Music is the Key
Also, recent research from the University of Munster in Germany suggests that regular piano practice as a child actually alters the anatomy of the brain. An area of the brain that encodes the sounds made by a piano is found to be 25% larger in skilled musicians than in those who have no musical training.
In the educational communities, extraordinary strides are being made in securing the future of music in our schools. Integrated curricula seems to be the watchword with two excellent examples of this occurring in Los Angeles and Ft. Lauderdale.
In Los Angeles, the LA Unified School District is demonstrating how important they believe music is to the overall development of the child by requiring that music be integrated into other fixed curricula such as physics, physical education, and math. The District will also be testing for music competency and understanding at the 4th, 8th and 10th grade levels just as they test for reading and math. Don Dustin, director of performing and visual arts, who spearheaded the effort, takes the argument one step further. He states, "Music is the window to other cultures of the world. Music teaches diversity and teaches cooperation. In essence, music helps to train tomorrow's workforce."
In Florida, both public and private schools are implementing integrated music-math programs. Iain Ferguson, executive vice president of the Plantation Institute, started a course last year built around a performance of the Florida Philharmonic. Students who had never read a note of music were able to compose sonatas and study complex Beethoven scores by looking for recurring math-like patterns. According to Ferguson, students who are actually tone deaf are producing remarkable pieces of music. Lennie Bloom, the music teacher at another Florida school, The Cambridge Academy, says that music seems to sensitize young children to pattern, space, and time sequencing.
This does not come as a surprise to some educators because research has shown for years that music training, and specifically keyboard training, improves spatial reasoning which is directly linked to math and science proficiency.
"We believe that 1999 will be the year that people really start talking about the concept called Brain Fitness," says Ron Raup of the American Music Conference. "Brain Fitness is the new frontier in the overall health picture. We've focused on our diets and the physical fitness of our bodies but new research techniques are enabling us to make great leaps of understanding about how our brain functions. In a sense, music is the ultimate organic 'food,' or medicine, for the brain."
"Though the evidence suggests that simply listening to music has a positive
effect," adds Reuter, "the broader body of research indicates that playing
musical instruments offers a greater range of positive effects - in short,
they provide the optimum exercise for the brain."
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©1999 Yamaha Corporation of America
- Keyboard Division -
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"Brain
Fitness is
the new
frontier in
the overall
health
picture."