 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Liam Murphy
Date: 2011-12-05 23:50
We often hear children's superior academic performance being attributed to their musical studies.
The argument generally goes something like this:
Student plays violin --> student gets good geography marks --> studying violin improves geography marks.
That it is as a bare-faced correlation-equals-causation argument aside, I pose this reasoning is not only (1) flawed but (2) perhaps missing half the story also.
Firstly, most musicians I know chose to begin learning their instruments. Thus any observed superior academic performance could be attributed to certain children’s nurtured or innate intellectual curiosity and interest in things aesthetic and abstract.
Yet instead of this unpopular and elitist possibility, we’re told ‘musicking maketh the nerd’ not ‘the nerd maketh a good musician’.
Piers Adams, Brian May, Artie Shaw, Leonard Bernstein, Tony Pay, Tzimon Barto and others were/are very musical and academic. Many of the best musicians I know have diverse academic interests as well. Since it requires diligence and intelligence to tackle a musical instrument, cannot such nurtured/innate traits explain superior performance in academia also? Are not some students better conditioned and predisposed to musical/academic success than others are?
Secondly, why does this have to be a one-way street? Why shouldn’t studying, say, Latin improve one’s musicianship? Learning to read and compose Latin is a similarly complex task which requires comparable levels of perseverance, concentration, and raw effort. Surely many academic/musical skills spill into and enrich one another in this way.
My general position is that the more someone knows the richer her skill-set is and the better equipped she is to tackle complex tasks such as performing music.
For the record, I don’t doubt that music is an important part of a good education. I do believe studying music hones skills applicable to other studies. I also believe the entire music/academic dichotomy is a false one.
I’m interested to hear other people’s thoughts on this.
Liam
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Author: sfalexi
Date: 2011-12-06 00:59
Just by asking band members I've served with, I get the answer, "I love math" and "I hate math" at about the same rate. So I no longer believe the "musician = math" thing. Personally, I love math. There's a right answer. all the time. No subjectivity. And I'm sure it helps me in some areas of music and hurts in others.
Alexi
US Army Japan Band
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2011-12-06 01:11
Students who play musical instruments learn many skills, which must be coordinated and performed simultaneously. This requires concentrated work over a long time. It's like learning to walk or speak.
I think that this long-term persistence and integration is useful -- in fact necessary -- to high academic performance. It's also far from universal in other classes, in which students can get by with "appreciation" rather than hard work.
At least when I was in high school, the best musicians were also the best academic students, and it was more than just a bare-faced correlation.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2011-12-06 02:11
I don't want to put too harsh a damper on the elitist love fest but some of the best musicians I've come across are as dumb as stumps.
The jumping off point though was whether music can add to one's ability to learn. I think this can be true. There are all sorts of folks putting forth the idea that keeping ones mind engaged with puzzles, etc. can partly stem the tide of aging. Therefore anything that engages the mind can have a global benefit.
.................Paul Aviles
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Author: Buster
Date: 2011-12-06 03:54
Liam,
as you wrote:
Student plays violin --> student gets good geography marks --> studying violin improves geography marks.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
Unless a true first-order study is done, a concrete correlation cannot be said to exist.
And as you suggest, the opposite may also hold true.
-Jason
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2011-12-06 12:50
The part I don't get is the separation between "the arts" (including music) and academic studies in the first place. Unless somebody just sits around noodling at random without ever learning to read a score or understand anything about how an instrument (inlcuding the human voice) works, I think music *is* an academic study! -- and a fascinating one, too.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: Sylvain
Date: 2011-12-06 14:02
At the risk of sounding condescending here, neuroscience is my day job, I think this is the type of discussion that is going to go nowhere until someone presents *data*.
What one thinks or what one experiences in high school or college, is not going to answer any of these questions, which are not well posed in the first place.
