Daniel Levitin wrote an interesting book called This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession. He examines scientific observations about how music affects our brains and vice versa. It’s especially fascinating when you think about learning to play music.
I’d like to mention here just a few interesting points raised in the book–about practicing, ear training, and the effect of music lessons on brain development.
Practicing
Levitin describes an experiment where researchers tried to define “talent.” They examined music students who were regarded as most talented, and invariably found that those students who were the best musicians had practiced significantly more than the others. “Talent” seems to be a word people apply retrospectively to someone who has accomplished something in music already.
Some argue that practice is everything. Apparently everyone who has been considered world-class in their field of expertise, whether music, writing, chess, math, crime–any expertise–was found to have put in at least 10,000 hours of practice in that field of expertise. Levitin points this out as part of a debate about how patterns are developed in neural pathways, but also discusses the impact of caring and enjoying an activity on brain chemistry and on the success of building good physical and artistic memory.
This brings up a motto I made up: “The more you play, the better you get. The more efficiently you play, the faster you get better.”
Ear training