Podcast on Hear here

After posting the little articles about music psychology (see previous post), the website Hear here from royal philharmonic orchestra and classic FM also posted a podcast in which Alex Lamont (at 6'25'') and I (at 8' 36'') are explaining a little about music and its influence on our moods. My piece was cut a little unfortunate, but basically what I am saying here is that people do not always want to be happy as the hedonistic theories claim we do, but they turn out to make themselves relaxed with listening to music. Something I also agree as to be a form of happiness, but a form of happiness that contains less arousal, and is therefore less tiresome to be in.
Especially in comparison with the perfect English accents of the host, my accent sticks out horribly, my apologies for that :-). Even more reason to compliment the host on his lovely pronunciation of my name.
Go to "this month", "podcasts" no. 10. to hear the complete podcast.

Sad-in a nice way!

Every month, the website "hear here" has a special music related theme. This month they focus on music psychology and mostly music in everyday life. Most contributions come from the music psychology group from Keele University of which I am part. Check out the site for Augusts "Listen and Discuss" called: "An outburst of the soul" and find besides the wonderful pieces of Alex, Alinka, and Andreas, mine on mood regulation.
My piece is about mood regulation with music and points out a new approach to mood regulation. I distinguise broad strategies like distraction and relaxation from tactics (or tools), like listening to music, and excersizing. I claim that the tactics like music listening can help the broader strategies, and I point out how widely used and how varied the outcome of music listening can be. If you lost it by now, check out the piece. The piece is called: Sad-in a nice way!