This article is a good place to try to get some answers:
http://neurosciencenews.com/neuroscience-music-enchances-learning-neuroplasticity
The work of Nina Kraus is also very interesting http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/faculty/?PID=NinaKraus
My understanding is that even after removing as many cofounding factors as possible, there is still very strong evidence that musical training changes the brain in a way that is beneficial for learning in general.
--
Sylvain Bouix <sbouix@gmail.com>
Post Edited (2011-12-06 16:40)
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Author: oca
Date: 2011-12-07 08:41
Music helps with fractions in math and only fractions.
Many people falsely relate music with intelligence but in fact, it trains the ear, a main source of input in the educatuon.
I will explain further if anyone requests.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2011-12-07 10:42
oca wrote:
> I will explain further if anyone requests.
Remarkable theories require remarkable PROOF.
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Author: Sylvain
Date: 2011-12-07 14:26
Dear oca,
Maybe you can tell us why you disagree with the work of countless scientists who show strong links between musical training and auditory, visual, and motor performance.
I could list about hundreds of articles here, but who's going to read them?
--
Sylvain Bouix <sbouix@gmail.com>
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Author: oca
Date: 2011-12-07 23:27
Good points.
Here is my view.
When you learn baseball, you not only learn how to play baseball, you also learn how to learn. Let me elaborate; when you learn how to hit a ball, you are training your eyesight when detecting the ball, depth when calculating its position in the air, motor skills when swinging the bat fast, balance after the swing, endurance and cellular respiration running, and muscle coordination overall.
Mentally you learn how to listen to instructions, how to detect error, how to improve.
Thus you are hardly learning how to hit a baseball at all.
Can you see the start of my viewpoint forming?
Thus, when learning an instrument, you are not just learnin clarinet, you are learning memorization, work ethic, determination, classification, comprehension; in other words they form a healthy student mind, the mental academics.
But to address the concrete academics that music teaches, yeah, only fractions.
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Author: Buster
Date: 2011-12-07 23:51
oca,
I am not familiar with Neuro-Science, nor Neurological function, but music plays a much larger role than you give it, and your view point is quite flawed.
Sylvain's links, as someone that is quite familiar with the field as it is his job, get far closer to saying anything of concrete substance than I ever could. And as stated, he has countless others he could post.
I think you would do well not to challenge but defer to someone actually educated in the field. But in reading your "dissertation", even I can see gaping holes.
Do I have the science to back it up, no; yet in this case I don't need it.
-I recently saw a special on the recovery of Congress-Woman Gifford from her gun-shot wound. She has had to re-learn practically every aspect of daily life that we take for granted.
Part of the damage to her brain affected speech/word-recognition/vocabulary etc.... They were un-able to perform therapy in a "traditional" manner due to the damage. Yet, through music, which "lies" in a differing part of the brain, the therapists were able to access verbal function through a different door. I cannot say I know, nor understand, the exact science of it, but the neurological connections formed in the brain are quite complex. The connections formed from the region where music resides to the "verbal" center were exploited to access and begin recovery.
Can I provide the medical proof of this, no I cannot; but I need not in this case and for this discussion. Her husband documented every step of her recovery on video; it clearly shows the therapists "re-teaching" her using music as a tool.
--------
The attempt for an objective argument is admirable, but in this case quite flawed and short-sighted.
-Jason
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2011-12-07 23:59
"Music helps with fractions in math and only fractions."
"But to address the concrete academics that music teaches, yeah, only fractions."
Fractions... a core means of representing rational numbers, used in all fields of mathematics... algebra, geometry, trig, calculus, probability, linear algebra, etc.
Yeah, I guess if music only helps with fractions, it can't possibly carry over to anything important.
There are lots of instances in music that give opportunities to use math. It's not as much a matter as "you learn math because music teaches you math" as "you improve at math because music allows you to apply it."
It also depends on how far you take the music theory. Get deeper into intonation, and relationships like 3/2, 5/4, 7/4, 9/8 become quite important, and 127/128 is a thing of interest. What's a 7/2 followed by a 4/5? And what does that all read in cents on a tuner?
