Ted Talk - lesson by Anita Collins, spoken by Alex Gendler
5 Magical Things That Would Happen If Every Student Studied a Musical Instrument in School
March 31, 2015 In the next few weeks, schools all across our nation will have assemblies for their young students in order to introduce band and orchestra instruments available for them to study. Music shops will be coordinating visits, demos, and instrument “petting zoos”.... Read More 20 Important Benefits of Music In Our Schools
July 21, 2014 Nearly everyone enjoys music, whether by listening to it, singing, or playing an instrument. But despite this almost universal interest, many schools are having to do away with their music education programs. This is a mistake, with schools losing not only an enjoyable subject, but a subject that can enrich students’ lives and education... Read More Composing Code: Why Musicians Make Great Software Developers
Anthony Hughes, Contributor Co-founder and CEO of Tech Elevator Excerpt from the article: As it turns out, musicality seems to be a powerful predictor of coding success. “The greatest scientists are artists as well,” the genius Albert Einstein once said, but why are musicians uniquely suited to be software developers? First, thanks to their performance background, attention to detail, and innate need to perfect their parts, musicians tend to be analytical, logical and methodical—skills that the best coders also possess. “There seems to be a high correlation between musical ability and reasoning skills,” Terry Skwarek, the director of SharePoint administration at DePaul University, once told CNN. “It has to do with recognizing and manipulating patterns. That happens in music and in programming.” Tech Elevator student Drew Sullivan—who has performed with the world-class Cleveland Orchestra and was only the second doctoral-level clarinetist student ever at the renowned Cleveland Institute of Music—agrees that analytical-minded musicians are well-suited to coding. “Musicians enjoy the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of music,” he says. “Musicians can learn, as I am, to ask the computer the same types of analytical questions we’ve been asking ourselves of the music for years.” |
FAQ's
Is Band hard? - No! We teach every student! Music is picked based on the students ability level and the directors help the students to learn. Do I already have know how to read music? - NO!!! We teach everyone from the beginning. 90% of student come in not knowing how to reach music or having previously played an instrument. Does band take up all my time? - NO! Band is a class that meets during the school day. Can I take athletics or advanced classes and be in band? -YES! Our students are involved in sports, advanced classes, academic UIL and so much more. We work with the students to help make sure they can participate in any activity they would like. Does school come first? -YES! Good grades is a priority for us and our students. Our students are college bound and we do everything we can to help them on their journey. Everyone Can Gain From Music Making
By Julia Calderon, 2015 March/April Issue of Scientific American MIND Magazine The perks of learning to play an instrument last for decades. Think back to your elementary school music class. You absorbed commands from a baton-wielding conductor while deciphering inky notes on a page. You kept tempo with the rest of the band while your contorted fingers sped from key to key. There is no doubt about that musical training is a challenge for the brain. And in the past decade an abundance of studies have found that this effort confers cognitive benefits on all who study music, from toddlers to retirees. Researchers became interested in the effects of music on the brain when a provocative study in the early 1990s claimed that simply listening to a Mozart sonata could make you brainier - so dubbed the "Mozart effect." The finding was never confirmed. Various studies followed that showed listening to music has transient effects on cognitive functions such as spatial ability, speed of processing and creative problem solving - but such effects last only about 10 minutes once the music is switched off. Experts continue to debate whether frequently engaging with music has longer-term effects on cognition. In recent years new techniques to measure the brain's response to auditory cues in real time have given researchers valuable data to address the issue. "We can see how these ingredients of sound are processed by the brain," says Nina Kraus, an auditory neuroscientist at the Northwestern University School of Communication. Today some evidence suggests that musical tranining may enhance a suite of cognitive functions, including listening, linguistics, focus and memory, along with spatical, motor and mathematical skills. Better Reading through Music? Young children are ripe subjects for research in this field because their brains are primed to develop language skills, which music seems to enhance. Many studies suggest that children who are musically trained have stronger cognitive abilities, including better vocabulary, reading skills, and sound perception. Yet these studies leave unanswered the important question of correlation: Are