Help me describe why music education is important please

[Michaelangelica]

Studies are under way to determine if music can cure or help emotional problems and people with brain injuries or Alzheimer’s.

The effects of sounds on other aspects of nature have also been known for centuries. In southern India, farmers believe the gentle sounds of humming and buzzing insects guarantee healthy sprouting of the sugarcane. Carefully conducted experiments have proved that plants grow faster when music, especially tunes in the low frequency range of 100 to 600 hertz, are piped over the fields or into greenhouses. Farm animals and pets have been known to respond to music.

The Sounds of Music: Music Can Have Remarkable Benefits for your Health, or it Can be Destruct | RaisingSunflowers.com

Autism Movement Therapy: alternative approach to improve attentive behavior and language skills
Autism Movement Therapy: alternative approach to improve attentive behavior and language skills

Five Reasons Why Your Child Should Take Music Lessons
1. Significant difference between a musician’s brain and a non-musician’s:
2. More developed Motor Skills and Brain Connections
3. Longer Attention Span and Better Self Control
4. More Developed Geometric Abilities
5. Better Overall Performance at School
6. Strengthens the “Mozart Effect” in Children
details at
Five Reasons Why Your Child Should Take Music Lessons

[Michaelangelica]

Music program at nursing home 'wakes up the brain' across generations
BLOOMINGTON -- A pilot program at a Bloomington nursing home is trying to build connections in the brain and among generations one note as a time.

"The combination of music and babies stimulates the seniors like nothing I've ever seen," said Katie Henderson, who runs the program.

"It's very good," said Mary Lou Swailes, a resident of Heritage Manor in Bloomington. "Music is good for all ages."

Called Kindermusik Village with Seniors, the weekly program brought infants and their moms or dads to Heritage for 45 minutes of waving, smiling, clapping, stomping and sometimes even singing with residents.
. . .
The pilot was offered by Music Connections Foundation Inc., which offers early childhood music and movement programs to children through age 7 by using Kindermusik, said Henderson, Music Connection's founder and director. Kindermusik is an international curriculum that uses music to enhance the development of young children.

For example, using fine motor skills by grasping and shaking rattles, bells, egg shakers and other simple musical instruments helps to develop fine motor skills, said Henderson, who has done Kindermusik programs in Central Illinois since 1994.

Learning to keep a steady beat provides the foundation for future music and may help with balance, coordination and self-confidence, she said.

Music Connections wanted to reach older adults, figuring the music and movement would have the same advantages for them as for young children.

"I think it wakes up the brain," Henderson said of the program. "Music provides the stimulation and once you have the stimulation, you're more likely to move your limbs."

Moving your limbs gets blood circulating to all parts of your body - including your brain.

Henderson has a personal reason for developing the program.

"My grandmother (Ethna Hudson) gave me music as a child," Henderson recalled. "She sang to me, she paid for my piano lessons, she would sit with me as I played and she sang the songs of her ancestors. I saw how important those songs were to her in a nursing home and how I could connect with her through song.

"This (program) is a way for me to give back."
. . .
Benefits
Ashley Wall, activity director at Heritage Manor in Bloomington and a certified therapeutic recreational specialist, believes the pilot program, Kindermusik Village with Seniors, has resulted in several benefits to the seniors who participated:

Memory stimulation
Listening to and singing old songs and playing with infants brings back memories of happy times.

Physical activity
Seniors who clapped their hands, stomped their feet or moved around were getting some exercise and circulating blood to all parts of the body, including the brain.

Social connection
Some nursing home residents tend to isolate themselves. Participating in the class resulted in social interaction with fellow residents, the children and their parents.
"It helps the seniors to feel more connected to the community," she said.

Improved mood
Feeling connected with other people improves seniors' spirits.

"It means a lot when people want to hang out with them" - especially young people, Wall said.
"They love when young people come in, especially infants. It makes them happy. I think it's their energy. The babies generally are smiling and giggling."

Improved health
"When you're happier, you're going to be healthier."

Music program at nursing home 'wakes up the brain' across generations

Singing does more than soothe the souls of Parkinson's patients
by Abby Wuellner, KY3 News
"It just organizes the brain and, with Parkinson's, everything is just out of whack. Rhythm puts everything in place, kind of like when you have your iPod and start walking to the beat without thinking about it,” said Losson.

She sees proof in the singers.

"I've seen some people make that instantaneous progress where they prove they can literally double their speaking volume or improve their intelligibility by 100 percent just like that!” the therapist said.