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Liam Murphy
Date: 2011-12-08 00:53
I think all these ideas are interesting.
@Lelia
I too have issues with the arts/academic division.
If we agree that Latin is an “academic” study, some parallels seem to exist between it and “music” studies.
Noun/verb morphology --> scales/technique
Virgil/Ovid --> Mozart/Beethoven
Prose composition --> music composition
Translation --> sight reading
Oratory --> performance
Repertoire --> literature
My second proposition (that "academic" studies could influence "music" studies) is the one I'm more interested in.
I was interested in maths long before I began clarinet and my approach to music has been influenced by other "academic" studies since.
@Buster and georgec
Every time I eat peanuts I suffer anaphylaxis. Therefore peanuts cause my anaphylaxis.
This too is a 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' argument but a pretty strong one I'm sure you'll agree!
@oca
I like your philosophical view; it almost recalls David Hume.
Is playing music a unique skill or a "bundle" of generic skills?
Liam
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Author: Sylvain
Date: 2011-12-08 03:55
Since we are splitting hairs:
occa said
"When you learn baseball, you not only learn how to play baseball, you also learn how to learn."
I agree with you, but I would argue that when you learn baseball, you modify your brain in a way that is at least partially different from when you learn music.
I would further argue that the part that is unique to music is not restricted to fractions and ear training.
@Buster check out http://www.musicianbrain.com in particular the work of Gottfried Schlaug on speech recovery after strokes through music therapy.
Finally to come back to Liam's original question "that "academic" studies could influence "music" studies". It is difficult to argue that someone who has a set of good tools to learn in general will not do well at learning music, although there are famous exceptions (do you know that Hilary Clinton is tone deaf?).
Yet I cannot stop myself from splitting yet more hairs by proposing that the already good learners will still benefit from their musical training in other disciplines.
--
Sylvain Bouix <sbouix@gmail.com>
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Author: rgames
Date: 2011-12-08 03:55
I think it's all about pattern recognition and abstraction. Music helps improve your skills in those regards and they carry over to lots of other endeavors.
For example, when a musician looks at a score and see a C-E-G structure followed by a C-Eb-G structure, he recognizes the major to minor shift and can hear it in his head. The abstraction of the notes on the page becomes something real in his head as a result of familiarity with a pattern.
Likewise, when an engineer sees a second-order differential equation and the sign on the first derivative changes, he knows it goes from energy subtraction to energy addition (or vice versa). His mind fills up with images of spring-mass-damper systems and how they respond to that change. Again, the abstraction on the page becomes real in his head because of familiarity with a pattern.
Creativity, then, is the act of synthesizing those abstractions and patterns, possibly with others previously unrecognized, to create something new.
Same thing.
Different applications.
rgames
____________________________
Richard G. Ames
Composer - Arranger - Producer
www.rgamesmusic.com
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Author: Buster
Date: 2011-12-08 04:28
Sylvain,
Thanks for the link. There are many pdf files there for me to weed through.
It was extremely fascinating to have a small glimpse of the way music can be used as a "secondary access" point, for lack of the proper vocabulary. I do wish I understood it more thoroughly, but it does fall far outside my realm of knowledge; however I do now have some sources to glean!
For all of us, at the very least, it does clearly demonstrate that the resultant effects of music span a much larger realm than most of us can fathom. Thankfully, no acceptance of "spooky action at a distance" nor mystical leaps of faith are asked of us to witness this.
...And more importantly for me, a story of a woman's long road to recovery (that perhaps left my stoic exterior a bit teary-eyed), put my "troubles" in perspective.
-Jason
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Author: Simon Aldrich
Date: 2011-12-11 15:57
The article in the following link is tangentially related to this thread.
"Mozart has been credited with everything from increasing the intelligence of unborn babies to boosting the milk yield of cows. Now the head of a German sewage plant has introduced piped Mozartian music to stimulate the activity of microbes that break down waste."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/02/sewage-mozart-germany
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