Music and the Brain
Apr 1, 2010 Blog, Music & Brain Research
Greetings! Welcome to the Right Brain Guitar Method blog.
Music and the brain is a hot topic these days. I’ve been doing lots of reading in the last year about music and the human experience with it. In my studies I’ve found that humans are musical by nature.
Some scientists believe that humans sang or toned to communicate before there was language. Singing to get a mate, singing to calm a baby, singing to ward off predators and singing to pass down information to the next generation. This all acted to help insure the survival of the species therefore music was integral to human evolution. All humans have the capacity to be musical just like they have the capacity to speak a language. Some people are better at it than others but we all have it. It’s not some “gift” that only a special few possess.
Studies show that in-utero babies begin to react to music as early as 20 weeks of pregnancy. Scientists believe that children are quite sophisticated listeners of music by the time they are 6 years old. The point is we become very aware of the music around us right from the start. We develop a musical knowledge that grows more sophisticated the older we get. The only thing missing is the context aka the principles of music or “how music works”. These principles cannot be taught merely by learning to read music. Reading music does not tell you how music works. It would be like reading a book in a different language without speaking the language. You would be saying the words but none of it would mean anything to you – it would have no context.
My quest now is to teach people how music works. I want to provide a context to the knowledge that people already have in them and thus increase that ability to be more musical.
James