Research has broadly supported the assumption that
stimulative music increases psychomotor arousal, while soft or sedative music decreases arousal and facilitates relaxation.
"As well as using
stimulative music during training, many athletes are discovering the recuperative benefits of calming music following a tough workout," he said.
Gaston (1951) identified the qualities of both types of music and described how they affected the listener: stimulative music exhibited an unrestrained quality, and contained brief, staccato melodies, a clear underlying beat and percussive rhythms that encouraged physical activity.
The PFSM allowed the rater to accurately assessed 100% of the sedative music and 84% of the stimulative music.
The Yates's Continuity Correction indicated that the PFSM distinguished between sedative and stimulative music and confirmed the tool's intrinsic validity.
In the study of Pearce (1981 as cited by Kravitz 2004) a comparison was made on the influence of stimulative music, sedative music, and silence (no music) on measured grip strength of subjects which consisted of 33 male and 16 female undergraduate students randomly assigned to the order of the three types of stimulation (stimulative, sedative, and silence).
The basic task accomplished in this study was to determine the effects of classical or soft and fast or stimulative music on the duration of the second stage of labor among primigravida or women in their first pregnancy at Cebu City Medical Center.
However, the same observation was noted in the study that there was no difference noted between stimulative music group and the silent group.
after subjects listened to
stimulative music compared to no music and
The results were in the expected direction; grip strength following the
stimulative music was significantly higher than in the other two conditions.
Nevertheless I found that there were many common structures (factors) in sedative and in
stimulative music, predictable as well as unpredictable.
For example, Schwartz et al (1990) reported no significant differences in endurance time during a cycle ergometer task at 75% VO2 max between
stimulative music and control conditions.