musicians better at certain tasks because of musical practice alone? Or are they drawn to music because they have these skills already or because they come from advantaged backgrounds? Kraus and her colleagues have conducted a number of studies to tackle this question. In one experiment published last September, they gather 44 children aged six to nine from disadvantaged schools in Los Angeles and asked them to participate in musical instruction two hours a week. One group practiced for one year; the other practiced for two. After administering a battery of neuro-physiological tests that recorded their brain activity, Kraus's team found that those who participated in the music program for two years, independent of their age, were markedly better at processing speech syllables - such as differentiating between the sounds (ba) and (ga) - than those who had only one year of training. As Kraus explains, a key element of literacy is the ability to discern meaningful differences between speech sounds - so studying music, which shares characteristics with speech such as pitch, timing and timbre, may help kids read better. The authors say the study provides the first direct evidence that a community music program for at-risk youth has a biological effect on the children's developing nervous systems. Other experts urge caution when interpreting these results. "We already know that music training make you a better listener," says psychologist Glenn Schellenberg, who researches music's effect on cognition at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Until researchers have behavioral evidence that kids who get music training become superior at reading or perceiving speech, he explains, the question of whether music can influence language development remains open. Empathetic Multitaskers As a musician grows up, other cognitive benefits appear, among them a better ability to multitask, according to a 2014 study by psychologist Melody Wiseheart and her colleagues at York Univeristy in Toronto. The team recruited 153 university students aged 18-31, about half of whom were musicians with about 12 years of formal music training; the others were non-musicians. The students performed multitasking exercises, such as switching between identifying how many numbers were on a screen and indicating which particular number was on the screen or tracking a moving white dot with their mouse while monitoring a flashing set of letters. "We found that musicians were doing a lot better," Wiseheart says; they were about 30 percent more accurate than the nonmusicians when performing two tasks at once. She says that musicianship appears to enhance working memory, which underlies the ability to multitask and can boost skills both in and out of the classroom - when holding numbers in mind to compute an equation, for instance, or avoiding distractions while driving. Playing in a band or singing in a choir provides another type of benefit important for this age group. Studies show that making music in a group improves communication, coordination, cooperation, and empathy among group members. Many of these advantages of musicianship may be felt for decades, be some may not. For example, child musicians appear to have better spatial reasoning than their nonmusician peers, but adult musicians do not. Preventing Age-Related Decline Many areas in which child and young adult musicians outperform their non-musician peers - such as processing speed, memory and attention - also happen to correlate with areas of cognitive decline in old age. A small but growing body of evidence suggests that lifelong musical practice makes our brains healthier as we age - especially in combating hearing loss, which affects an estimated two thirds of adults older than 70 in the U.S. A series of studies by neuroscientist Alexandra Parbery-Clark of the Swedish medical center in Seattle and her colleagues found that musicians aged 45 to 65 appear to lack four of the five hallmark declines of speech processing in old age - they maintained consistent and speedy brain responses to speech, for example, and the ability to understand speech in noisy settings. In addition, studies suggest that older adult musicians tend to have stronger memory, more focused attention and faster brain processing. Although such effects are most evident in adults have practiced their instrument at least twice a week for 20 minutess a session since childhood, researchers think that such benefits may also exist for less enthusiastic hobbyists. The act of making music appears to be key because it requires the integration of various senses, motor coordination and concentration in a way that even very attentive listening does not. What this means is that learning to play a musical instrument is very good for you. And when that practice begins early in life, its positive effects can stretch into old age. "Biologically, our past shapes our present," Kraus says. Both she and Wiseheart hope educators and policy makers will take note of this research and keep music in classrooms. As Kraus says, "We want to improve human communication by harnessing the brain's ability to change." _____ Julia Calderone is a freelance science writer and former "Mind" intern. |