Rebecca St. James Engaged to be Married!

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One of Christian music’s most recognized and beloved artists is opening the New Year with an exciting announcement: Rebecca St. James is engaged to be married!

St. James will wed the man she’s been waiting for –Jacob Fink—on a date soon to be announced. The Christmas Day proposal came at Rebecca’s family farm in Franklin, Tennessee where she was presented the brilliant, solitaire diamond ring. The groom-to-be asked her parents, David and Helen, for their blessing prior to him surprising Rebecca with the engagement ring and his request for her hand in marriage.

Jacob, originally from Colorado, now resides in Southern California. He spent two years as a missionary in South Africa before attending college and graduating summa cum laude with a degree in communications and an emphasis on film production. He worked in television production prior to his current career in music. The couple met through mutual friends in Los Angeles.

Noted Rebecca in a communication to friends: “We are truly amazed at finding our dreams and ideals met in the love we’ve found. We are exceedingly grateful for this precious gift from God.”

Rebecca’s signature song, “Wait For Me,” released in 2000, inspired national attention to the ideals of purity before marriage—a self-lived message she has taken to young people worldwide from her concert stages and through her best-selling books and personal testimony.

2011 will be a milestone year for St. James, who recently signed with Provident Label Group’s Beach Street/ Reunion Records. Her new studio album I Will Praise You releases on April 5 with its first single “Shine Your Glory Down” impacting radio on Feb. 11.

Currently planning promotional and concert tour dates, and a wedding, Rebecca is also putting final touches on her ninth book, “What Is He Thinking?” (Hachette/Faithwords), which is due out in September.

Read our interview with Rebecca.

Photo credit: Ben Smallbone

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Effects of Music

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Research into the effects of music on behavior, intelligence, learning, pain tolerance and health have generated a number of interesting findings.

Music, Intelligence and Learning:
According to the Association for Psychological Science, intelligence test scores grew higher in children who took lessons in keyboarding or singing. In another study, boys between the ages of 6 and 15 who took music lessons scored higher on tests of verbal memory than a control group of students without musical training.

Music and Pain Reduction:
Researchers found that patients who listened to harp, piano, synthesizer, orchestra or slow jazz experienced less post-surgical pain than those who did not.

Music Therapy and Autism:
Music therapy is particularly helpful for autistic students, who have difficulty interacting with classmates and teachers and become agitated in noisy, changeable environments. Autistic students respond very well to music therapy, which can be used to help them remain calm under stress and socialize more effectively. In addition, many autistic children have spectacular music skills.

Music and Plant Health:
Experiments conducted by Dorothy Retallack to learn about music’s effects on plants are described in her 1973 book The Sound of Music and Plants. Retallack played rock music (Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Vanilla Fudge) for one group of plants and jazz for another. When two weeks had passed, the jazz plants were healthy and bent toward the radio. The rock music plants grew very tall and droopy, with faded blooms, and most had died within 16 days.

Retallack tried other types of music, including country, to which the plants showed no reaction, and modern (discordant) classical music, which caused the plants to bend away from the speaker. The plants seemed to “like” Bach and North Indian sitar and tabla music.

Other people have conducted similar experiments, and some claim to have achieved similar results. However, Retallack has been criticized for using unscientific methods in her experiments.

Most music studies to date have used small sample sizes and some have not controlled for confounding variables, so although these findings are compelling, more research is required. However, given that many studies have generated similar results for certain types of music, the psychology of music is certainly worthy of further exploration.

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Ruth’s new album streeting October 28th

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After a successful debut in 2007 (Secondhand Dreaming) and extensive touring with Switchfoot and Relient K (2007 “Appetite for Construction Tour with Habitat for Humanity”) as well as Emery, Ruth is proud to return with their sophomore release, Anorak, on October 28th.

Titled after the British slang definition of an obsessive enthusiast, Anorak is a reference to a person who has an unfathomable interest in something and feels compelled to talk at length about it. The project was produced by acclaimed roster of Aaron Sprinkle (Copeland, Anberlin), Chris Keene (Surrogate, Number One Gun), and Kelsey Smith. The album was also mixed by Ken Andrews (Mae, Pete Yorn) and JR McNeely (The Almost, Relient K).