Singing does more than soothe the souls of Parkinson's patients | KY3 | Local News

How noise and nervous system get in way of reading skills
In a typical neural system there is a clear distinction in how "ba," "da" and "ga" are represented. The information is more accurately transcribed in good readers and children who are good at extracting speech presented in background noise.

"So if a poor reader is having difficulty making sound-to-meaning associations with the 'ba,' 'da' and 'ga' speech sounds, it will show up in the objective measure we used in our study," Kraus said.

Reflecting the interaction of cognitive and sensory processes, the brainstem response is not voluntary.

"The brainstem response is just what the brain does based on our auditory experience throughout our lives, but especially during development," Kraus said. "The way the brain responds to sound will reflect what language you speak, whether you've had musical experience and how you have used sounds."

The Auditory Neuroscience Lab has been a frontrunner in research that has helped establish the relationship between sound encoding in the brainstem, and how this process is affected by an individual's experience throughout the lifespan. In related research with significant implications, recent studies from the Kraus lab show that the process of hearing speech in noise is enhanced in musicians.

"The very transcription processes that are deficient in poor readers are enhanced in people with musical experience," Kraus said. "It makes sense for training programs for poor readers to involve music as well as speech sounds."

How noise and nervous system get in way of reading skills

What do people think of this crowd?
Advanced Brain Technologies

Thanks Tormond for this
http://hypography.com/forums/science...ndow-into.html

[Michaelangelica]

Listening To Music Can Change The Way You Judge Facial Emotions

ScienceDaily (May 7, 2009) — It is often said that music is the language of emotions. Simply, we are moved by music. But can these musically induced emotions arising through the auditory sense influence our interpretation of emotions arising through other senses (eg visual)?

Listening To Music Can Change The Way You Judge Facial Emotions
An this is not obvious because. . .?

Music Reduces Stress In Heart Disease Patients

ScienceDaily (Apr. 16, 2009) — Listening to music may benefit patients who suffer severe stress and anxiety associated with having and undergoing treatment for coronary heart disease. A Cochrane Systematic Review found that listening to music could decrease blood pressure, heart rate, and levels of anxiety in heart patients
. . .
The researchers reviewed data from 23 studies, which together included 1,461 patients. Two studies focused on patients treated by trained music therapists, but most did not, using instead interventions where patients listened to pre-recorded music on CDs offered by healthcare professionals.

Music Reduces Stress In Heart Disease Patients

Some Vocal-mimicking Animals, Particularly Parrots, Can Move To A Musical Beat

ScienceDaily (May 1, 2009) — Researchers at Harvard University have found that humans aren’t the only ones who can groove to a beat — some other species can dance, too. The capability was previously believed to be specific to humans. The research team found that only species that can mimic sound seem to be able to keep a beat, implying an evolutionary link between the two capacities.

Some Vocal-mimicking Animals, Particularly Parrots, Can Move To A Musical Beat

Brain Music: Putting The Brain's Soundtracks To Work

ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2009) — Every brain has a soundtrack. Its tempo and tone will vary, depending on mood, frame of mind, and other features of the brain itself. When that soundtrack is recorded and played back -- to an emergency responder, or a firefighter -- it may sharpen their reflexes during a crisis, and calm their nerves afterward.
Over the past decade, the influence of music on cognitive development, learning, and emotional well-being has emerged as a hot field of scientific study. To explore music's potential relevance to emergency response, the Dept of Homeland Security's Science & Technology Directorate (S&T) has begun a study into a form of neurotraining called "Brain Music" that uses music created in advance from listeners' own brain waves to help them deal with common ailments like insomnia, fatigue, and headaches stemming from stressful environments. The concept of Brain Music is to use the frequency, amplitude, and duration of musical sounds to move the brain from an anxious state to a more relaxed state.. . .

Brain Music: Putting The Brain's Soundtracks To Work
Homeland Security!!!
What next??

Baroque Classical Music In The Reading Room May Improve Mood And Productivity

ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2009) — Baroque classical music in the reading room can help improve radiologists work lives, potentially improving diagnostic efficiency and accuracy, according to a study performed by researchers at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, MD, Harbor Hospital in Baltimore, MD, and the University of Pennsylvania Health System in Philadelphia, PA.
Eight radiologists participated in the study and rated their mood, concentration, perceived diagnostic accuracy, productivity and work satisfaction on a seven point scale. “The greatest positive effects were noted with regard to mood and work satisfaction, with 63% and 50% of respondents reporting a positive impact,” said Sohaib Mohiuddin, MD, and Paras Lakhani, MD, lead authors of the study. “No participants indicated a negative effect on mood, perceived diagnostic accuracy, productivity or work satisfaction. Only one participant (12.5%) indicated a negative effect of music on concentration,” they said.

