You Are the Music: How Music Reveals What it Means to be Human (5 page)

In particular, her group has found an advantage for musical children when it comes to hearing speech in noise. Hearing in noise (HIN) is an important ability in younger years as children often find themselves trying to understand and learn
words in noisy environments like classrooms or playgrounds. HIN requires a child to focus on certain characteristics of a sound, such as its pitch, timbre and rhythmic patterns, in order to isolate, lock in on and track its development in a complex soundscape.

Dana Strait, Kraus and their colleagues
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reported that a group of children (aged seven to thirteen) who were taking music lessons showed superior HIN ability compared to their non-musician classmates who were matched on IQ and basic hearing skills. Furthermore, the ability of the musical children on HIN tests was significantly related to hours of weekly practice; more music practice equals better HIN ability.

How might musical training help to boost hearing skills? According to Bharath Chandrasekaran and Kraus,
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this effect is due to the plastic (i.e. malleable) nature of the brain. The auditory system has ‘feedforward’ neurons that transmit information about sound to the brain but it also has lots of ‘feedback’ neurons that carry information backwards from the brain to the ears. The higher centres of the brain use these feedback pathways to provide guidance for the auditory system on how to focus and track sounds. This process refines our everyday perception of sound – it tunes our ears. Again I will quote Kraus: ‘What we do with what we hear changes the way our nervous system responds to sound.’
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Of course, there is always the question of whether musical training
causes
improvement to listening skills or whether these improved systems are in place to start with in children who choose to take music lessons; you will recall this issue of causality from our discussion on music and IQ. Kraus argues for an influence of musical training on listening ability rather than vice versa, based on the strong and consistent relationship between the number of years that a child has been training and their task performance.

A child’s ability to process spoken language is undoubtedly connected to the types of listening skills I have been describing. And children who take music lessons show an aboveaverage boost in related areas such as memory for sound, a skill that may contribute to the improvement of HIN.
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But there are some skills that are not so directly related to basic sound processing that also appear to receive a boost related to music lessons – namely language processing and reading.

Language and reading

Sylvain Moreno has looked into the effects of musical training on children’s development for many years and has frequently found a boost in the way that they process language. In 2006 he and Mireille Besson conducted an experiment to determine whether short-term musical training (eight weeks) would help eight-year-old children to detect pitch changes in language.
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All the children were tested beforehand on their ability to detect pitch changes in simple spoken sentences. The researchers looked at their accuracy and response times, and their brain responses. To assess brain responses they used EEG as described in the previous chapter, a contraption resembling a swimming cap covered in wires, which registers the brain’s electrical activity. In this case the researchers were interested to measure brain responses to pitch changes.

After all the initial language measures were collected, ten of the children started eight weeks of music lessons while ten began eight weeks of painting lessons. When all the children took the language test again, the researchers found no difference in their performance but they did see a difference in the brain activity of the children who had taken music lessons. Their brain responses were stronger when pitch changed compared to the children who had enjoyed the painting lessons. In this case it appears that only eight weeks of music lessons had modified the way that the brain responds to language sounds.

The authors followed up: what happens after more longterm training? How about six months? The idea was the same: divide the children into two matched groups, one that takes music lessons and one that takes painting lessons. In this case the sample was slightly larger, 32 children from two elementary schools in northern Portugal, all of whom had similar socioeconomic backgrounds.
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Before the training began the two groups showed no difference in a number of standard tests including memory and reading ability. They also showed no difference in pitch discrimination.

The musical classes included lessons about rhythm, melody, harmony and timbre.
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In the painting lessons the children were taught to distinguish and create different colours, about form and space perception, linear perspectives and the nature of different materials and textures. At the end of the year the children in the music group gave a public performance and the children in the painting group had a show of their best creations.

This time, after a longer period of lessons, the researchers found a much bigger group difference. The children who took music training now had significantly better scores on sentence discrimination (as well as pitch discrimination) and were also faster at the tests compared to the children who had taken painting lessons. The researchers replicated their earlier result with the brain EEG: musical children showed a stronger and more robust brain response to pitch changes in language.

Together these studies imply that a relatively short period of time spent on music lessons can have a positive influence on the way that a child processes words and that this effect gets stronger as a child continues their lessons.

As yet we do not know whether these effects are sustained if a child stops their lessons or if there is a continued ‘dose effect’ whereby more lessons, or lessons on more instruments,
produces a stronger result. What is clear is that music lessons appear to have a significant effect on the way that a child’s brain responds to language and that after only a few months this development will have consequences for the way they react to sound in the real world.

Another interesting result in the six-month study was an improvement in reading ability within the music group but not the painting group. This result suggests that music lessons can improve the development of the word representations in the mind that are necessary for reading.
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These language learning findings may be partly linked back to the responses of the auditory brainstem – the way that musical training tunes the ears. Dana Strait, Jane Hornickel and Nina Kraus
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reported relationships between brain responses, musical aptitude and reading ability in 42 children. The poorer readers in their study showed less robust brainstem responses to various aspects of speech sounds.

