0:00

You're listening to a

0:02

Mama Mia podcast. Mama

0:04

Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land

0:07

and waters that this podcast is recorded

0:09

on. Hi,

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I'm Claire Murphy. This is Mama

0:13

Mia's Daily News Podcast, The Quickie.

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And today we're going to have

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an experience together. We've

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all been through a really stressful few

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days. The new cycle has left us

0:32

with heavy hearts and sometimes we need

0:34

to find ways to break that feeling.

0:37

There are signs to suggest that listening

0:39

to low-fi forms of music can improve

0:41

our brains in a bunch of different

0:43

ways. So

0:45

today, let's get low-fi and discover how

0:48

it can benefit our mental health. But

0:51

before we let the music take over, here's the

0:53

latest from The Quickie Newsroom for Wednesday, April 17.

0:58

With three violent stabbing incidents in three

1:00

days in New South Wales, the state

1:02

is considering taking a tougher stance on

1:05

knife laws. Premier Chris Minn

1:07

says he's open to strengthening the state's

1:09

knife laws and noted that recent violence

1:11

had left New South Wales in a

1:13

combustible situation. Knife laws had

1:16

been recently looked at after the death

1:18

of paramedic Stephen Tuffer, doubling the maximum

1:20

penalties for possessing a wielding a knife

1:22

in a public place from two to

1:24

four years in jail, with penalties increased

1:26

up to $11,000. A

1:29

stabbing attack at a Western Sydney church

1:31

that hospitalised two clergymen is being treated

1:33

as an act of terror, the teenager

1:35

allegedly responsible having a history of knife-related

1:38

crime and was already on a good

1:40

behaviour bond over a knife-related crime just

1:42

three months ago. Last weekend,

1:44

a 40-year-old man killed six people at

1:46

Westfield Bondi Junction in a stabbing rampage

1:49

before he was shot by police officer

1:51

Amy Scott, while a 16-year-old boy has

1:53

been charged with murder after he allegedly

1:56

stabbed and killed an 18-year-old man

1:58

and wounded another teenager's life. nearest school

2:00

in Doonside in Sydney's West on Friday.

2:03

In a blow for Julian Assange's supporters,

2:05

the US government has given the London

2:07

court the assurances they were looking for

2:10

before allowing the extradition of the journalists

2:12

to the US to face criminal charges.

2:15

Last month, the London High Court ruled that

2:17

without assurances, the 52-year-old would be allowed to

2:19

launch a new appeal against 18 of

2:22

the charges he is currently facing

2:24

over the release through WikiLeaks of confidential

2:26

US military and diplomatic cables. The

2:28

deadline for the US government to respond to

2:30

requests that Assange be given First Amendment rights

2:33

to free speech, that he not

2:35

be prejudiced at trial for his Australian

2:37

citizenship, and that there was no prospect

2:39

of any new charges that could result

2:41

in the death penalty being posed was

2:43

met. So the UK judges will now

2:45

consider the submission and any response from

2:48

Assange's lawyers. The first day

2:50

of former President Donald Trump's hush money trial ended

2:52

with not a single juror picked to be on

2:54

the panel of 12, dozens

2:56

dismissed after saying they didn't believe they

2:58

could be fair. This is the

3:00

first of Trump's four criminal cases to go

3:03

to trial, and maybe the only one that

3:05

could reach a verdict before voters decide in

3:07

November whether the presumptive Republican

3:09

presidential nominee should return to the White

3:11

House, Trump painting himself as the victim

3:14

of a political witch hunt. Trump

3:16

has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony

3:18

counts of falsifying business records as part

3:20

of an alleged effort to keep Salacious

3:22

stories about his sex life from emerging

3:24

during the 2016 campaign,

3:27

including paying off porn actress Stormy

3:29

Daniels. Prince William will

3:31

head back to work for the first time

3:33

since his wife Princess Catherine announced she was

3:36

undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer. William

3:38

has spent the last three and a half

3:40

weeks with Kate and their children over the

3:43

Easter break, but will return to work on

3:45

Thursday visiting a surplus food distribution charity and

3:47

then a youth centre which benefits from that

3:49

charity's regular deliveries. William did

3:51

take son Prince George to an Aston

3:53

Villa football match last week, their first

3:55

public outing since Kate's announcement. Kensington

3:58

Palace saying he'll undertake this. week's

4:00

engagements to shine a spotlight on

4:02

the organization's community and environmental impact.

