It was written by Tina Broad who is a consultant in arts education and strategy, working on the APRA AMCOS SongMakers Project, and previously ran Music: Play for Life, the Music Council of Australia’s national campaign to get more Australians making music in schools, communities, everywhere. This article was first published to accompany the album Music to Study By, released by ABC Classics in 2012.
"Mankind and music are inextricably linked."
"Plato said music "gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything." It is no wonder, then, that many of the giant intellects through the ages have had music as a lifelong companion.
Thomas Jefferson apparently picked up his violin to clear writer’s block when drafting the Declaration of Independence. Do we have Einstein’s relationship with music to thank for e=mc2? He, too, was a keen violinist, who said he got most joy in life from music. There are even reports that a high number of today’s top Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are musicians.
Perhaps it is Beethoven who best leads us into the music-as-study-aid terrain. He said, "Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents." He was onto something. Fast forward a few centuries and there have been quantum leaps in our understanding of the many ways in which music helps our brains.
While 21st-century science tells us that the most profound and long-lasting benefits to our brain come when we make music, listening – and the choices we make about what we listen to – can have positive effects, too. The evidence about the effect of music listening on learning got off to a shaky start with the much quoted, but misrepresented, Mozart Effect. Conducted two decades ago, the research looked at three different listening states – silence, relaxation music and a Mozart sonata – and compared the effects of each on one aspect of listeners’ IQ tests. Granted, there were positive changes with the Mozart, but most lasted just ten minutes! The media picked up – and picked through – the research, exaggerated its findings, and the misnamed ‘effect’ has been with us ever since.
More recently, Daniel Levitin, a musician and former record producer turned neuroscientist has made it onto the New York Times bestseller list with his book This Is Your Brain on Music. He and his team at McGill University in Canada have been researching the effects of music on mood, among other things. In one experiment, he measured listeners’ responses to Mozart, John Coltrane and even Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, through measures such as heart rate, blood pressure and brain activity. He concluded that the music people enjoy can act like a stimulant on the brain, regulating mood and aiding concentration – positive conditions for learning.
Though the jury is still out on what genres of music might best induce these positive conditions, Levitin’s musical samples support a more general agreement that listening to music with lyrics is out if you need to concentrate – or at least, lyrics in your mother tongue. The prefrontal cortex gets overtaxed tuning out the distracting verbal stimuli, so you don’t have the full advantage of all your grey matter on the learning task at hand. As anyone who has tried meditating knows, attention takes mental effort, and the fewer distractions, the better.
Our relationship with music begins before birth and is hard-wired in the womb, with the particular musicality of the mother’s voice creating a powerful bond which scientists think is pivotal to the infant’s survival. As young children, we acquire language and numeracy skills best when music is involved: we learn the alphabet in song, our times tables to a rhythmic pattern. As we reach our teen years, research shows that our relationship with music is as important to us as our relationship with our friends, and what we choose to listen to is one of our most powerful forms of asserting our identity at this time. Throughout our lifespan, whatever our cultural background, music is right there with us, marking every milestone in our lives and setting the mood for all occasions.
This ability of music to change our moods seems to be related to the production of different chemicals in the brain. Dr Katrina McFerran, at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Music, Mind and Wellbeing, says that endorphins triggered by listening to and making music provide a kind of natural pain relief, where dopamine leads to feelings of buoyancy, optimism, energy and power. This may explain the kinds of ‘flow’ and ‘peak’ experiences people often describe as having been evoked by music listening and more active musical participation, she says.
Of course, one of the biggest impediments to learning is stress – and we know that listening to music is great for stress relief. Studies involving residents of nursing homes and people with mental illness show links between music making and listening, and reductions in the stress hormone, cortisol. There are reports, too, that playing certain types of classical music, such as Beethoven and J.S. Bach, in Intensive Care Units produces a calming effect which helps reduce patients’ dependence on medication after surgery. Conversely, much has been made of experiments involving heavy metal music, which can cause a stress response, or ‘voodoo drumming’, which, perhaps not surprisingly, made the poor lab mice hyperactive and aggressive.
Studies have also looked at the link between brain rhythms and beats per minute of the music or heart, to look at the kinds of brain states that may or may not be induced by different tempos. There is debate about whether certain pieces of music induce deep, delta states of sleep, for example. Or if Baroque music, which is typically in the 50–80 beats per minute range, can create the calm but alert alpha brain state which is ideal for learning. In the 1960s, psychologist Georgi Lozanov, since dubbed the ‘father of accelerated learning’, played Handel and J.S. Bach in the background of a foreign language class and found that it increased students’ speed of learning and boosted memory retention. Interestingly, it was the 60 beats per minute music that was most effective – a rate which closely matches a relaxed pulse."
And I think we are still a long way from interpreting the effects that melodious sound, a syncopated rhythm, a lyric that inspires, the joint harmony of instruments in musical elaboration presents, which can influence and change our attitudes and ratify dormant values in our states of consciousness.
For example, JS Bach prefaced his songs with the words: "In the name of Jesus" which have influenced the life of Albert Schweitzer, a humanist scholar, organist, physician, writer and Nobel Peace Prize winner who, of conscience, on a goal at the end of his 30 years of age, decided to live in a remote region of Africa and there to heal and educate the humble population of Lambaréné.
Huberto Rohden, inspirer of this blog, spent whole hours, together with his studies and writings, listening to the best in classic compositions. In one of his books, The Cosmic Experience (available in Portuguese only), as he wrote, hearing the soft melodies and inspiring lyric of one of his best records: "14 Hymns of the Mariners," saying that he felt himself engulfed by this wonderful mystical music.
The famous choir in "Hallelujah" by GF Handel, in his mystical vision of the angels of heaven; Paramahansa Yogananda, who produced true musical pearls for the intimacy of the soul with God; of the religious musics of all beliefs; some works for piano by Chopin and Rachmaninoff which enraptures and harmonizes; the brilliant compositions for ballet music; some songs and melodies of the popular repertoire; and more recently, music for electronic games, some of them true pearls of instrumental composition. And the influence of many other talents and musical geniuses from so many countries and who inspire humanity... and in this particular moment, when I hear the Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler, in the 9 minutes of his Adagietto... so sublime!
And everything above, not to mention the performance of all musical instruments - from a simple berimbau to a sophisticated organ, or to a set of sounds emitted by electronic instruments - each in particular, regardless of its origins, reveal the artist's feeling. And what else more to say about the guitar?, the most popular one, which has virtually the ability of any other instrument, that of the range of expression, as Beethoven says: "If any instrument has the ability to duplicate an orchestra, on a smaller scale, it must be just the guitar!"
So... studying with music is the best option!
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