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The Benefit of Music's Vibration

One question that stumbled to me while I was researching for my paper about music and emotion is: How do the deaf listen to music? And upon searching on Google, I found out that the deaf 'listens' to music by feeling the vibration a sound produces.



First, let's start off with the misconception that being deaf means you cannot hear anything at all – there are varying levels of deafness. Secondly, deaf people can feel the vibrations produced by the music being played and consume those vibrations through their body. The humming sound produced by picking a bass string or the boom of the drums can be felt very easily by them. The lyrics evoke different types of feelings, and the combination of vibrations and lyrics is how deaf people enjoy music. Someone who wears hearing aids or Cochrane implants may have some enhanced levels of hearings, but for those who don’t, they turn up the volume so they can feel the vibrations from beats and bass more strongly as they read the lyrics.

Deaf people experience concerts differently. Usually, the music at concerts can be said very loud; and can even damage people with regular hearings, especially those who are wearing hearing aids. In those situations, deaf people would just turn off their hearing aids which may make them hear the music less but instead, they enjoy the music through amplified vibrations being produced by the large speakers around the area. Nowadays, it is also common for bands/musicians to have sign language interpreters who sign song lyrics for the deaf audience. This way, deaf people can feel the music AND get to know the words of the songs as well!

Another living thing that benefits from the vibration of music is plants! Playing music for your plants may seem strange, but research suggests that any sound, including music, helps boost plant growth. Vibrations from sound waves seem to stimulate growth factors. Besides, sounds may not just impact growth; evolution may have given plants "ears" so they can hear warnings about predators.

Research has shown that any sound can stimulate plant growth. In one study, plants that were exposed to sounds for six hours a day showed more growth than plants in a soundless control group. However, that same research showed that while music helped plants grow, it wasn't more effective than non-musical sounds. In other words, plants don't distinguish between music and different sounds. However, music does help plants grow


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