4:06

That's the latest news from around the

4:08

world. Next, we get down with our

4:10

lo-fi selves and discover the beautiful way

4:12

our brains react when this form of

4:15

music enters areas. At

4:33

the risk of sounding a little

4:36

like your yoga instructor, let's relax.

4:39

Allow your mind to focus in on the

4:41

sounds and calm, soft

4:43

waves crashing over your body.

4:45

This is a life

4:54

for your music and it's been found to

4:56

have major benefits for our brain. Lo-fi

5:01

music uses lower sound quality than

5:03

the clean, crisp beats we've come

5:05

to expect from our digital devices.

5:09

It actually stands for low fidelity, in

5:12

contrast to high fidelity where the music

5:14

production is of higher quality. People

5:16

worry about kids playing with guns,

5:18

nobody worries about kids listening to

5:20

thousands, literally thousands of songs about

5:23

heartbreak. Just a token

5:26

throwback to the 2000 movies starring the

5:28

thinking woman sex symbol John Cusack, high

5:30

fidelity. The Beach Boys have been

5:32

credited with creating lo-fi sounds with their 1967

5:34

album, Smiley Smile. But

5:49

some disagree with the Beach Boys origin

5:51

and say the term didn't really come

5:53

into use until the 1980s. The modern

5:55

versions of lo-fi usually include a drum loop.

6:01

A jasual progression from a piano,

6:03

guitar or synthesizer. Sometimes,

6:07

but not always, a vocal sound.

6:11

And other calming sound effects. Today,

6:24

LoFi has taken over YouTube

6:26

with countless videos of animated

6:29

characters, usually reclining, smoking, studying

6:31

or walking, accompanied by these

6:33

chill LoFi bits. Many

6:36

people use these hours-long YouTube videos to

6:38

help them concentrate on work or fall

6:40

asleep. The channel, LoFi Girl,

6:42

is one of the platform's most popular.

6:46

Her videos are mostly of an anime

6:48

girl wearing headphones, either studying or making

6:50

a coffee or sitting on her building

6:52

roof top with her cat watching the scene. She

6:58

walks to our brain, lots of grandson and

7:01

smiling. Kevin

7:04

J.P. Woods is the Director of Science

7:06

at Brain FM. He

7:09

has a doctorate from the Program in

7:11

Speech and Hearing Bioscience & Technology at

7:13

Harvard University for work performed in the

7:15

Lab for Computational Edition, MIT Department of

7:17

Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Kevin,

7:20

what is LoFi music doing to our brains? Why

7:22

do we like it so much? It's

7:24

actually a whole suite of features that LoFi

7:27

has that other music doesn't. For example, a

7:29

lot of the treble is taken out of

7:31

LoFi, right? The brightness, the sort

7:33

of twanginess is cut out of that music.

7:35

That's a characteristic of the style of music,

7:37

but things that are bright and shiny attract

7:39

our attention, just like they do in vision,

7:41

they do in audition. And so

7:44

by not having these bright and shiny elements

7:46

of the music, it helps you ignore

7:48

it and makes it better for focus. Another

7:51

aspect of course, no vocals, right? The

7:53

human voice, like the human face, is an attention grabber.

7:56

So you remove vocals from the music, you're going to have a better time focusing.

7:59

Another one, I think, is... repetition. So

8:01

lo-fi music tends to be highly repetitive.

