Working to Music

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 201, 30 April 1943, Page 3

Working to Music

YV, E print on another page "certain basic conclusions" reached by a BBC _#researcher into the effect of broadcast music in factories. Some, but so far not much, research of the same kind has been carried out in New Zealand; a little by ourselves. We have, for example, been assured by some factory managers that music "speeds up production," and by several factory workers, male and female,

that they (1) like to hear it, (2) are hardly conscious of it, (3) feel better when it is going, and (4) can’t hear what they are doing when "the thing is on." We suspect, too, that not much more than this has so far been established in Britain, though it is interesting to know that notes have been taken for nearly three years, and that the "Music While You Work" programme has been found an annoyance only when the conditions have been unfavourable. The worst set of circumstances, it would appear, has been the playing of "unsuitable selectionsmusic the workers don’t know, . melodies that will not "ride over factory noises," extremes of fastness or slowness, Oddly enough, too, it has not been found that quicker rhythms carry output with them, and it will be interesting to see what effect this has on industrialists who have encouraged the scheme in the belief that production would be insensibly accelerated. Where output has been increased the explanation seems to

be that cheerfulness has been increased: which is another way of Saying that friction and fatigue have been reduced. After all, very few of us spend our days doing the things we most want to do, or we would hardly. know fatigue; but the next best thing to the delight that physics pain ought to be the quiet joy that makes us unconscious of it. Perhaps, too, it i$ safe to assume that most of those whose ears would be agonised by dance bands, accordions, and Viennese waltzes contrive somehow to keep out of machine rooms and to earn their bread in other ways.