How Does Music Boost Your Creative Powers?

I love music. All kinds of music. It truly has an impact upon my creative powers.

I have to agree with Plato, who said,

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

Sometimes I want to listen to music when working on a project that requires creativity. Other times I want quiet. Anyway, this got me thinking about whether music really does boost creativity. Clearly, some people believe it does. In my research for this post, I found a Pandora user with a stream that purports to stimulate his creativity. Oh, and here’s You, Improved’s classical music playlist on Pandora.

There is some evidence that listening to music can improve your performance on cognitive tests. A few years back, there was a study suggesting that listening to Mozart could improve your creativity. The media narrative became “if you listen to Mozart 20 minutes a day, it could raise your IQ.” As usual, the media narrative was skewed, but that’s another post.

According to the Huffington Post,

Unfortunately, the theory has been debunked. It’s not Mozart that makes you more apt to solve visual problems — any music you like can have this effect. The experiment has since been replicated…