Music, Music, Music.
by Win Wenger, Ph.D.
Photo courtesy of Elan Sun Star
Here is a
brief summary of some of
our work as regards music. The list of methods for learning
to play music, or to upgrade one's skills in such playing, is much
longer than this list: sometime we will organize it if there is
sufficient interest. Meanwhile, the Improvitaping next below is
in itself one of the fastest and easiest ways to get to know and play a
particular instrument, learning its voice and ways to express it, once
you learn to listen to yourself. Here is a short list of
addresses of our articles on various topics regarding aspects of music:
Improvitaping: please see http://www.winwenger.com/archives/part13.htm and
http://www.winwenger.com/part91.htm
In 900 minutes of self-training by this simple program, you can
be composing excellent music of your own favorite kind. This is
true even for people who are not yet musically inclined. Even
more than composing, this is a fast way - and after those first three
rounds, an easy way - to learn to sensitively play an instrument or to
play it better.
Regarding Perfect Pitch, please
see http://www.winwenger.com/archives/part14.htm
and http://www.winwenger.com/part39.htm
Maybe we were all born with it: certainly we can all learn it or
re-learn it. If anyone reading this is good with computer games
and willing to work with us, we can develop software to build the skill
in adults. Consider the by-now-ancient computer game concept of
successively higher challenge levels. Now consider that even the
tone deaf can distinguish one octave from another, or whatever interval
to start from, then work to finer and finer discriminations and more
finely discriminated predictive expressions(!) until one is finely
tuned and the core intellectual organ in the brain, the left plenum temporales, our
instrument for distinguishing nuances of word-meanings, is fully
stimulated and developed. (In people with perfect pitch, that organ is double
the size, by volume, of its counterpart in people who do not have
perfect pitch.
Regarding pole-bridging effects of
sight-reading and playing music, please see http://www.winwenger.com/part73.htm and
http://www.winwenger.com/part41.htm
This is the main reason, we believe, why young children who learn to
sightread and play music have an average of 20 IQ points
lifetime advantage over their culturally and economically matched
counterparts who do not. Immediately apparent are many methods
for Pole-Bridging to integrate the brain and, among other things, to
improve intellectual performance.
Regarding a quick easy aid for getting
challenging passages in playing music just right, please see
the cluster of articles referred at http://www.winwenger.com/babble.htm
The application to music, in learning to play any difficult passage
just right: set the repeater feedback interval to whatever length -
then, without having to fuss with the controls in-between, play the
passage in question any number of times and immediately hear the
feedback, until you consistently have the passage exactly how you want
it.
Generally: we may not know yet exactly why,
especially in bio-evolutionary survival terms, why music is so very
powerful in our lives, We do know, however, that music involves,
and stimulates the development, of many different regions of the brain,
not only the left plenum temporales,
and seems inseparably intertwined with many crucial intellectual
functions. We also know that other life forms besides humans
respond strongly and positively to music, from cows giving more milk to
corn growing better, to elephants - once given appropriate instruments
that could take the treatment - obviously playing what was
recognizeably a form of music. When we do eventually research the
answers as to why and how, we will know a LOT more about human brains,
human learning, and human well-being.
Comments to:
Win Wenger
You may copy this
brief —in whole but not in part,
including its copyright — for use with others whom you care about.
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