Teach Music to Kids!

Music notation: its limits—and potential ill effects

Can we notate in music a Stephane Grappelli solo accurately?( http://bit.ly/StephGrap ) The notes? Mostly. The rhythm? Partially. The style? Less likely. The tiny slides between notes, the rhythmic feel, and subtle expressive elements? Impossible. Absolutely impossible. The best anyone can do with notation would be to put something down that would remind the music reader of some of the basic elements mentioned above. All of he rest must come from audiation—the part that is in your head that cannot be well represented in notation: subtleties such as tonal nuances, phrasing, and most expressive elements. These would be just a few of the differences between your interpretation and mine, say, of a beautiful ballad. What you bring to the party—from all your past listening experiences that inform your choices—will be different from what I bring. Given this, notation falls horrendously short of representing music—that is with the exception of tones and some rhythm. If you never heard Stephane Grappelli play, your rendition wouldn’t match up much. Besides, what would be the point of putting into notation something Mr. Grappelli never had to read in the first place? If you can’t play it first by ear, then the notation serves only as a shortcut—a detour, actually—for you to develop your own musicianship.

Let’s look at this a different way: When you read a book, do you hear the author’s voice in your head? Is it different than my interpretation of the author’s voice? Do the letters and words actually convey all of the intention of the author? 

Consider most elementary school bands and your experience of listening to them. Their intonation is not well developed to put it nicely. The children have been taught to play notes, push buttons and blow air. Does their rendition of the piece of music groove? Or does it sit lifelessly? I believe we have taught them to count the beats and not feel what’s in between—where the music really lives.

Some adults say of themselves that they are not musical, but then I hear them perform. “Wow, that was really moving and beautiful. How can you say you’re not musical?” They answer that they don’t know the notes (names of notes) or the theory (like how many verbs did you just read in the last paragraph), or, more often than not, they don’t know how to read the notation. To me, this is simply absurd. Listen to Erroll Garner ( http://bit.ly/ErrollGarner ), and tell me why he should need to read what he’s playing. The truth is that he doesn’t know how to read and write music. Yet, many fine jazz musicians call him a musical genius.

Now, this is not to say that reading notation—with understanding—is not valuable. We would not have symphony orchestras to play some of the world’s finest music. Many rock and jazz bands rely on written music. Most probably do not. When they do, the notation reminds them of what it is they can already audiate. They can “think the music” in their minds. If you can do that, then I say that you are musical—whether you can play, sing or read music or not! And think about this for a bit: Musical listeners are actually half of the equation. Otherwise, for whom are musicians performing?

 Please leave your thoughts and share as you wish.

Learning music is good for what? Research says. . .

Well, you'll have to read it for yourself. (See links below.)

 

Or, in the meantime, just hear this:

 

My take on all the research I've read is that there are indeed solid relationships between music and non-musical skills.  The problem is establishing clear causality. All of these studies could be seen as a very promising reason for why to study music or play an instrument.

 

Unfortunately, the research is replete with flawed research design, misinterpretations of data, and exaggerated implications of research findings. Most important to me, and probably to many of you, is that music is worth it for it’s own sake. Many great musicians cannot read music or know theory. In improvisational music, parts of the prefrontal cortex actually are best shut down. There is also this anecdote about a 40-year-old man who cannot tie his shoes and is socially a 4-year-old, and yet, upon first hearing can immediately imitate a Fats Waller composition he’d never heard before from beginning to end. No social, math, language skills got developed there. The outliers may tell more truth than the middle 68%. (I’m a bit of a Gladwell fan, though still skeptical of some of his work.)

 

All that said, still, the preponderance of the evidence is moving in a positive direction toward illuminating benefits of music education. Having read much of this type of literature—many high level research studies by prestigious universities some published in respected peer reviewed journals—my belief is this: 

 

People who have the innate nature to be musical—coupled with a rich interactive musical environment at the earliest stages in life—become musical. Period. 