Baroque Classical Music In The Reading Room May Improve Mood And Productivity
How can they say anything meaningful after such a small sample of such a select group?

[Michaelangelica]

The sounds of learning
UCLA receives grant to study the impact of music on children with autism
By
Mark Wheeler
| 7/20/2009 9:05:00 AM
In June 2009, newspapers reported that archaeologists in Germany had discovered a 35,000-year-old flute made of bird bone. It represented, one paper said, "the earliest known flowering of music-making in Stone Age culture." And we have been tapping our toes, humming along, singing and dancing ever since.

The power of music affects all of us and has long appealed to our emotions. It is for this reason that UCLA researchers are using music to help children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), for whom understanding emotions is a very difficult task. This inability robs them of the chance to communicate effectively and make friends and can often lead to social isolation and loneliness.

. . .

. . .

Specifically, the children are using a method of music education known as the Orff-Schulwerk approach. Developed by 20th-century German composer Carl Orff ("schulwerk" is German for schooling), it is a unique approach to music learning that is supported by movement and based on things that kids intuitively like to do, such as sing, chant rhymes, clap, dance and keep a beat or play a rhythm on anything near at hand.
Orff called this music and movement activity "elemental" — basic, unsophisticated and concerned with the fundamental building blocks of music.

The 12-week program uses elements from the Orff method — including games, instruments and teamwork — and combines them with musical games. The idea is to pair emotional musical excerpts with matching displays of social emotion (happy with happy, sad with sad, etc.) in a social, interactive setting.
. . .

In fact, he said, participating in musical activities has the potential to scaffold and enhance all other learning and development, from timing and language to social skills.

. . .

The goal of the research is to evaluate the effect of the music education program on outcomes in social communication and emotional functioning, as well as the children's musical development, according to Molnar-Szakacs.

"Hopefully this will be a fun, engaging and cost-effective therapeutic intervention to help children with ASD recognize and understand emotions in daily life interactions," he said. "An improved ability to recognize social emotions will allow these children to form more meaningful social relationships and hopefully greatly improve their quality of life."

. . .


The NAMM Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing active participation in music-making across the lifespan by supporting scientific research, philanthropic giving and public service programs from the international music products industry.

. . .

The UCLA Tennenbaum Center for the Biology of Creativity has as its mission the study of the molecular, cellular, systems and cognitive mechanisms that result in cognitive enhancements and explain unusual levels of performance in gifted individuals, including extraordinary creativity.
It is part of the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, an interdisciplinary research and education institute devoted to the understanding of complex human behavior, including the genetic, biological, behavioral and sociocultural underpinnings of normal behavior, and the causes and consequences of neuropsychiatric disorders.

The sounds of learning / UCLA Newsroom

[enorbet2]

Have you seen the scan results showing that more parts of the brain are simoultaneously active when one is playing an instrument while singing than in any other activity including flying a supersonic jet?

[lemit]

Michaelangelica,

Although there haven't been that many responses, have you seen the number of views? That alone might be a reason to preserve music, just that so many people show an interest in keeping it in schools, even if they don't know how to put that interest into words.

From third grade, I was in music until my junior year of high school. I decided to try theatre my senior year. Both disciplines, and the people I met in them, were wonderful for me. They were among the most interesting, funny, joyful people I've ever met. I've never found people like them to replace them. I miss just hanging around musical people. I hope Australian school kids are never deprived of those associations, those friendships. I hope no school kids anywhere are ever deprived of those associations, those friendships.

--lemit

p.s. I have to correct myself. Journalists were also great fun to be around. Hypographers are beginning to seem like they might be too.

[Michaelangelica]

Originally Posted by lemit

Michaelangelica,

Although there haven't been that many responses, have you seen the number of views? That alone might be a reason to preserve music, just that so many people show an interest in keeping it in schools, even if they don't know how to put that interest into words.

From third grade, I was in music until my junior year of high school. I decided to try theatre my senior year. Both disciplines, and the people I met in them, were wonderful for me. They were among the most interesting, funny, joyful people I've ever met. I've never found people like them to replace them. I miss just hanging around musical people. I hope Australian school kids are never deprived of those associations, those friendships. I hope no school kids anywhere are ever deprived of those associations, those friendships.

