The link between music and learning capabilities has
always been one of great interest to me.
When I was four years old, I saw my cousin’s violin recital and declared
I wanted to play as well. Eighteen years
of private lessons, seemingly endless hours of practice, tons of recitals, hours
upon hours of rehearsals with the city symphony and many concerts later, I’ve
heard I’m pretty good. I could read, play and write music before I could do the
same with words. My entire scholastic career has been in tandem with my musical
one. I hold my own theories on how it
influences learning, based solely on my own experience and hearsay from others,
but I’ve never really done much research into the topic until now.
What I found interesting right off the bat
was the three things that Marcus stressed in terms of learning (music or
otherwise): heredity, practice, and instruction. The first, heredity, seems to be the
shakiest. With learning and skill
acquisition as such a complex topic of discussion, interlocking genes with
social, emotional, or even religious, as Marcus points out, it is hard to
simply state that ability in anything is based on your genes. My family, for example was not particularly
musical (my dad played trumpet in the school band and my mom played percussion
in the same, but that’s about the extent).
Of course there is strong correlation between your smarts and your
family’s smarts, there are always exceptions as well. What seems to be important is to understand
that there isn’t one gene that codes for intelligence or ability to learn,
rather there are genes that have broad functions that simply lend to the
ability. The areas of the brain that
Marcus lists as being integral in musical ability include ones that are
essential in emotional processing, motor coordination, analytical thought, or
language processing (combining smaller units into larger ones that make more
sense). So a combination of genes can lend to ability, but there is not an
absolute guarantee it will give you the ability.
The second aspect of learning is one that is drilled
into us from as early as possible: practice.
There are probably few people alive in our society that haven’t heard
“practice makes perfect!” told to them at some point in their lives. In terms of brain function, though, it may not
make perfect, but it certainly is going to move you toward expertise. What is
interesting about practice is that for the most part, it must be
self-directed. Of course at a young age,
it may be monitored by an adult at some rate.
In an article from ScienceDaily, the importance of self-directed
learning is examined as the optimal way to learn. Perhaps it is key to progressing at a skill
because of the process of integrating new and building off of already-possessed
skills. The article suggests that there is a strong motivational aspect to
self-directed learning that helps solidify the cognitive processing that gives
us a memory. This seems to ring true with Marcus’ account of his progress. His progress through learning guitar was certainly
self-motivated. While there were, of course, people helping him along the way,
he had a certain motivation and drive to not only reach his goal but excel at
it. This motivation seems to be
essential in learning any skill set.
Finally, the teacher or mentor seems to have a large
measure of influence on the skills learned as well. Marcus details this in his
book, and I see this in my personal experience as well. The rate at which I personally progressed, especially
early on in my musical career, was largely based on what private teacher I was
studying under at the time. Marcus
stresses that is not simply the technique they teach, but how they teach what they do – a certain level of enthusiasm and
passion is absolutely essential to instilling that same thirst to learn in the
student. Linking up general learning
techniques with common memory tricks is another good way to exceed – as Marcus
details, one of his mentors used elaborate and exotic looking musical flashcards
that helped the concepts stick out in his mind.
In my experience, my favorite and best violin teacher created a board
game to help us learn counting and the more mathematical side to music.
The last two concepts, practice and a good teacher,
link up with the topic that Marcus set out to debunk; that you can’t teach an
old dog new tricks. Or at least, not easily. When new knowledge or skills are
acquired and built off of, gray matter in the brain gets denser. In a study detailed in ScientificAmerican, a
word-teacher experiment was run on adults.
MRI images were taken of the brains of participants both before and
after the words were learned. In the areas associated with the topics learned,
there appeared to be an increase in gray matter. The change in the brain was noted after only
three days. This, among many other
studies, shows that adult brain adaptation is not as slow and reluctant as has been previously thought. Interestingly
enough, this finding backs up the "practice and good teacher" concepts, in that
perhaps adults are merely hindered by the belief that they won’t be able to learn
as quickly as someone younger. Murcus
describes that a lot of what children have going for them is simply due to a
lot of free time for practice, a drive to learn a new skill, and no actual
real-world hindrances (such as a job, a family, car payments, etc) to slow down
their practicing. They can also be more
easily be influenced by the superior figure of an adult teacher. In any event, it appears that while there are
many factors that contribute to the learning of any skill, anyone should be able to do it – and be able to
do it well.
Sources
Marcus, Gary (2012, January 19). Guitar Zero. New York: Penguin Group Publishing.
Association for
Psychological Science (2012, October 4). What makes self-directed learning
effective?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 09, 2012, from
http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2012/10/121004134843.htm
Graber, Cynthia (2011, April 4). Adult Brain Shows Learning
Changes Fast. ScientificAmerican. Retrieved October 07, 2012, from http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=adult-brain-shows-learning-changes-11-04-04
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