Paragraphs 3&4
- Feb 14, 2018
- 3 min read
Music though seemingly beneficial in early stages of brain development, has also been researched on the higher levels of education and into adulthood. The music industry today has become such a huge part of the economy, Statistics.com says in the United States alone the music industry “was estimated to generate about 17.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2016”. Music is offered across multiple universities with a variety of degree programs for those who look to pursue music as a career. In Christopher Bergland article in Psychology today he compares music to professional athleticism. As a professional, Guinness record holding athlete and trainer himself he came across the common factor, “endurance”. Bergland says in his research in music its the brains endurance and resistance that you are building when you start music at an early age and continue it into adulthood. There “less reliance” on your brain working separately within different sections of itself, and that energy is rather put towards “connectivity” of the brain. The same way athletes build muscle, musicians are utilizing their brain power to practice “systematic training” and “memory”. So these same effects we see on a younger level are being transferred on through life. Like Brown said in her article, it starts with early development, but Bergland ties in the fact it's all like training, so even those who don't start early in music education can always learn and still reap the benefits of the mental training, and systematic development. Bergland even goes deeper into the idea of Musics educations relation with “sensory information”, musicians are given a piece of music and expected to use their prior knowledge of tone, fingering positions, and good tone quality and transcribe all of this in real-time to play a piece of music.
Though many musicians know practice is a key to bettering yourself, there has been an emergence in “sight reading” which is the ability to play a low to high grade piece of music with little to no practice and it still retain musicality. This all again linking back to this idea that music is helping the way you perceive information, because it is taking an effects on the brain's anatomy and engages several parts of the brain to make it more reactive which is translated to other subjects. Your brain becomes so used to applying itself in these Music Education programs when you go to a different class, your brains endurance and elasticity has been stretched so much it allows a larger intake of information. Sight reading is an “upgraded” way to play music as you must know enough about the instrument to activate the memory receptors in your brain and apply that information in real time. Leading to my belief that learning to play an instrument greatly improves memory. Musicians are made to learn countless pages of drill, which is the field positioning when they are in a marching band, and pages of music. All of which have to be utilized during a performance, hinting back at Berglands point that playing music requires you to use multiple areas of your brain at one time to accomplish one goal. The constant stretch of your mind to focus on so many elements, is presumably key in other classes, this idea that your brain is exercising itself and building its muscle. So when your intaking these large variables of information, your brain is so used to stretching and multi-tasking learning becomes easier.
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