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| Photo: Kidspot |
It’s no secret that learning music is good for kids’ growing brains. Whilst there’s a lot of emphasis on learning sports at school which is great, I’m often baffled as to why learning music doesn’t have the same kind of emphasis.
Unfortunately, many schools in Australia don’t have a dedicated music teacher or curriculum. Often the only real exposure to music will be a class teacher trying vainly to teach kids the recorder – even though they themselves may have no idea what they’re doing!
And yet the benefits of learning an instrument are boundless. For one, a recent study by Sydney’s Macquarie University found that kids aged nine to 11 who were exposed to at least a year and a half of private music lessons had an edge when it came to detecting patterns as instrument training had made their brains better at statistical learning.
Music is like a language
Music itself is a language just like English or computer code. There are great cognitive advantages in learning a language in terms of improving brain functionality and memory. In music there are rules (and fun ways to break them), vocabulary and idioms. Fluency in music is very similar to fluency with language. Additionally, singing or playing a musical instrument combines those language skills with complex hand-eye coordination, and gross and fine motor skills....
Music can help assist with STEM skills
The structure of music is somewhat akin to mathematics and sequencing. When you examine octaves, quarter notes, vibration, resonance, and frequency, you’ll begin to see that numbers, formulae, patterns and sequences all help to make up musical phrasing. I always feel it’s almost like a STEM subject in itself! Like any STEM subject, learning music can be tricky to grasp, but that’s also what makes it so rewarding.
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Source: Kidspot
