Thomas Alexander Kolbe

That music can serve more than purely aesthetic or entertainment purposes is no longer a surprising idea. Across many cultures and historical periods, music has functioned as a means of regulating mood, attention, and bodily states. Over the past decades, clinical research has begun to examine these effects with greater methodological care. Within psychiatry and psychology, music-based interventions now appear in studies addressing anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and related conditions. Structured musical interventions - such as guided listening, improvisation-based music therapy, or therapist-led sessions - can reduce obsessive symptoms, lower anxiety, and ease depressive comorbidity when used alongside established forms of treatment. Controlled studies report measurable improvements in anxiety and obsessive symptoms when music therapy accompanies standard care. At the same time, sample sizes remain limited, and further research is required. Music also relates to cognitive and emotional mechanisms that are relevant to OCD. Studies indicate that individuals with obsessive-compulsive personality traits often show heightened sensitivity to musical tension and a strong preference for harmonic resolution. These observations suggest links between musical structure, predictive processing in the brain, and the regulation of intrusive thoughts. The intersection of neuroscience, psychology, and musical practice therefore forms a productive field of investigation. Musical processes operate simultaneously on several levels: rhythm can synchronize breathing and autonomic activity, tonal expectation structures attention, and deep musical immersion alters the subjective experience of time as well as aspects of cognitive control. These characteristics make music a complex medium within therapeutic contexts. I examined these questions in greater detail last year, focusing on anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive conditions, the current evidence base, and practical forms of music-based interventions in clinical settings. Read the full essay: https://tomkolbe.com/2025/08/25/music-based-interventions-for-anxiety-obsessive-compulsive-and-related-disorders-effects-applications-and-evidence/ #MusicTherapy #MusicAndMentalHealth #Neuroscience #Psychology #OCD #AnxietyResearch #MusicAndTheBrain #MusicResearch #MusicAndHealth

In spring, the quality of light changes quietly. The low, clear light of winter gradually softens and spreads, drawing out the colors inside a room. When flowers are placed by the window, this change becomes easy to notice. The petals catch the light and seem almost translucent, and the air slowly fills with the presence of the season.

From time to time I arrange flowers by the window. My girlfriend enjoys doing this as well, and sometimes I notice that she has quietly arranged them in her own way. A branch from the garden, a few seasonal flowers, a small adjustment of stems. In those moments, a small landscape appears on the windowsill.

Outside the window lies the spring garden. Pale cherry blossoms, the yellow of rapeseed flowers, small blossoms scattered like points of color. In the vegetable bed young shoots are pushing through the soil, and in the distance a range of mountains stretches softly across the horizon. Everything rests in the calm brightness of spring.

On the windowsill stands a Kintsugi vase in deep royal blue. I have always liked this color. It has a quiet depth - in the light it glows gently, while in shadow it becomes calm and grounded.

Across its surface runs a thin line of gold, the trace of a former break. I have always loved the combination of royal blue and gold. Within the deep blue, the gold appears as a soft light. The contrast is not loud; it exists as a quiet harmony.

When flowers are placed in the vase, this harmony becomes clearer. The pale tones of cherry blossoms, white petals, small purple and yellow flowers. Spring flowers are light and delicate, almost dissolving into the daylight.

And yet their time is brief. The moment of full bloom does not last long. A gust of wind can send the petals drifting through the air.

The Kintsugi vessel carries another kind of time. It holds a past. At some moment it broke, and at another moment it was carefully mended. The golden line does not hide that event. It allows it to remain visible.

While arranging flowers, I often think about this. The flowers carry the time that lies ahead of them - the certainty that they will soon fade. The vase carries the time that has already passed. On the windowsill those two directions of time meet.

In the spring light, the petals and the golden line glow softly. The flowers will fall. The vessel will keep its time.
And the light of spring quietly illuminates them both.

