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Get ready for a delightful addition to our podcast family: Microhance. These bite-sized episodes, lasting 10 minutes or less, will serve as quick musical snacks, offering tips, hacks, resources, and personal anecdotes to inspire you on your own musical journey. To catch every musical gem, make sure to subscribe or follow for free. Each episode will seamlessly land in your podcast feed, ensuring you never miss a beat. Whether you’re a seasoned musician or someone who simply enjoys the occasional radio hit, “Enhance Life with Music” is your go-to source for discovering the magic music adds to our lives.
I’m Mindy Peterson, host of Enhance Life with Music podcast, where we explore the ways music makes our lives better. I started the show in 2019 because I couldn’t find the podcast I was looking for. As a music lover and music educator, I’ve always been fascinated by the ubiquity of proven beneficial musical effects in the human experience – regardless of whether said humans considered themselves musicians or not. I’m talking about articles in the news about the latest research showing music training’s effect on a developing child’s brain or on those with dementia, since music memory is the last to fade away. Or reading an update on US Representative Gabbi Giffords, who survived a shooting that left her with brain damage and aphasia, so she could no longer speak. And seeing in the article that Giffords was able to re-learn to speak because of music – music therapy enabled her brain to create new neurological pathways, sort of like superhighway detours, around the damaged areas of her brain. I would spot these miraculous effects of music constantly in the news and wonder, why are we as musicians not shouting this information from the rooftops?! Music truly has superpowers; and not only can an increased awareness improve the quality of life of our communities, but it’s also great job security for us musicians and music educators.
Another example of the type of situation that would catch my attention, is a friend mentioning a song that randomly played on the radio. She commented, “I hadn’t heard that song for so long; but just like that, it took me right back to senior prom!” This person does not consider herself to be a musician at all, and she didn’t have to be to have this moment of her day enhanced by music with a re-lived memory from youth. She was very casual about the experience. But to me, it was a clear example of the subconscious, but pervasive, ways that music impacts our lives for the better.
When I discovered podcasts, I thought: This is the PERFECT medium to spotlight all these ways music makes life better – in areas as varied as science & health, sports & entertainment, education & community, and business. I was on a quest to find the podcast that was putting this all out there, highlighting it all in one convenient place. As you’ve figured out, that podcast did not exist, and I set out to create the podcast I had hoped to find. But I did hesitate, because I didn’t want to invest significant time and effort into creating a show, only to recognize, 6 months in, that the well had run dry and there were no more topics to cover.
It is now four years later, and a supply of topics has NEVER been a problem! I am continually amazed at the omnipresent ways music impacts the human journey – they may be subtle and imperceptible if we’re unaware of them (like well-selected music influencing a more expensive purchase in a retail store); and they may be powerful and intentional (like well-selected music increasing athletic performance by 15% – so much that it’s been called legal doping!).
While I’ve not yet been at a loss for episode topics (and guests – there are so many AMAZING people in the world of music) – not every musical shiny object that catches my eye or makes me smile is the right fit for a full length podcast episode. I’ve begun to accumulate a random assortment of delightful musical gems that I’d like to begin sprinkling into the episode mix with an occasional short-form podcast episode that I’m going to call Microhance. Each Microhance episode will be 10 minutes or less – a quick snack (or micro-dose!) that I hope will inspire you with new ways to enhance your own life with music. It may be a quick tip or hack to share, or a resource to spotlight; it may be a personal story or anecdote of a musical experience that recently impacted MY life.
Whenever a Microhance episode is released, it will show up right here in your Enhance Life with Music podcast feed – if you’re subscribed. To subscribe is free, it’s also called “Follow;” just tap the “+” or “Follow” button in your podcast listening app if you haven’t already done so. This conveniently delivers each new episode to your device when it releases, so you don’t have to search for it.
I hope you enjoy these nuggets of musical enrichment, and that you are inspired to enhance your life with music.
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