8:03

You'll have some sort of

8:05

beat, some sort of instruments that generally they're

8:07

not doing anything super interesting. It'll

8:10

have a repetitive structure that really helps you

8:12

to ignore it, fades into the background, helps

8:14

you focus. And I would say a final

8:16

aspect is sort of the lack of strong

8:19

melody in general. So the

8:21

musical structure, the musical complexity

8:23

of lo-fi is generally pretty low.

8:26

So you're not going to have anything again that catches your

8:29

ear. And so the scene here over and over again is

8:31

that lo-fi, it's quote unquote easy

8:34

to ignore because it

8:36

has all of these aspects that don't catch

8:38

your attention, unlike most music on

8:40

the radio, which is specifically engineered to

8:42

catch your attention. And if you're a

8:44

great music producer, you go out of

8:46

your way to make things punchy, right?

8:48

You want to make people sit up

8:50

and turn their head and request that

8:52

song again. Lo-fi bucks all of those

8:54

trends. It's a genre that's been around

8:56

for a long time, but it was

8:58

only just recently discovered for focus because

9:01

it accidentally turns out to have many

9:03

of those features that are useful for

9:05

focus. So that makes

9:07

sense as to why it doesn't distract us and

9:09

why some people find it really good to focus,

9:11

especially when they're doing things like researching or studying

9:13

and things like that. But I was

9:16

reading that it might actually be changing

9:18

sort of chemically within our brains too, that it

9:20

might be dumping a little bit of dopamine in

9:22

to make us feel good. Do you think that's

9:24

actually happening? I think that's true of

9:26

music in general, and I think

9:29

that's particularly true of music that's exciting,

9:31

percussion driven, that sort of thing. Now,

9:33

does lo-fi do that more than

9:36

other music? Not that I'm aware of,

9:38

but it's definitely the case that,

9:40

you know, music produces a dopamine-nurtured response that

9:42

helps us to do things. So

9:44

that would help us reduce stress too, I

9:47

imagine. But do you think listening to

9:49

lo-fi music is actually beneficial to our

9:51

mental health overall? Absolutely

9:53

to the degree that it helps you

9:56

get things done. I think that

9:58

listening to music of any sort is good for one. mental

10:00

health. I might be somewhat biased in that regard.

10:03

But yeah, absolutely. And I think what's not good

10:05

for your mental health is listening

10:07

to something with a lot of lyrics

10:09

that's very exciting and distracting while you're

10:11

trying to work and therefore sabotaging yourself

10:14

in the process, right? And

10:16

what I was saying earlier about how great music

10:18

producers go out of their way to grab your

10:20

attention, a lot of people

10:22

don't realize that and then they'll throw on Spotify

10:25

or whatever music they listen for entertainment while

10:27

they're trying to work. And it's a conflict of interest

10:29

in your head, so to speak. And

10:31

that's going to be bad for mental health. I

10:34

feel like too, this is used

10:36

quite a lot by people helping them get sleep,

10:38

which is something that obviously as a global

10:41

society, we're struggling with just the

10:43

way our lifestyles dictate our sleep

10:45

patterns these days. But lo-fi

10:47

music, is it something we should be sort

10:49

of including, especially if we're struggling with sleep,

10:52

something we include in our lineup of tools

10:54

to help us drop off over nighttime? Yeah,

10:57

the way I would think about that is

10:59

that for the same reasons that it helps

11:01

you focus, meaning that it's easy

11:03

to ignore, those are the same reasons that

11:05

help you get to sleep. And

11:08

ideally, you sort of want nothing

11:11

on, but there's really no one

11:13

that lives in an environment that's quiet, right? And

11:15

the brain is a change detector. So even if

11:17

you think you have a pretty quiet environment to

11:20

sleep in, the moment a car drives by on

11:22

the street, you're going to have a

11:24

bad time if you're a sensitive sleeper. And

11:26

so often what people do is, you know, they'll put

11:28

on their white noise, they'll put on some sort of

11:30

music. But whatever sound you have

11:33

on to mask your environment needs

11:35

to itself be very stable and not

11:37

have a lot of change going on.