#spring #kintsugi #flowers #stilllife #gouache #painting #japanesegarden

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“The Science of Musical Creativity: Bridging Intuition, Cognition, and Artistic Expression” Since the research for my planned book on this topic is taking longer than expected, I am publishing an essay on the subject today. Consider it a piece of weekend reading for anyone interested. Musicians and music creators who reflect on how to establish a meaningful connection with listeners might find the article worthwhile. The essay examines how insights from cognitive science help illuminate the way listeners perceive rhythm, harmony, expectation, and emotional tension in music. It looks at how intuitive creative decisions often correspond to perceptual mechanisms studied in neuroscience and music psychology, and how this knowledge can support composition, arrangement, and production without reducing music to formulas. The aim is to show how artistic intuition and scientific understanding interact in shaping musical experience. https://tomkolbe.com/2026/03/06/the-science-of-musical-creativity-bridging-intuition-cognition-and-artistic-expression/ #Music #MusicTheory #MusicCognition #Neuroscience #Creativity #MusicProduction #Composition

And as always, it’s the ordinary people who have to suffer.

Fills me with sadness to know that I’m familiar with some of the places where the war is raging in the Middle East right now - even if only from passing through.

On March 20, I will release “Songs in My Dreams”.

This time, I am not only composing and producing - I am also singing. The voice is not an added layer; it is the structural center of the piece. That decision changes the internal balance of a composition. Writing for one’s own voice exposes different thresholds: range, breath, fragility, restraint.

The lyrics were written deliberately in a poetic mode. Not as narrative explanation, but as condensation. I was less interested in describing dreams than in articulating the tension that follows them - the moment of waking when something internally coherent withdraws. Poetry allows ambiguity to remain intact. It resists closure.

For me, composition and research are not separate domains. My studio practice functions as a primary field of inquiry. Questions about memory, internal auditory imagery, and the instability of recall are worked through musically before they are formulated conceptually. In that sense, the act of writing and singing this song is already part of the investigation.

Some early genre classifications place the track within Adult Contemporary, based on its formal clarity and melodic hooks. I neither pursue nor reject such labels. They describe external features. My focus lies on the underlying processes.

“Songs in My Dreams” is therefore less about dreaming itself than about the awareness of loss - and the attempt to give that absence a voice.

https://tomkolbe.com/2026/03/02/songs-in-my-dreams-a-single-about-forgetting-and-the-longing-for-what-lingers-out-march-20/

#NewMusic #VocalMusic #AdultContemporary #LyricWriting #Dreams #Memory #Poetry

Listening to Spring Spring does not arrive with spectacle. It begins as a subtle shift. The light changes first. Shadows lose their density; contours sharpen. The ground softens, and young leaves quietly emerge. Nothing accelerates. The world seems tuned a fraction higher. A comparable adjustment occurs inwardly. Between the compression often associated with winter and the outward expansion characteristic of summer lies a transitional state. Psychological research on seasonal music preferences provides an empirical framework for understanding this interval. In their study on season-based playlist preferences, Krause and North (2018) identified three principal dimensions underlying how listeners describe music across the year: arousing, serene, and melancholy. Spring was most strongly associated with the serene dimension. Music considered fitting for this season was described as beautiful, natural, romantic, inspiring, and relaxing. In contrast, summer showed the highest association with arousing qualities, while autumn and winter were more closely linked to melancholy characteristics. This positioning is telling. Spring does not correspond to maximal activation, nor to introspective heaviness. It occupies an intermediate, stabilizing zone. The affective profile is not explosive but clarifying. Such findings resonate with perceptual experience. Moderate tempi, transparent textures, and luminous yet restrained timbres tend to support impressions of freshness and openness. The absence of excess - in dynamics, density, or dramatic contrast - appears central. Music aligned with spring does not demand attention; it sustains equilibrium. The painting reflects a similar structural logic. The gaze moves toward a distant village set quietly within cultivated fields. In the foreground, grasses; at the margins, young woodland narrowing in perspective. The composition avoids spectacle. Its coherence derives from balance rather than intensity. Spring, then, is less an event than a recalibration. It marks a shift in affective orientation - away from contraction, yet not toward full activation. Music, as the study suggests, participates in this seasonal modulation. It can articulate the specific tone of spring: serene, clarified, and quietly open. Krause, A. E., & North, A. C. (2018). “‘Tis the season: Music playlist preferences for the seasons.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000104

Ich habe gerade soooo einen Hals auf Meta... sperren einem Freund auf Insta ohne Verstoß gegen deren Terms den Account mit über 40.000 Followern... und regen sich trotz eingelegter Beschwerde nicht. Ist nicht ohne Grund ein Business-Account. Verklagen auf Schadensersatz den Laden...