 

Then, later on, because of how music is taught (e.g., a whole note = 4, 1/8 note in cut time = 1/16, You have to be good in math or you won’t jump through that hoop!), or because music probably helped brain development in a variety of ways in early and late infancy (rich webs of synaptic connections grown across areas of the brain not otherwise stimulated),  those connections are then there to be used in a multiplicity of ways that may make a difference in the development of a variety of non-musical skills. [Bad sentence, but not rewriting this now. Eesh.] Daniel Levitin makes a compelling case in This is Your Brain on Music, and A World in Six Songs. He is both thoughtful and imaginative. I’d like to think he’s right. He's also a good story teller but he didn't attribute  some of his writings (where he should have) to the greatest researcher in music psychology, Dr. Edwin Gordon. 

 

In the end, if we keep selling the value of music for the sake of the development of non-musical skills, we are selling ourselves out and doing a serious injustice to our profession in the long run, let alone to the children who have exceptionally high music aptitude and yet are low performing in many or most other subjects. Why is there no societal push to have studies that justify how learning Math helps English, or on how Science helps xxx? I find the current climate troublesome and to top it off, it is widely perpetuated by NAfME and the NAMM Foundation. NAMM's recent brochure does not include anything on how music education contributes to one’s ability to be musical. I find this completely out of whack.

 

Rant over. Here are some links to studies you might be able to use. 

The last paragraph comes closest to my way of thinking. The 'Rasmussen' quoted in the last piece interestingly is NOT me. I just searched for it and found out it is me!! It's from forever ago. PBS got it from ???

 

Attachments and links:

(The download links are all PDF files.)

 

Music and language learning: 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17943015

 

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Correlation between music and math: 

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1869#1

 

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Music Lessons, Emotional Intelligence and IQ

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/mp.2011.29.2.185?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

 

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Music Training and Second-Language English Comprehension and Vocabulary Skills in Indian Children

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12646-013-0180-3

 

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Musicians use both sides of their brains more frequently than average people

 

http://phys.org/news/2008-10-musicians-sides-brains-frequently-average.html

 

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Early Musical Training and White-Matter Plasticity in the Corpus Callosum: Evidence for a Sensitive Period

 

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/33/3/1282

 

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Download WLTP Brochure-2

Download Susan-hallam-music-development_research 

Download 2004-costa-giomi

Download Neu-25-3-378

Download KrausChandrasekeran_NRN10

Download Diw_sp0591

Another I cut and pasted.

Cereb Cortex. 2012 Dec 12. [Epub ahead of print]

Twelve Months of Active Musical Training in 8- to 10-Year-Old Children Enhances the Preattentive Processing of Syllabic Duration and Voice Onset Time.

Chobert J, François C, Velay JL, Besson M.

Source

Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives, CNRS - Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille Cedex 3, France.

Abstract

Musical training has been shown to positively influence linguistic abilities. To follow the developmental dynamics of this transfer effect at the preattentive level, we conducted a longitudinal study over 2 school years with nonmusician children randomly assigned to music or to painting training. We recorded the mismatch negativity (MMN), a cortical correlate of preattentive mismatch detection, to syllables that differed in vowel frequency, vowel duration, and voice onset time (VOT), using a test-training-retest procedure and 3 times of testing: before training, after 6 months and after 12 months of training. While no between-group differences were found before training, enhanced preattentive processing of syllabic duration and VOT, as reflected by greater MMN amplitude, but not of frequency, was found after 12 months of training in the music group only. These results demonstrate neuroplasticity in the child brain and suggest that active musical training rather than innate predispositions for music yielded the improvements in musically trained children. These results also highlight the influence of musical training for duration perception in speech and for the development of phonological representations in normally developing children. They support the importance of music-based training programs for children's education and open new remediation strategies for children with language-based learning impairments.

 

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Improved Test Scores
A study published in 2007 by Christopher Johnson, professor of music education and music therapy at the University of Kansas, revealed that students in elementary schools with superior music education programs scored around 22 percent higher in English and 20 percent higher in math scores on standardized tests, compared to schools with low-quality music programs, regardless of socioeconomic disparities among the schools or school districts. Johnson compares the concentration that music training requires to the focus needed to perform well on a standardized test. 

Aside from test score results, Johnson’s study highlights the positive effects that a quality music education can have on a young child’s success. Luehrisen explains this psychological phenomenon in two sentences: “Schools that have rigorous programs and high-quality music and arts teachers probably have high-quality teachers in other areas. If you have an environment where there are a lot of people doing creative, smart, great things, joyful things, even people who aren’t doing that have a tendency to go up and do better.”