--lemit

p.s. I have to correct myself. Journalists were also great fun to be around. Hypographers are beginnig to seem like they might be too.

Thanks lemit, that is a lovely post.
To "come clean" and "bare my soul" .--
I have musical women in my family yet I missed out on musical education despite my father and grandfather playing the piano and other instruments. I have always felt the loss. I'm really not much into music; I rarely listen to it. ( My favorite sound, now rarely heard, is my wife playing piano late at night). However one daughter is likely to have a shot at a professional career in music. She now has three degrees in music, including post graduate work in London. She is now trained by names you would know well. (At $160 an hour- as much as a psychologist!-This she raises by herself)
I have watched these kids and what they have been through, the work they have done to get to the position they have now. The number of forms my wife has helped her fill in. The amount of support and money she has needed to raise from the community.

Strangely, one daughter has chosen journalism, (if anyone asks, I tell them she is a used-car saleswomen! ) and now rarely plays the two instruments I spent a fortune on educating her in. She does have an amazing "ear" for language and can mimic accents so easily. I find it hard to understand why someone who has the skills to play, doesn't. They mumble about being "not good enough"; for a non-musical trained person, I find this incomprehensible and sad.

This wasn't meant to be a life history, so to cut to the chase, I was once asked if i was proud of my kids. "Proud? Why should I be proud? It has nothing to do with me. They did what they did, they are the ones that should feel proud. I am just relived and eternally grateful that they are not drug addicts." My wife overheard me (who now tells me not to mention her on the net!) and said "Drug addicts! They were too busy with their music to become drug addicts!"
My background is in psychiatric nursing, welfare, staff development and training, sociology, technical education, business and psychology. So I started to think that something needs to be done to get more kids some music training. It is very poorly resourced in my area, especially classical. When I was rich I could afford $30-60 an hour for music lessons, $1,500-$6,000+ for professional like instruments, $50 for a few pages of sheet music, music camps, traveling etc etc. Now I am poor, and it seems to me that many, like me, would not be in any position to pay for a musical education.
I have had the concept of a self-funding Music Education Trust Fund for some years.
Recently a charitable community development organisation asked for people who could provide music education for toddlers. I went along to that meeting and found that the government had provided $2M for community development in one 'poor' area. The parents, when asked what they wanted for their kids, had said "Music!". Much to everyone's surprise!
Now, in two weeks, I have my first public meeting to launch "my" Music Education Trust Fund, Future Fund (First job, will be a better name! ). I am as nervous as hell, unusual for me.
Local politicians have been very supportive, but music education is like motherhood--hard to oppose. When I ask for money they become quiet. Other local activists in music I have talked to, are burnt out and bitter. They don't want to know; having banged their heads against bureaucratic brick walls for years. Professional musicians are too busy earning a living, teaching, playing, rehearsing and fighting each other. Sport is incredibly well funded (over-funded?) in Australia, and gets all sorts of exceptional tax breaks ( football Clubs are allowed poker machines; say no more?). Recently, we have had a spate of aggression, corruption, abuse, drugs and bastardy from the football field (It just, "Isn't cricket"!). This unacceptable "role model" behaviour has alienated many especially women--the ones who take their kids to football games and training. so hopefully music may get something from that reaction.
Established music groups are terrified that I might take away or compete with them for what little funding is available.

I am using this thread to help me make my case. It has been extremely helpful. Music Advocacy groups in the US have been very generous and supportive with ideas, supportive emails and websites.

Now I guess I am using the thread to store the best articles my "Google Alerts" come up with.
Now, also, I guess, to calm my nerves.
What if you gave a party and no-one came????

Already I have had my first request for help (Hold on, we don't have a bank account yet--let alone money!!). A local social worker has a young government ward in foster-care. The high point of his week is a 30 min guitar lesson. This was being funded by the "Department of Youth and Community Services". Now they say they don't have the money ($20 PW). The kid's social worker is appalled, as she feels that the music is really helping the kid heal a few scars. She also shockingly said, in a thow away comment, "His music teacher is the first decent male role model this kid has had". Those words go into your brain and becomes an explosive little time -bomb of meaning and horror.

Well I hope you are still reading? That is why; this thread- Thank you everyone for helping get me this far!

[Michaelangelica]

What would happen if they were "too busy with their music"?

'broken windows' theory

The thinking is along the lines of the "broken windows" theory, introduced in 1982 by political scientist James Q. Wilson and criminologist George L. Kelling.