RE: @thomas@social.srvr.life

I am currently preparing more in-depth material on this topic, with a focus also on people who are interested in music AI and want to understand the subject without having a professional background from the outset. This approach is deliberate, as I also want to include readers with professional experience and bring both perspectives together.

In my post, I only addressed the topic from my own perspective. In the more detailed material, I will broaden that perspective.

I am open-minded and very curious about what my research will reveal.

If you like, and if you have not already done so, please read my post. Thank you very much.

Japan’s musical traditions do not exist in isolation. Many of their early foundations developed through sustained contact with cultural currents from China and Korea. In an essay I published last summer, I looked at these transregional connections and the historical processes that shaped Japanese music up to 794 CE, before the consolidation of court-centered musical systems. Rather than treating musical traditions as fixed or purely national categories, the text focuses on transmission, adaptation, and the limits of retrospective classification. The essay discusses early forms of musical exchange, the movement of instruments, modes, and practices, and the broader cultural and political conditions under which these influences were absorbed and transformed. It also reflects on how later historiography tends to simplify or homogenize these processes, often overlooking their layered and contingent nature. If you are interested in early Japanese music, East Asian cultural history, or the question of how traditions take form through contact rather than isolation, you may find the essay useful. https://tomkolbe.com/2025/08/11/before-the-court-korean-and-chinese-currents-in-japanese-music-up-to-794-ce/ #MusicHistory #JapaneseMusic #EastAsianHistory #CulturalExchange #MusicResearch

In the study I would like to briefly introduce here, the focus is on the relationship
between meditation and music – a pairing that is widely discussed, yet often without
much precision.

The study examines how music that reliably induces aesthetic chills interacts with
meditative processes, with particular attention to affective intensity,
self-transcendence, emotional permeability, and subjective insight.

Open access study:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1589132/full

#MusicResearch #Neuroscience #Psychology #Meditation

In the study I would like to briefly introduce here, the focus is on the relationship between meditation and music – a pairing that is widely discussed, yet often without much precision. The study examines how music that reliably induces aesthetic chills interacts with meditative processes, with particular attention to affective intensity, self-transcendence, emotional permeability, and subjective insight. The work does not establish clinical efficacy. Its relevance lies in showing how music can modulate inner states that, in clinical contexts, are regarded as markers of change. The analysis is process-oriented and based on self-reports rather than clinical outcomes. In medical terms, this is not therapeutic evidence, but a contribution to understanding state-dependent mechanisms – potentially of interest to both musicians working with affect and clinicians concerned with contextual modulation. Open access study: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1589132/full #MusicResearch #Neuroscience #Psychology #Meditation #AffectiveStates #Musicians #Clinicians

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A small heads-up: I coded a Mastodon browser extension and will be sending out two or three test posts today and tomorrow. Nothing unusual is going on - everything is fine.

My Experiences with Suno AI

I approached Suno AI with curiosity, not defensiveness. As a composer and producer, technology is always part of the work. The question was not whether AI should make music, but whether it can engage with musical structure, form, and intention that aligns with compositional practice.

For me, it does not.

The first limitation appears at the level of arrangement. Even simple ideas such as a progressive intro cannot be handled at all. Musical material tends to appear abruptly instead of unfolding. There is little sense of preparation or directed motion.

This becomes clearer when approaching climaxes. In my own work, climactic moments rely on harmonic ascent, register expansion, rhythmic intensification, or upward key changes. Suno AI fails to realize such processes convincingly. Modulations feel arbitrary when they occur at all. There is no harmonic trajectory, no buildup that makes a climax feel earned.
Music is not a sequence of textures. It is a temporal system of expectation and resolution. Without an internal grasp of this logic, musical output remains static, even when it sounds busy.

Another issue is intentionality. Composition involves deciding why something happens and when it happens. A pause or thinning of texture carries meaning because it is placed deliberately. Suno AI produces sequences of events, not decisions. Sections follow one another without internal necessity.

This limitation is especially visible in long-form or reduced music. Ambient and minimal approaches depend on proportion and patience. These are precisely the areas where the system collapses into repetition or sudden, unjustified change.

