Music And The Brain
Check out the link above to an article on the LiveScience site.
With 8 years of formal instrumental music training, a number of years of choral music and the odd year singing and playing in bands, I've always found that I can pick out fine nuances in sounds and voices. This comes in handy every day when speaking to people and in many other situations. On the trivial side, I often find myself putting a name and face to a voice when I hear voices in ads, TV shows and such (where you only hear the voice). I wouldn't say that playing music makes you smart, but just better able to hear differences in tones/sounds and to pinpoint specific sounds/voices amongst a sea of other sounds. It makes sense since when you play an instrument or sing, you are focusing on how it sounds. When you play in a group, especially in a large band or orchestra, you listen to yourself as well as the rest of the group as a whole, and other individual instruments at certain times. You spend a lot of time focusing your ear and brain on specific sounds.
With 8 years of formal instrumental music training, a number of years of choral music and the odd year singing and playing in bands, I've always found that I can pick out fine nuances in sounds and voices. This comes in handy every day when speaking to people and in many other situations. On the trivial side, I often find myself putting a name and face to a voice when I hear voices in ads, TV shows and such (where you only hear the voice). I wouldn't say that playing music makes you smart, but just better able to hear differences in tones/sounds and to pinpoint specific sounds/voices amongst a sea of other sounds. It makes sense since when you play an instrument or sing, you are focusing on how it sounds. When you play in a group, especially in a large band or orchestra, you listen to yourself as well as the rest of the group as a whole, and other individual instruments at certain times. You spend a lot of time focusing your ear and brain on specific sounds.
