Music in the Home

I used to fall asleep to music all the time, but fell out of the practice. I’ve been more of a white noise person, with a box fan to generate it, and then more recently when I moved into the house, just the ceiling fan.

Last night, something prompted me to turn on some music. I don’t have a grand sound system or anything. I just plugged in some little speakers into the headphone jack of my aging iPod, and let it play all the Joe Hisaishi music I have.

Joe Hisaishi is a Japanese composer, probably best known for his soundtracks to Hayao Miyazaki films. I have some music from those films, but Hisaishi has some beautiful albums that are not soundtracks. He has a several “Piano Stories” albums that are beautiful.

Little bit of trivia: Joe Hisaishi is not his given name. Hisaishi is the same word using Japanese kanji characters as “Quincy,” and Joe is from Jones, so Joe Hisaishi is his pseudonym in honor of Quincy Jones.

So I’ve found Joe Hisaishi music easy to fall asleep to. That’s not to say it’s boring or anything. The music is intricate and full of emotion, bright and happy, or dark and sorrowful, or fast and full of action. BUt I’ve become so familiar with them, they are extremely soothing.

Once I woke up, I realized I liked the music playing in the house and kept it on through the morning as I got ready for work. I’ve listened to music in the house before. But I haven’t really embraced music as the background to it. There’s a reason that Walt Disney World plays background music everywhere you go, and it’s something that you often don’t pay any attention to, but sometimes, you can stop and listen and actively enjoy the music, and if you stop and listen and it’s not there, then you miss it.

Music offers enrichment in a way nothing else can. I am making a promise to myself to play more music through the house.

And so I ask you, dear readers, does music enrich your home? Do you fall asleep to music? What’s the best music you’ve found to fall asleep to?