Underlying this is a lack of functional musical memory. Creative music depends on remembering what has occurred and transforming it. Suno AI may reference stylistic patterns, but it does not meaningfully relate its present to its own past. Development is replaced by variation without direction.

My conclusion: I don't know. Maybe AI systems can generate material or sketches. But they cannot replace creative music-making.

An AI system can only draw from existing material. This will remain true. Human creativity often works against probability. These decisions emerge from embodied listening and lived experience.

Suno AI demonstrates technical capability, but not compositional agency. As long as intention and responsibility for form remain absent, such systems stay what they are: tools, not composers.

This randomized controlled trial examines whether music-based group exercise offers advantages over standard individual exercise in patients with acquired brain injury. Using a four-week intervention, the authors compare cognitive performance, mood, and activities of daily living between both approaches. While music-based group training was not superior in clinical outcomes, the study provides careful evidence that both formats support cognitive and functional improvement, with clear differences in enjoyment, concentration, and individual preference. Open access study: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1650872 #Neurorehabilitation #ClinicalResearch #MusicTherapy #BrainInjury #StrokeRecovery #CognitiveRehabilitation #OpenAccess

Kumpel hat sich vertan beim lesen meines Profils: „baked in Nagoya…“ 🤣 Zugegeben, das hat irgendwie auch was. 😂

In Part II of Music in Neuroses: Mechanisms, Applications, and Verification, I review peer-reviewed studies published since October 2025. I focus on how recent work compares music therapy with established interventions, translates therapeutic principles across methods, and applies physiological measures in research. https://tomkolbe.com/2026/02/18/music-in-neuroses-mechanisms-applications-and-verification-pt-ii/

本エッセイ「神経症における音楽 – 作用機序、実装、検証 Pt. II」では、2025年10月以降に発表された査読付き研究を整理し、音楽療法に関する臨床比較、治療原理の運用、生理学的指標の扱いについて検討しています。パートIで示した分析枠組みを踏まえつつ、近年の知見がどのように更新・補強されているかを記述的にまとめました。

https://tomkolbe.com/ja/2026/02/18/%e7%a5%9e%e7%b5%8c%e7%97%87%e3%81%ab%e3%81%8a%e3%81%91%e3%82%8b%e9%9f%b3%e6%a5%bd-%e4%bd%9c%e7%94%a8%e6%a9%9f%e5%ba%8f%e3%80%81%e5%ae%9f%e8%a3%85%e3%80%81%e6%a4%9c%e8%a8%bc%ef%bc%88%e3%83%91/

「最初の鳥が鳴く前に」 “Before the First Bird” 夜を描きたくなった。 理由はなく、ただそういう時間だった。 冬はもう遠く、 春はまだ、名も持たないまま。 森と村のあいだで、 何かが静かに息をひそめている。 最初の鳥が鳴く、その前。 世界はまだ、目を閉じている。

新しい研究資料を読んでいた。
エッセイはもう自分のサイトに出している。
リンクはあとでここに。

ああ、もう……このボットたち…… 🙄

There are new findings on the topic that I’ll discuss this Saturday in "Music in Neuroses: Mechanisms, Applications, and Verification, Pt. II” on tomkolbe.com.

Until then, feel free to revisit my first essay on the subject as an introduction.

"Music in Neuroses – mechanisms, application, and verification"

https://tomkolbe.com/2025/10/04/music-in-neuroses-mechanisms-application-and-verification/

#MusicTherapy #ClinicalNeuroscience #MentalHealth #ClinicalPsychology #EvidenceBased #Neuroscience

Natürlich denke ich auch immer: "Hoffentlich passiert es nicht." Ich wäre ohne Pubmed., arXiv.org und andere Zugänge zu wissenschaftlichen Daten echt aufgeschmissen... gerade zu aktuellen Studien etc. Hätte ich mir im Leben auch nicht träumen lassen, sich darum mal Gedanken machen zu müssen...

https://blog.tib.eu/2025/05/13/die-wissenschaft-schuetzen-tib-baut-dark-archive-fuer-arxiv-auf/

ある日は、大きなコーヒー用のサーモマグがあるのがありがたい。

Sooo... noch die Webseiten Verifikation und dann is dat Ding mit dem neuen Server hier durch 😁