It’s important to take day trips every once and a while, dear readers.

The reason for this is twofold. First, if you take a day trip you are taking an adventure, which is always important to do – you clear your head, gather inspiration, and separate yourself from your daily life. Second, a day trip forces you to either spend time with your thoughts or listening to someone else’s, whether those thoughts are recorded or in real life.

Think about it for a moment, because you likely fit into the same mold as most other people , you struggle with down-time or silence, meditation isn’t really something you get excited about. Thus, you’ll want to fill your day trip with music, audiobooks or talking with potential road companions.

Let’s be honest. Music is the most likely candidate here.

Music is a wonderful primer to organizing emotions in a meaningful way. But the challenge with music is that it is often polarizing between individuals, as well as groups. You get on the road and you hope your tastes line up with your companions, friends, and love ones. But sometimes it doesn’t. And if you dig deeper into the music decisions we make, a lot of the time, we get into musical patterns which limit our growth and stunt our emotional intelligence.

Let’s expand on this last statement a bit better.

For instance, you may only listen to specific genres of music, so you buy music which fits a certain genre and while you may buy new music regularly, you will always careful to stick to that particular theme you trust. Or alternatively, maybe you can only handle certain artists within a genre or genres. You buy up all of their records, but you just aren’t interested in exploring a world outside of those musical heroes.

And of course studies on music preference have been conducted which indicate that certain genres suit our personalities and can determine our intelligence levels too.

This chart below showcases the kinds of musical acts people with different intellects typically listen to.

And this snippet from an article on music and personality associations shows the typing of individuals based on common musical genres certain personalities prefer.

[Blues, classical, folk, jazz] … “reflective and complex”, you probably see yourself as unathletic, liberal and intelligent (and do, in fact, do pretty well on exams and IQ tests). You are also probably very open to trying new experiences.

[Alternative, heavy metal, rock]… “intense and rebellious” listening types: you share most of your characteristics with the jazz/classical brigade, but you’re more likely to see yourself as athletic and slightly less likely to seek to dominate others.

[Country, pop, religious, soundtracks] “Upbeat and conventional”, you’re likely to be agreeable, extraverted and conscientious. You also see yourself as attractive, wealthy and athletic, as well as politically conservative. Good news: this group is the least prone to depression. Bad news: it scores lowest on IQ tests.

[Electronic, hip hop, rap, soul] You’re an “energetic and rhythmic” listener – extraverted, agreeable, attractive and athletic, but you probably don’t share the political conservatism, wealth or lower IQ of your upbeat-and-conventional chums. This group also scores highest for “blirtatiousness” – the tendency to blurt out your thoughts and feelings as soon as they arise.

 

But what if you don’t fit into one of those four musical camps? What if you have a few genre preferences? Heck, what if you have a really have high IQ and you love punk rock or pop music, does that mean the studies are off base?

Well, no, I think the studies are conclusive, they are taking date from a sample group and applying their models to the general population, and let’s face it, the social sciences, and particularly brain science have not received nearly enough attention yet for us to consider ourselves experts on the subject.

What if you listen to a lot of different genres so you can better appreciate where they are coming from, or what if you want to listen to music from all genres because you recognize that there is value in other perspectives, and you don’t know where to start? Well, I’d recommend checking out this link or this link, for starters.

I have this theory, you see, a theory that if I want to contribute to the music scene, I need to listen to a lot different kinds of music – so that I can appreciate all of what’s available, and quite frankly, expand my own horizons and grow.

This is why I’ve created a Back Catalogue; a list of albums I need to experience reaching as far back as the 1950s. Similar to my list for film, the Back Catalogue is broadening my own collection while strengthening my tastes in good music.

By expanding our music tastes, we can grow our intellect and emotional intelligence. That way, when we take day trips with others, we won’t struggle with the radio on the ride down, no, we’ll be comfortable with the music decisions and will be happy to be on the road again.

But what do you think? Am I wrong for suggesting you expose yourself to new music and artists? Please leave some comments and if you like what you read today, don’t hesitate to like the post and subscribe to my blog. That’s all of my theories for today, see you tomorrow friends!

Tim!