The theory - widely debated - basically says bigger crimes can be prevented by focusing on hot spots and the people doing the smaller crimes, such as graffiti and breaking windows.

The concept is that such behavior leads to disorder and breeds more bad behavior and deterioration of affected neighborhoods.

New York City officials credited the "broken windows" approach to helping them slash violent crime there in the 1990s, although critics also point to other factors.

In Tampa, officials started by simplifying their mission statement and emphasizing it to every officer: "The Mission of the Tampa Police Department is to Reduce Crime and Improve the Quality of Life Through a Cooperative Partnership with the Community."

Officials also backed the mission and their "focus on four" crime approach with changes in procedures.

They decentralized the department so that three geographical divisions had their own tacticians and other resources without having to compete with each other to obtain them from headquarters, Castor said.

Reducing crime: Tampa's success | Jacksonville.com

The Mozart effect
J S Jenkins MD FRCP
J R Soc Med 2001;94:170-172
© 2001 Royal Society of Medicine

40 Hampstead Way, London NW11 7JL, UK In 1993 Rauscher et al.1 made the surprising claim that, after listening to Mozart's sonata for two pianos (K448) for 10 minutes, normal subjects showed significantly better spatial reasoning skills than after periods of listening to relaxation instructions designed to lower blood pressure or silence.
The mean spatial IQ scores were 8 and 9 points higher after listening to the music than in the other two conditions. The enhancing effect did not extend beyond 10-15 minutes.
These results proved controversial. Some investigators were unable to reproduce the findings2,3,4 but others confirmed that listening to Mozart's sonata K448 produced a small increase in spatial-temporal performance, as measured by various tests derived from the Stanford—Binet scale such as paper-cutting and folding procedures5,6,7 or pencil-and-paper maze tasks8.
However, Rauscher has stressed that the Mozart effect is limited to spatial temporal reasoning and that there is no enhancement of general intelligence; some of the negative results, she thinks, may have been due to inappropriate test procedures9.
INTRODUCTION
Go to next sectionLOCALIZATION OF MUSIC PERCEPTION...
Go to next sectionLONG-TERM EFFECTS OF MUSIC...
Go to next sectionMUSIC AND THE...
Go to next sectionMOZART EFFECT ON EPILEPSY
Go to next sectionSPECIFICITY OF MOZART'S MUSIC
Go to next sectionCONCLUSION
Go to next sectionREFERENCES

The Mozart effect -- Jenkins 94 (4): 170 -- JRSM

[lemit]

Your story would work here. (Even losing funding to football wouldn't need translation.) I wish you all the luck in the world.

You make me wonder what my city is like now. When we moved here, it was a small town known as the birthplace of the "Stars Of Tomorrow" competition and one of the smallest towns in the world to have a symphony orchestra. It has now grown tenfold. I have no idea what the musical community is like now. A few years ago, there were an unusually large number of pipe organs here, but I haven't heard any superlatives recently.

I'm not really musical either. My most prominent performances were as a page turner for a friend who accompanied seemingly everybody. Now, I don't listen to music either. But I think there is something about the pattern recognition that follows you through life if you are exposed to music, something that allows you to organize your thoughts (as the autistic people in the PBS video do).

I think that like art, it has value beyond language's ability to describe or even comprehend, something that completes us as human beings.

Good luck.

--lemit

[Michaelangelica]

Music Education and Mentoring as Intervention for At-Risk Urban Adolescents: Their Self-Perceptions, Opinions, and Attitudes
Christina Shields
Millikin University

This study describes the role and importance of music education as intervention for at-risk urban adolescents through participation in performance groups while receiving mentoring.
Students' self-perceptions over six domains, including musical competency, were measured by scales administered pretest and posttest. Opinions and attitudes of students were gathered in structured interviews and coded for themes. Results showed a significant increase in the students' self-perception of musical competence. A change from a moderate positive relationship to a low positive relationship between perceived musical competency and global self-worth indicated that musical participation in students' lives was domain-specific, related to global self-worth, but not synonymous with it.
Students ranking music as important in their lives increased from 76% to 82% over the course of the study. Interviews resulting in 101 themes provided evidence of the importance and role of music, music education, and the music teacher as mentor in the students' lives.

Journal of Research in Music Education, Vol. 49, No. 3, 273-286 (2001)
DOI: 10.2307/3345712

Music Education and Mentoring as Intervention for At-Risk Urban Adolescents: Their Self-Perceptions, Opinions, and Attitudes -- Shields 49 (3): 273 -- Journal of Research in Music Education

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