According to studies, dogs seem to like reggae and soft rock over other types of music.
A study by the Scottish SPCA and the University of Glasgow contends that dogs’ behavior is influenced by music.
At a Dumbarton dog adoption center, researchers played a range of music to canines while monitoring physiological and behavioral changes.
According to Prof. Neil Evans, when the dogs were played reggae and soft rock, the greatest favorable behavioral improvements were noticed.
The study, he claimed, revealed that each dog had its own musical preferences, even though these genres stood out.
“Overall, the response to different genres was mixed,” said Prof. Evans, “highlighting the likelihood that, like humans, our canine friends have their own unique music preferences.”
Do dogs prefer stillness or music?
It depends, adds Radosta in response to the question of whether dogs enjoy music. According to research, music may be therapeutic for stressed-out pets.
A seminal 2002 study tested how shelter dogs reacted to dialogue, stillness, heavy metal, pop, and classical music. Researchers discovered that dogs could relax to classical music. The puppies switched between standing and barking and relaxing while lying down. A other study found that sick dogs who were listening to harp music had better respiratory and heart rates than those who weren’t.
However, a recent study discovered that audio books, not classical music, were the sound that calmed shelter dogs the best. How come? According to Radosta, having a repetitive sound to block out ominous noises like hospital equipment or other dogs barking is probably having the most influence.
Ahmed. After working with Salvadoran composer Ricardo Henriquez, Ahmed initially founded the Roundwaves company with the intention of using music to help people unwind. However, he soon discovered that Zuki, Henriquez’ dog, was also benefiting from the music. When he heard gunshots, which were frequent where they resided, he would feel anxious.
Ahmed continues by stating that seven years of feedback research served as the foundation for his company’s top-secret musical formula for its programs. They have nearly 437,000 subscribers on YouTube alone, and that number keeps growing. In 2018, 20 million dogs and cats listened to RelaxMyDog and RelaxMyCat across all of their platforms, including websites and music streaming services.
Today, MusicForPets gets very emotional requests from fans, says Ahmed. “Pet owners reach out saying their cat or dog just passed away and they want to use the animal’s favorite track to play at the funeral. It is insanely heartwarming that our music was such a deep part of their pet’s life. He says messages like this are one of thousands that reinstate the “why behind his company’s purpose and encourages people to introduce music to their dogs. ” All you have to do is press ‘play’ and you’ll see your pet settle into a relaxed state, he says.
However, Dr. Ochoa says that what works for one dog may not work for another and the only way to know is through trial and error. “Be cognizant of how your dog responds and go from there, she says.
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect a clarification from an expert.
What kind of music do dogs enjoy?
The first performance of Howl, a song cycle for 20 singers and three dogs, took place at Carnegie Hall in 1980. Kirk Nurock, a pianist and arranger who has collaborated with artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Judy Collins, Bette Midler, and Leonard Bernstein, wrote the music and led the performance. Nurock, a Julliard School of Music graduate, went on to write and perform the Sonata for Piano and Dog in 1983 and Expedition, a jazz trio and Siberian Husky arrangement in 1984. In each of them, dogs howled in time with the music, punctuated by barks and yips.
Since canines occasionally howl in response to music being performed or sung, many people believe that a dog is trying to generate music when they howl. Domestic dogs bark much more frequently and rarely howl than wild dogs. Although it might be a sign of loneliness in a solitary dog, howling is actually a mode of communication that frequently serves other social purposes. Wolves howl to form the pack and to reaffirm their collective identity. When one animal starts to howl, the rest of the pack comes together and starts singing along with them. The most well-known howl begins quietly and lasts for a significant period of time. Before switching to the main tone, it may start out at a slightly higher pitch, and occasionally the pitch will drop as the howl draws to a close. To the human ear, it sounds sonorous and melancholy. However, the canines who engage in collective howling appear to enjoy it, which is presumably why people assume that howling dogs or wolves are having the canine version of an impromptu jam session.
There is evidence from scientific studies that dogs can perceive pitch. When more wolves join the chorus, each one’s tone changes, according to recordings of wolves. No wolf seems to want to sing in the choir on the same note as anyone else. This is why the presence of a dog howling in unison with a group of people singing is immediately detectable. He purposefully speaks in a different register than the other voices and appears to enjoy the dissonant noise he is generating.
Wind instruments, especially reed instruments like clarinets or saxophones, provide the kind of human music that frequently makes dogs howl. On occasion, a long violin note or even a human singing while holding a long note might make dogs howl. Perhaps the hearing dog thinks these are proper howls, and he feels compelled to respond and join the chorus.
Many scientists believe that dogs don’t truly use their vocalizations to create music, in the same manner that humans occasionally sing or play the piano for aesthetic reasons. However, there have been accounts of canines with distinct musical preferences and an understanding of what makes for good music. George Robinson Sinclair, the London-based organist at Hereford Cathedral, kept a bulldog by the name of Dan. He was close friends with Sir Edward William Elgar, who is best known for his compositions Land of Hope and Glory and Pomp and Circumstance. Dan won Elgar’s affections because, in his opinion, the dog had an excellent ear for music. The composer grew to love Dan because he would frequently accompany his master to choir rehearsals and would growl at choristers who sang out of tune.
