Mar 24, 2020
Working from home: four soundscapes to fuel your activities
Here are four tracks designed with melodies and samples to enhance particular activities. Try them out and tell us how you get on.
With so much going on right now, it helps to use every tool we have to get things done. So remember: music can be a valuable tool in terms of your wellbeing. It can complement your mood or help to change the way you feel.
So, whether you’re looking to be creative, taking time to think something through, want to relax, or are focusing on work — here’s a little helping hand you can download or stream for free.
Music2Create
When it comes to creativity, you need to be relaxed and comfortable — this improves our lateral thinking, and ability to make connections that lead to new ideas. Obviously, happiness is subjective. But there are some characteristics that are found in the majority of ‘happy’ music.
Our Create soundscape is a varied piece of music. There’s a fast-ish tempo, an upliftingly major key and lots of pleasing high-pitched samples. Its major and minor seventh harmonies have also been proved to evoke happiness.
Music2Think
Most offices are hotbeds of distractions. But laying down constant, or a selective range of, sounds helps to mask the increases and decreases in volume of disturbances like phone calls, conversations and mouse clicks.
Common ambient masking sounds come from air-conditioning units or if you’re working outside, running water. This Think soundscape uses biophilic sounds to help you process thoughts clearly (it’s also great background music for a sleeping baby!).
Music2Relax
Virtually everyone uses music to relax. Calm, soothing tracks slow the heart rate and breathing. This reduces blood pressure and stems our production of cortisol — the stress hormone.
It takes around five minutes for this to happen (people who say “count to ten and calm down” need to revise their advice!). So listen to our Relax soundscape’s biophilic sounds. There are fewer samples here than the other tracks — literally giving you more space to breathe.
Music2Focus
When you’re trying to focus on an activity, a background track can really help you block out other distractions, get up a head of steam, and then keep a rhythm to your work.
So, our Focus soundscape has a constant, defined beat that helps you maintain your energy levels. It runs at 87 beats per minute too — slightly faster than the average resting heartbeat, so you feel energised and productive.