“I would hope that the music we play is something a little more timeless,” band’s founder, singer/guitarist Dustin Ruth confesses. “Hopefully whomever gets one of our albums ten years from now, they’re driving somewhere, and they can still listen to these songs and enjoy it. Our ten year goal for the band is that no matter what, we would still be real, that we would still be who we are, no matter how many records we sold.”

Written primarily at rest stops and hotels, Anorak captures the emotions and experiences of watching dreams come true and others fall beyond reach. Ruth’s music is liberating, freeing and uplifting, while at the same time avoiding the pitfalls of cliché and easy, safe or predictable melodies. Anorak is at once challenging and yet simple to understand, recalling the best of ’80s radio, ’90′s English pop and contemporary indie without sounding derivative of any particular genre.

“This one feels more like a band album,” Dustin says. “We had a lot more time to develop through a year and a half of solid touring. It made going into this album a lot different. As a songwriter, I put a lot more time and devotion into writing the songs that we really wanted on this album. These songs were written more intentionally for this album.”

The band will also return to the touring sector with Decemberadio after a summer filled with dates. Check out their MySpace for updated dates.

Read our interview with Ruth here.

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Miami Ultra Music Festival 2011

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The 2011 Ultra Music Festival will be take place for 3 days in Miami, Florida. Miami festival is outdoor music events which will be dated are March 25th-27th. This is an annual celebration of a lot of fun.

Last year, the Miami ultra music festival sold out topping over 70,000 people and they are expecting at least that this year. This was one of the foremost festivals in the US last year and will expectantly rock out especially this year.

UMF Co-Founder Russell Faibisch said that “We are really excited to return to Miami in 2011 at the end of March, especially as a three-day event with our most diverse program to date; The strength of our line-up really dictated this expansion and we look forward to announcing it very soon.”

The music lineup for the popular festival has not been fully proclaimed, although groups have started to verify their participation. Crystal Castles has definite they will be in turnout at the festival.

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Music makes you smarter, happier

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Music energizes the soul of all humanity. It excites the brain and animates the spirit, accumulating evidence shows. That is why music is so enduring and pervasive.

When we listen to music (it is as if) the brain is on fire. According to Nina Kraus at Northwestern University, music has “a pervasive effect on how the nervous system gets moulded and shaped … a transformation that comes about only with active engagement with sound.”

Researches confirm that listening to music at a very young age improves spatial and temporal reasoning, and increases aptitude in mathematics, engineering and some games, such as chess.
The impact of playing a musical instrument is even more impressive.

Recent information indicates music can boost brain power and that musically-trained children have enhanced visio-spatial processing capabilities, better memories and higher overall intelligence.

Some neuroscientists call it the “Mozart effect,” the collective benefits acquired through playing and/or listening to music.

Music processing is an “ensemble activity” involving many areas of brain circuitry. Studies show that music impacts on almost every important region of the brain: prefrontal cortex, motor cortex, cerebellum, hippocampus, amygdala, sensory cortex, nucleus accumbens and auditory cortex, some of which are vital in long-term memory retention.

Accordingly, music impacts on the brain’s pleasure centres.

Babies are born with a musical readiness that includes a basic sense of timing and rhythm.
Specific taste in music tends to freeze in early adulthood, rarely changing thereafter.

(People) tend to form enduring preferences during a sensitive period in their lives, the researchers report. Musical tastes are strongly related to song-specific ages (the age at the time the song was popular), peaking in late adolescence or early adulthood (23.5 years of age).
“Music styles popular during youth generate preferences over other styles of music that tend to prevail for the rest of their lives,” they explained.

That is why listening to music that was popular during one’s youth can be therapeutic. Such nostalgic music can be beneficial in treating dementia, anxiety, stroke, cancer, some respiratory ailments and some types of brain injury.

Music significantly boosts the self-images of children and has hugely beneficial impacts in the treatment of some hospitalized children.

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