11:39

And that's where lo-fi music comes in.

11:41

It's this genre of music that is

11:43

extremely stable in terms of its characteristics.

11:45

Again, with the no vocals, minimal breaks

11:47

and drops and all those kinds of

11:49

things that you'll find in other music.

11:52

And so for that reason, it's probably

11:54

better sleep music than most.

11:57

Is there an example of what we might consider the perfect?

12:00

LoFi music? Like is there

12:02

a creator that makes the

12:04

most awesome version of LoFi

12:06

that our brains enjoy the

12:08

most? Well, again, I'm

12:10

slightly biased because I'm the director of

12:12

science for a company that makes this

12:14

music. But if you're giving me a

12:16

plug, I'll take the plug. Sure, go

12:19

for it. Yeah. So I'm the

12:21

director of science for Brain FM. Brain FM is

12:23

a music app that we use patented technology to

12:25

change the patterns in your brain to help

12:28

you focus, relax and sleep. And

12:30

we do have a LoFi genre that

12:32

has all the advantages that I just

12:34

described of LoFi plus Brain

12:37

FM's technology, which is, I don't

12:39

want to overcomplicate things, but it's an

12:41

amplitude modulation that changes your neural oscillation

12:43

in your brain. It

12:58

is music to change your brain loops, right? And

13:02

LoFi music in itself doesn't

13:04

specifically have this effect, but we can

13:06

add this effect to all those other

13:08

advantages of LoFi music. Our

13:10

LoFi genre is actually the most popular

13:12

genre on our app. People absolutely love

13:14

it. And I can't recommend

13:16

it enough. I use it myself. It's amazing. Why

13:20

do you think there's such debate around where

13:22

LoFi music came from? When I was reading

13:24

through forums about LoFi music, there was lots

13:26

of people saying it's attributed to the Beach

13:28

Boys from their album in the 60s. But

13:30

some say like it was around way before

13:32

that. Why is there such a debate about

13:34

where this type of music came from? I

13:38

think it depends on what you

13:40

mean when you say LoFi, right?

13:42

And the original purpose was low

13:44

fidelity. In other words, music that's

13:46

poorly recorded, right? And

13:48

a lot of LoFi today you'll hear sort

13:50

of hissing on top of it. The high

13:53

frequencies in the music are sort of masked

13:55

out by a static hiss,

13:57

which is meant to replicate the sound

13:59

of these old, vinyl record players,

14:01

basically bad recording quality. But

14:04

going back historically, right, you might even

14:06

say that the original lo-fi music was

14:08

the very first music that was recorded

14:11

on whack cylinders because that stuff sounded

14:13

absolutely horrible and had no trouble whatsoever just

14:16

due to the limitations of the recording. So

14:21

it really depends and if you track

14:23

through history at some point you get

14:25

to I think maybe in the 80s

14:27

when people were doing this deliberately and

14:29

they were saying okay now

14:32

it can make high quality high fidelity

14:34

recordings but I don't want to. I

14:37

want to go back and recreate the

14:39

sound of recordings that we had decades

14:41

ago and that's what I

14:43

would point to as maybe the origin

14:45

of lo-fi is when people started doing

14:47

it on purpose rather than by accident.

14:55

The quickie is produced by myself Claire

14:58

Murphy and our executive producer Kelly Borg

15:00

with audio production by Some Lion who

15:02

crafted this melting pot of lo-fi beat.

15:06

Thanks for tuning in today we thought we'd

15:08

leave you to relax for a bit so

15:10

here's some chill lo-fi for your stressed or

15:12

anxious brain. This is from an

15:14

artist called Luzette, she's on Spotify and

15:17

a really big 50. you

15:55

you You

16:30

You