And it doesn’t end there: along with better performance results on concentration-based tasks, music training can help with basic memory recall. “Formal training in music is also associated with other cognitive strengths such as verbal recall proficiency,” Pruett says. “People who have had formal musical training tend to be pretty good at remembering verbal information stored in memory.”

Being Musical
Music can improve your child’ abilities in learning and other nonmusic tasks, but it’s important to understand that music does not make one smarter. As Pruett explains, the many intrinsic benefits to music education include being disciplined, learning a skill, being part of the music world, managing performance, being part of something you can be proud of, and even struggling with a less than perfect teacher. 

“It’s important not to oversell how smart music can make you,” Pruett says. “Music makes your kid interesting and happy, and smart will come later. It enriches his or her appetite for things that bring you pleasure and for the friends you meet.”
While parents may hope that enrolling their child in a music program will make her a better student, the primary reasons to provide your child with a musical education should be to help them become more musical, to appreciate all aspects of music, and to respect the process of learning an instrument or learning to sing, which is valuable on its own merit.

“There is a massive benefit from being musical that we don’t understand, but it’s individual. Music is for music’s sake,” Rasmussen [NOT ME, Oh, it IS ME!! from forever ago. PBS, where did you get my quote??]  says. “The benefit of music education for me is about being musical. It gives you have a better understanding of yourself. The horizons are higher when you are involved in music,” he adds. “Your understanding of art and the world, and how you can think and express yourself, are enhanced.”

 

 As always, I'd love your thoughts. 

 

Importance of jazz in early childhood music

I share this quick email I sent to a colleague who asked about the "importance of jazz as a component of early music education"

 

Hi, 
Glad to meet you.

 

I'll do a short spiel here to try to answer your question. It's really not rocket science. It doesn't need to be science at all when it comes to how children learn. [I have a very science-based understanding of how children learn though. When I boil it down, it becomes common sense, and most of the common sense I've come to is that we don't know how best to teach children. Still, some major tenets get revealed in good research and my observational work of over 20 years with children ages birth to 8+.]

My quip: "Children know better how to learn than we'll ever know how to teach them. Ever."

Here's my try:
Simply put, if as a child—especially birth (or prior) to 3 years old—you were not acculturated in, or at least exposed to, a style of music, you will not develop a "listening vocabulary" for that style and henceforth will be less able or unable to do so later in life. The more enriched an early childhood music environment is, the more potential there will be for obtaining (listening and performing) with appropriate musical vocabularies later in life. Without listening to your mother speak in utero, or hearing her and others speak your native tongue, you will be hampered in developing language skills. That is to say, if you don't hear that language, it would be near impossible to speak that language, read or write, create or improvise in that language. You would not be able to even think in that language. It'd be like me listening to Mandarin. I hear the sounds just fine. Don't understand anything.

Same for music. If you're not exposed, then you won't develop a listening vocabulary from which you can develop a performing (including movement) vocabulary. 

I think that's as simple as I can make it.

Jazz, generally being the most complex on a number of levels, is a critical component of what I expose the children in my early childhood classes. The parents need it too, though!

I play Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bichet, Roy Eldridge, Dave Brubeck (Blue Rondo and Take 5), Paul Desmond (Take 10), Mills Brothers (Tiger Rag), Nina Simone (Here Comes the Sun), Lionel Hampton (Rag Mop), Fletcher Henderson, Django Reinhardt, regularly and repeatedly for children birth to age 8, but that's only because I don't teach older children.

I, of course, play classical, gospel, blues, big band, some kids music, Harry Bellafonte, but not much rock, and one gospel song that has a rap section (Take 6 - "Harmony" off of Join the Band). I'm still looking for more repertoire from all genres that is appropriate for young ears.

Criteria for such:
Length - 2 to 3:45 minutes long (I don't like to fade out. I want children to experience the WHOLE many times.)
Groove - a must
Timbral changes at least 5-6 times if not 20 during the cut.
Strong dynamic changes, if not enough of the former. Gabrieli works here.

 

[Please contribute your favorite repetoire for children below. Thanks!]

Feel free to ask questions. Or shoot me an email back. [email protected].

Also, we've recently launched a campaign for a revolutionary music learning app. Check it out at http://igg.me/at/teachmusictokids 

Thank you!

Best,
Eric