Overall, the story of transfer effects from music lessons is still one where the most convincing positive evidence relates to skills that are trained as part and parcel of the music lessons. We have looked at hearing and the musical aspects of language processing, up to more complex cognitive skills such as reading. There are a number of possible transfer effects that I have not mentioned here where the evidence is more variable, including visual, motor and spatial skills as well as concentration, emotional senstitivity, creativity and selfconfidence. An excellent review on this vast area of literature has been written by Susan Hallam.
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The take-away message when it comes to transfer effects is not to get carried away in assuming that musical lessons will boost the brain and behaviour in every sense. Having said this, there is now little doubt that musical training, being a ‘super skill’, brings rewards and benefits beyond those directly related to musical performance.

Effective musical education

We’ve established that music lessons can bring benefits during development so let’s look at the nature of music lessons themselves. I am not a professional musician but I taught music for thirteen years. I was lucky enough to teach a number of wonderful children who were keen to play the classical guitar, and who typically started lessons between the ages of five and ten. I taught boys and girls, individually and in groups, in schools and at home.

Over the years I saw some children struggle, some flourish, some fade in interest, and one – my star pupil Patrick – overtake me. One of the best days of my life was when I had to tell his father that I simply could not take his money for lessons any more, as Paddy could do everything that I could do … and more!

There are countless individual differences and situational factors that play into whether a child responds well to their music lessons or loses interest. But there are also several aspects to music education that can predict whether lessons are likely to be effective and over which parents/carers and teachers have a degree of control: here I will tell you about choice of instrument, teacher selection, degree of reward and motivation, and practice strategies.

I am not presenting myself as a music education guru here and it’s not my aim to compare or rate different musical education techniques. What I’d like to give you is the evidence regarding some of the general factors that contribute to a successful musical education that can be adopted and used by anyone.

Choosing an instrument

Let’s start at the beginning. What instrument would I recommend for a child? I have been asked this question many times, mostly by friends when their child reaches about five years
old. Studies have shown that instrument choice, and more specifically who makes that choice, can influence the success of musical education. When it comes to instrument selection a child should have a strong say, if not the complete say, in what they want to learn.
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Ask yourself, what sounds does your child enjoy hearing? What type of music gets them up and dancing? What shape/colour/feel of instrument do they get excited about? These may seem like trivial concerns but giving a child the choice over their musical instrument (or voice) has a big impact on their drive to get involved in their lessons, which in itself will have positive consequences for later development in motivation.

There is a proviso when it comes to instrument choice: a parent should try to match the demands of the instrument to the child’s development so as not to put them off by giving them too great a physical challenge at the start. This could seriously damage their motivation before it has even got going. There are many options, so for example you could try a recorder for a child who is interested in the flute but who struggles with breathing difficulties. Playing the recorder will teach them the basic fingering they need for the flute and help them work on their breathing.

Another consideration with instrument choice is size. You might go for a keyboard or a smaller brass instrument for a child who has their heart set on a grand piano or a tuba but needs time to grow a little first. When my pupil Patrick started learning guitar at the tender age of five he played the sweetest little quarter-size guitar. At the beginning of our time together he often tried to get hold of my full-size guitar but soon realised that he could make much better noises on his own as he could reach all the strings.

A music teacher will be able to give advice on the ideal starter instrument for a child and you never know, they may
end up loving it and never moving on! I still have a soft spot for the recorder and have three in the spare room that I enjoy playing now and again. Another plus point of this strategy to bear in mind is that diversity of instrument experience is associated with later musical excellence.

Choosing a teacher

So, you’ve chosen the instrument – now what about the teacher? A child’s first teacher can exert a powerful influence on future musical development but this depends much more on the match between personality and temperament in the child and teacher, in the dynamics of their relationship, than in the teacher’s level of technical ability or performance credentials.
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I was only fifteen when I began teaching; neither technically advanced nor concert-experienced. I now know however, that those things are not so important when a child is just beginning their lessons and needs to learn the basics of making sounds, reading music and/or ear-training skills. You can afford to save the expert teachers for later when specialist skills are more important in a musical role model; this is about getting started and gaining motivation momentum.

When asked about their first teacher, young expert conservatoire musicians reported that they remembered them as warm, friendly, and encouraging; in some cases the teacher was even seen as a member of the family.
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Able young performers often change teachers within two or three years and some have lots of different music teachers: their band, orchestra or choir leader, their school/theory music teacher, and eventually their instrument/voice specialist.

Successful musicians tend to report having had more teachers than those who do not achieve such a high standard.
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That first relationship is all-important, however, so a keen-eyed parent should observe a few lessons to check out
the dynamics of the relationship and ask the child how they feel about the teacher.

Are there any differences between boys and girls? Jane Davidson and colleagues carried out an interview study of 257 children to determine how they saw their teachers and how this related to their later level of musical achievement.
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The researchers found no gender differences in the ratings of first teachers – encouragement and friendly, relaxed support were important for all.

Maintaining motivation

It goes without saying that lessons must be seen as enjoyable by a child in order to maintain their interest in this extra form of education, but what might be less obvious is the level on which it should be a rewarding experience. There is an important shift that must happen within musical and indeed any form of education – that from external to internal (or intrinsic) motivation.
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