True musicians know how to practise until their fingers bleed, drool over iconic musical locations, and generally spend every waking minute itching to get their hands on their instruments. Still, for all of the obsessiveness, there’s one area of the day where music often doesn’t get a due amount of attention: the morning. 

Musicians are typically creative types, and getting up bright an early isn’t quite their style. Often, the moments after exiting their slumbrous rest are filled with groggy attempts to ward off the day for as long as possible. If you can relate to this kind of narrative on a daily basis, you may want to consider integrating that music you love right into your morning routine.

5 Benefits of Listening to Some Morning Music

If music can have a positive impact on plants, you can bet that it can do wonders for yourself even when you’re not aware of it. Here are several of the ways that purposefully incorporating some tunes into your morning routine can benefit your musical journey.

1. Morning Music Facilitates Mindfulness

Practising mindfulness is a key component of a successful musician’s life. It can help you get out of your own cyclical internal dialogue, can give you a better perspective, and can help you function throughout the day. 

Sitting in quiet contemplation every morning for a few minutes is a great idea, but if you do it in the quiet dimness of the early morning, you’re giving yourself an open invitation to fall back asleep. Putting on some music can be a great way to stimulate your mind and help you engage with the day in a healthy, mindful way.

2. Morning Music Stimulates Your Creativity

Along with helping you enter a thoughtful state of mind, music can be a great tool to help stimulate your creativity. On the surface, it may seem like you’re getting ahead of yourself by already aiming for something like creativity when you’re still struggling to prop open your eyelids. Nevertheless, for many artistic types, it’s that very early morning fogginess that is the perfect time for them to exercise their craft. 

Ernest Hemingway, for instance, famously wrote early in the morning, counting on the fact that he would warm to his work as he went along. The morning is an excellent time to sidestep the analytical, critical part of your brain before it fully wakes up and simply creates something. As a musician, turning on music as you get out of bed can be a great way to stimulate your dim thoughts and get those creative juices flowing.

3. Morning Music Invites Apollo

The ancient Greeks were well aware of the fact that music and healing were closely connected. In fact, Apollo was literally given the dual task of being the god of healing and music both. Needless to say, integrating music into your morning routine can be an excellent way to invite that Apollonian influence into your day as early as possible.

Music therapy is a field of medicine for a reason, after all. A healthy dose of soulful R&B, some relaxing rock or a classical canticle can serve as a sound remedy for everything from helping those with ADHD to aiding stroke victims in their recovery, and even controlling the effects of Parkinson’s disease. And, of course, turning on some tunes early in the morning can be a great way to invite that power of healing into your daily routine.

4. Morning Music Sets Your Rhythm

Along with healing, music can help you get into a rhythm as well, physiologically speaking. Listening to music as your brain and body wake up can be a great way to get your blood pumping and your lungs breathing. 

From the earliest days of the scientific research of music, it’s been known that a good song can produce:

• Good respiration.
• A steady pulse.
• Better cardiac output.
• Excellent blood pressure.

In other words, music is a great way to set the tone for your body’s daily rhythm.

5. Morning Music Gives You A Unique Focus

Finally, when you take all of these things and put them together, music brings a unique level of focus to a musician right from the beginning of their day. It doesn’t shock you awake like a cold water shower, nor does it coax you back to sleep like a warm, cosy meditation session while you’re still drowsy. 
Music gives your brain and your body a gentle wake up as you prepare for each day that’s ahead of you. Whether you’re listening on your smartphone as you make breakfast, tuning in on a radio as you take a shower, or hooking up your Bluetooth to your head unit as you drive to work, music is one of the best ways to get your head in the game as you go about your routine each and every morning.

Courtesy of Indiana Lee