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Did You Know? Skilled musicians have an area of the brain that is up to 25% larger than those who have never played an instrument. Scientists have found a link between the age at which a person starts learning an instrument and the size of the musical area of the brain. Research shows that repeated exposures to complex music induces improved spatial- temporal learning. Music students continue to outperform their non-arts peers on the SAT, according to the 1998 “Profiles of SAT and Achievement Test Takers”. Students in music performance scored 52 points higher on the verbal portion of the SAT and 36 points higher on the math portion than students with no arts participation. “There seems to be a high correlation between musical ability and reasoning skills. It has to do with recognizing and manipulating patterns. That happens in music and in computer programming.” – Skwarek The basic nature of people can be found in their songs, images, dances, and stories. To be illiterate in the arts is to be blind, mute, and deaf at a most fundamental level. -The study of music and art makes us disciplined and civilized. The arts demand high standards, analytical thinking, creative thinking, practice, discipline, teamwork, and follow through. – all qualities that employers say they need in workers in today society. “Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul”. – Plato “The arts are an essential element of education, just like reading, writing, and arithmetic…music, dance, painting and theater are keys that unlock profound human understanding and accomplishment”. – former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett |
How Students Benefit From Learning To Read and Play Music
Music is a Science – It is exact and specific. It demands exact acoustics. A conductor’s score is a chart, a graph that indicates frequencies, intensities, volume changes, melody and harmony all at once with the most exact control of time. Music is Mathematical – It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper. Music is a Foreign Language – Most of the terms are in Italian, German, or French and the notation is certainly not English – but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language. Music is History – Music usually reflects the environment and the times of its creation, often even the country and / or racial feeling. Music is Physical Education – It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lips, cheeks, and facial muscles in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragmatic, back, abdominal, and chest muscles which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets. Music is All These Things, but Most of All, Music is Art – It allows a human being to take all these dry, technically boring (however, difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion. That is the one thing science cannot duplicate. It allows you to be human, to recognize beauty, and to be sensitive. |