A small blurb in the Times of London this weekend stuck out in my mind. Due to the rise of violent crimes and aggression in the subway trains, they've started an experiment. They play classical music in some of the trains and they've noticed a direct correlation between the lack of aggression in those trains.
The aggressors tend to avoid them!

What do you think?

Do you know if they tried other types of music on other trains? You'd end up with trains exclusively for the use of teenage girls, ravers, metalheads, hip-hop kids etc. That'd just be silly though, wouldn't it? I'm also not too sure that, say, the 1812 Overture at 8 am on my way to work would put me in anything other than a foul mood. Not so keen on those weird "real" instruments, me! Keep it unreal!

My degree is in music therapy. One theory on this might be, that when you play the opposite music of your mood, often you demonstrate avoidance of it or indifference. Whereas, if you play music that meets your mood, you react upon it. This can be both positive and negative. In the case of the trains, it seems to ward these people off the train, "Can't stand that elevator music they play." When actually working with aggressive persons, you don't want to to go too far away from their mood by playing the antithesis of their feelings but nor do you exactly want to match it. You usually have to find a somewhat common ground.

Example from personal experience. If you work with a client who is aggressive, you probably don't want to play AC/DC for them. I often used instrumentals by Jeff Beck and grunge influenced music from Pat Metheny's "Zero Tolerance for Silence" (not my favorite Metheny work but good for adolescent angst). It often helped to meet the person partially where they were and slow them down. Where as if you played Mozart they would either clam up all together, ignore the therapist, or continue their inappropriate behaviors.

[ 01-14-2002: Message edited by: malizma ]

I know when I stress out I tend to listen to jazz specifically guitar work by guys like Joe Pass ,John Stowell,Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis or Larry Carlton.Works for me.

The main place that music helps me is in the car. Say, I have a Pat Metheny tape actually with the rainstorm..that I love and then the next song is a good steering wheel tapping rhythm.
Herb Ellis is a wonderful man, I got to play with him on stage at a jazz festival with my ensemble and he didn't treat us like punk kids or anything. (he sure could have!)

I actually cannot stand classical music at work for more than a half hour tops.

But as to the aggression, I wonder if they specified what they played.
I personally find the new age stuff a little unnerving!
I mean, after about 15 minutes I feel like eating red meat or listening to Creedence Clearwater or something real.
I might actually prefer techno! Nope...I will prefer flipper the dolphin any day to that.

When I worked in a small kind of organic type restaurant many years ago, they told us never to let the music stop because it was so quiet and you heard people talking and the silverware noises. It was like keeping a fire burning.

Malizma sounds like the principles of homeopathic medicine, you give something to someone that would create the reaction you want. You fight fire with fire.

I'm not sure how relevant this is but a while ago I decided to paint most of the rooms in the house and always had one CD or another on. If it was a nice soothing song, like, say The Coors, I would go really slow .... put something on like Meatloaf and the room would be painted in no time flat!

Well that's a good point Copago, I suppose that some managers might use that to their advantage too!
You reminded me of a family roofing project on an old house (in California that's a hundred years or older) and we were ripping the shingles off and then doing new ones. It's hard dusty and hot work and somebody piped up music from the living room to keep us going. I'll never forget it.
I think we did a lot of classical but probably some Beatles too.
Imagine us all up on the rooftop, about ten of us, ripping off shingles and singing Beatles songs.
Those squirrels must have thought we were nuts!