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Tom Barnes, Staff Writer for Mic.com's music section reports, "Humans have been making music since the beginning of time. We learn more every day."
More recently, science has helped us
start to understand it — everything from how its waves move through time
and space to how it heals and empowers us. The more we discover, the
more we recognize its importance and power. But the more we know, the
more questions we have.
The past few years have produced some groundbreaking findings in our music knowledge. Here are seven of the most impressive:
1. Learning music has a positive effect on teenagers' brains.
When budgets are tight in America's schools, among the first areas cut are often music class offerings. But that is to the detriment of our children's futures, as a June study out of Northwestern University underlines.
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| Photo: Mic |
Previous research has uncovered numerous benefits of music
education for young children, including how it improves spatio-temporal
reasoning, verbal skills and impulse control. The June study proves that musical training can have similarly powerful neurological impacts right up through adolescence.
Researchers found that music accelerates
neural development and can improve phonological awareness language
skills. "Although learning to play music does not teach skills that seem
directly relevant to most careers, the results suggest that music may
engender what educators refer to as 'learning to learn,'" Nina Kraus,
senior study author and director of Northwestern's Auditory Neuroscience
Laboratory at the School of Communication, said, according to Medical Xpress.
2. We can all be taught how to achieve perfect pitch ...
To everyone who has been told they can't hold a tune:
there's hope. According to a February study out of Northwestern
University, singing in key is a skill that can be learned, like any
musical instrument. Researchers came to this conclusion by testing the
singing abilities of three groups with varying musical experience:
kindergartners, sixth graders and college-aged adults. Sixth graders
turned out to be the most in-tune singers. College students' skills were
comparable to kindergartners.
"Our study suggests that adults who may have performed
better as children lost the ability when they stopped singing," Steven
Demorest, lead researcher and professor of music education at
Northwestern, said, according to Science Daily. But his research suggests that if adults were to start practicing again, they could get their skills right back.
Source: Mic
