and colleagues studied people while they listened to instrumental music and found activity in brain areas connected with both hearing and emotion. Valorie Salimpoor and colleagues studied music that gave people strong feelings of pleasure and found that the brain could release dopamine, a chemical connected with reward and motivation.

Scientists have also studied how the brain understands the music itself. Mark Jude Tramo and colleagues looked at features such as pitch, melody, harmony, and rhythm to learn more about how the brain turns sounds into musical patterns.

Playing an Instrument

Playing an instrument makes the brain more active. Imagine playing the piano: your brain has to move your fingers, keep the rhythm, listen to the sound, remember the music, and prepare for the next notes. More action.

Robert Zatorre and colleagues studied how hearing and movement work together during music. Their research showed that playing music depends on close teamwork between the brain systems used for listening and movement.

Practice can also change the brain over time. Krista Hyde and colleagues studied children who received music training for about 15 months and found changes in brain areas connected with hearing and movement.

The brain’s ability to change through learning and practice is called brain plasticity. This does not mean that playing an instrument automatically makes someone smarter at everything. It means that practice can strengthen and change the brain systems used for the skills being practiced.

Composing Music

Composing asks the brain to do something special, that is, to create music that did not exist before.

Researchers have tried to see what happens in the brain during this process. Jing Lu and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study 17 professional composers from the Sichuan Conservatory of Music during a music creation task. They found that the brain worked differently while the composers were creating music than while they were resting.

More recently, Xiaohu Gu and colleagues studied music creation using electroencephalography (EEG), a method that records the brain’s electrical activity. They compared brain activity while people were remembering music and while they were creating it. The researchers found different patterns for the two activities, and people with musical training showed more connections between different brain areas.

These studies suggest that there is not one small composition area in the brain. Different brain systems work together as a composer remembers sounds, creates new ideas, and decides what should happen next.

Creating Music in the Moment

Creating music in the moment means making up music while you are playing it. This is called improvisation, and it is one of the most important concepts in creating music.

Imagine sitting at a piano and inventing the music as you go. You are listening, moving your hands, remembering musical rules, and deciding what should happen next.

Researchers have tried to see what the brain is doing during this kind of music making. Sara Bengtsson and colleagues studied pianists while they improvised and found activity in brain areas involved in planning and building musical ideas.

Charles Limb and Allen Braun looked at professional jazz pianists doing something similar. Their study also found changes in brain areas connected with planning, monitoring, and decision making.

So improvisation is not just about letting ideas appear. The brain is creating, listening, checking, and choosing at the same time.

Is There One Creative Part of the Brain?

It would be easy to imagine that there is one small creative center in the brain that turns on when someone writes music. But research suggests that creativity can be thought of as a group project.

Roger Beaty reviewed studies of musical improvisation and found that several brain systems seem to work together during creative music making.

Think about what happens when you compose. You may imagine a sound, remember what came before, choose what should happen next, listen to the result, and then decide whether to keep it or change it.

That is a lot of work for one moment.

So instead of thinking about one creative spot in the brain, it may be better to think of creativity as a team effort. Different parts of the brain help with different jobs, and together they help turn an idea into music. So no, there is really more than one creative part of the brain.

Can Creating Music Change How We Feel?

Creating music is not only about choosing notes and rhythms. It can also give us a way to explore thoughts and feelings.

When you compose, you might try to make a melody sound calm, exciting, mysterious, or joyful. You may experiment, make changes, and slowly shape the music until it feels the way you want.

Neurologist Oliver Sacks also wrote about the strong connection between music, emotion, memory, and the brain. In his article The Power of Music, he described how deeply music can affect the way people feel, remember, and respond.

Scientists are still studying exactly how different kinds of music making affect mood, stress, and well being. The experience is not the same for everyone, so it would be too simple to say that composing always makes people happier or less stressed.

What we can say is that creating music gives people another way to think, express feelings, and create something personal.