Richard Wilhelm Wagner, who is well known as the author of the quartet of operas known as The Ring Cycle, was a big fan of canine musical taste. His Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Peps, had a particular stool in his study. Wagner would play the piano or sing rough drafts of his compositions as he worked on them. The composer watched the dog intently and adjusted musical motifs in response to the dog’s reactions. Wagner observed that the musical keys of tunes affected how Peps reacted to them. As a result, while some portions in one key may occasionally induce a tail to wag calmly, other passages in different keys may generate an agitated response. This gave Wagner the beginning of an idea that eventually inspired him to create a tool known as the “musical motif.” The motif relates certain musical tones to particular feelings or moods in the operatic drama. As a result, in the opera Tannhauser, the key of E-flat major was associated with the idea of sacramental love and salvation, whereas the idea of sensual love and excess was associated with the key of E major. Wagner eventually learned to use musical motifs to highlight significant characters and other elements of the narrative in all of his future operas.
According to research, dogs have musical preferences and respond differently to various musical genres. At Queens University in Belfast, psychologist Deborah Wells exposed dogs in an animal shelter to several musical genres. The dogs’ actions were recorded while they were listening to recordings by heavy metal rock bands like Metallica, Grieg’s Morning, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and a collection of popular music that included Britney Spears, Robbie Williams, and Bob Marley. The dogs were also exposed to recordings of human speech and a period of silence to determine if it was really the musical parts of the sounds that they were responding to.
The canines’ musical preferences affected their behavior. The canines became quite anxious and started barking when the researchers played heavy metal music. Popular music and human interaction did not significantly alter the way people behaved from when there was no sound at all. On the other hand, the dogs appeared to be calmed by classical music. The dogs’ barking intensity dramatically decreased while they were listening to it, and they frequently laid down and took up position. “It is well recognized that music can influence our moods,” Wells said in her conclusion. For instance, listening to classical music can help you feel less stressed, whereas grunge music can make you feel hostile, depressed, tense, and exhausted. It is currently thought that when it comes to musical taste, dogs may be just as discriminating as people.
What genre of music soothes canines?
It begins with a somber string sweep in a low note, then transitions into birdsong before returning to the ambient strings. This goes on for twelve hours.
The target audience for this music is dogs, not humans; to the untrained ear, it may seem like one of the sleep playlists that have been increasingly popular in recent years. This calming (or annoying) muzak really contains canine-friendly frequencies that can help with separation anxiety or stress reduction.
Dog-themed music is far from a novelty; instead, it is quickly emerging as a lucrative new genre, with the production business RelaxMyDog at the fore. The service, which was established in 2011 by businessman Amman Ahmed and producer Ricardo Henriquez, has 10 million monthly users: In September alone, their work was streamed for 600 years.
This is the busiest time of the year for RelaxMyDog because Bonfire Night, Diwali, and Thanksgiving all coming up. There are several pharmaceuticals and herbal cures to relax pets, but Ahmed, 31, says he wanted to create something that was entirely natural and used music. We initially had a team of two, but we now have 12 employees working for us in Manchester, the UK, El Salvador, and India, and our readership is now worldwide. We expect our content to benefit roughly 15 million pets this year.
There is a devoted fanbase because to the positive response to their music and sibling firm RelaxMyCat, which was created in 2012. We receive comments from owners requesting that music be played at their pet’s funeral because their dog or cat used to like listening to it, adds Ahmed. “Our information integrates into these creatures’ daily life.
Ahmed is evasive when describing the hazy musical formula that underlies their success, though. According to him, it includes “a variety of frequencies that dogs can hear paired with music that is designed to be calming to people, so if the human is comfortable, that energy can be transmitted on to the dog as well. Instead of using scientific research to inform their compositions, he claims that “the finest research comes from actual users,” who regularly provide feedback through their 600,000 subscribers on their YouTube channel.
One of these comments was that dogs seemed to enjoy reggae music, which sparked the creation of a new series of dog reggae. A 2017 study from the Scottish SPCA and the University of Glasgow supports this conclusion. The study discovered that while listening to classical music initially helped to relax the dogs, after a few days they started to get bored. Reggae and soft rock were discovered to be the greatest genres for lowering heart rates, stress, and barking. Gilly Mendes Ferreira, the director of research at the SPCA, hypothesizes that this is because “certain genres have a rhythm that is similar to the dogs’ own heart rate.” This soundtrack imitates how a stressed-out puppy will cuddle up to its mother and utilize her heartbeat as a source of comfort.
When I leave the house, I leave the radio on Classic FM for my dogs, and they seem to like it. They’ve undoubtedly never voiced a complaint.
The SPCA last year worked with producer John McLaughlin, widely known for his work with Westlife, Blue, and 5ive, to develop Paws, Play, Relax, a charitable album created for dogs, taking the research a step further. According to McLaughlin, “I’m sure many others thought our initiative was barking crazy, but it made perfect sense to me. “Dogs require entertainment just like people do, and who doesn’t enjoy some reggae? Even more, McLaughlin created dog-centric lyrics, culminating in lines from love ballads like, “I was barely holding on / But I knew you were the only one / From the moment I saw you.
McLaughlin is pleased with the outcomes: “We held a listening party where a number of my friends’ dogs visited the house and it clearly works.” Some of those dogs might be quite animated, but this album helped to quiet them down.
On November 3, Classic FM will air a special show dedicated to animals, showcasing songs with pet-related themes like John Barry’s Crazy Dog. Despite the research showing that dogs prefer Bob Marley over Mahler, the show’s host Bill Turnbull, who also has three dogs, claims that his pups appear to like Classic FM when he leaves the house. No, they have never voiced a complaint.
With owners reporting an 87% success rate, RelaxMyDog is now aiming higher. “Our goal is to become the Netflix of the pet world; we want to be Petflix.
In order to better engage the dogs, Petflix uses dog-themed imagery like treks through a forest with a purple filter and, of course, their favorite music. Its success is yet unknown as it only debuted in October, but for the time being, Ahmed is concentrating on a more well-known, seasonal objective: “We’re releasing a Christmas album and I want it to reach No 1.
