{"id":209,"date":"2014-11-02T05:12:24","date_gmt":"2014-11-02T05:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gordonsmind.com\/?p=209"},"modified":"2014-11-09T01:45:59","modified_gmt":"2014-11-09T01:45:59","slug":"music-improves-listening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gordonsmind.com\/?p=209","title":{"rendered":"Music Improves Listening"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Music<\/a>I Like Music<\/strong><\/p>\n

All kids like music.\u00a0 Music not only make learning words and sound fun, it actually helps with the memorizing the order of words when there is the sequence of a melody and rhyming.\u00a0 Music often is associated with a mood, an emotion.\u00a0 The association of an event with an emotion helps my memorization.\u00a0\u00a0 I never could learn more than a few lines of a song or the chorus.\u00a0 As a child, I sure like singing a chorus I new over and over again.\u00a0 I remembers songs like “How Much is that Doggie in the Window?”, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth”, “It was an one eyed one horned flying purple people eater” or “She wore an itsy, bitsy, tiny winy, yellow pokka-dotted\u00a0bikinis”.\u00a0 There was something about the silliness of the songs and visual picture that\u00a0they created in my mind as I sung along.<\/p>\n

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Elementary School Choir<\/strong><\/p>\n

I practice singing “way down upon the swaming river”.\u00a0 I like the way the “way down” lyrics went way down.\u00a0 When I tried out for the choir with this song,\u00a0 I was told that I could be the light-monitor, that I wasn’t ready to be in the choir.\u00a0 A fourth grader that hand not been clued in that he might not be a great or even a good singer one day.<\/p>\n

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Dancing <\/strong><\/p>\n

Mixing in some lyrics while trying to stay on the melody\u00a0and doing a simple dance was an exercise.\u00a0 However, the music and the body movements made it seem so fun.\u00a0 The singing came after the dance improvisation to the rhythm of the music.\u00a0 Also what was in my favor is the simplicity of the lyrics for the songs I liked.\u00a0 Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again”, Joey Dee’s “Peppermint Twist”, or even the Beatle’s “Twist Shout”. A couple of lines and then the chorus.\u00a0 What a sense of achievement . . . music, singing, and dancing!\u00a0 I didn’t know that putting it all together and then maybe even memorizing the song may have been easier for many of my friends.\u00a0 I felt good about it.\u00a0 I felt good about myself.\u00a0 And oh I could dance.\u00a0 Up and Down, all around,\u00a0 one foot, two foot, and sometimes\u00a0synchronized hand movements.\u00a0 No partner required and no conformity to specific pattern of steps. This was just about me moving with the music. \u00a0Get a song\u00a0on I knew, and I was ready to perform.\u00a0 I even\u00a0won a twist contest at a carnival set up behind our church.\u00a0I was good and I knew it!\u00a0 I was a happy ten year old that wouldn’t hear the word dyslexia for 30 years later.<\/p>\n

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C<\/strong>onnecting with My Piano<\/strong><\/p>\n

My mother started me on piano lessons in I think the 2nd grade. Memorizing was from the notes on the paper\u00a0to the keys on the piano.\u00a0This was like reading but I only had 8 white keys and 5 black keys and then they repeat themselves in the next octave.\u00a0 The\u00a0duration\u00a0of the\u00a0note and\u00a0pause\u00a0was clearly notated.\u00a0 What a great uniform language.\u00a0 There was a one-to-one match between the written note and how it was to be voiced. Every syllable of a phrase was written exactly like it was to be voiced . . . including indication of volume!\u00a0 I hit the note represented on the page, the piano did the perfect voicing.\u00a0 I could “speak” middle C perfectly.\u00a0 Find the key and press it.\u00a0 Sound\u00a0without speaking.\u00a0 Even the teacher would correct me by pressing the right key or keys.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t taught with phonics.\u00a0 With English I may have thought I was speaking correctly but the letters could sound different depending on the order.\u00a0 There was no rules to learn.\u00a0 This word sounds like this and that word sounds like that.\u00a0\u00a0 Parroting and memorizing what you heard was the way to acquire a language.\u00a0 But want if you didn’t hear correctly OR you memorized the spelling but didn’t memorize the pronunciation because the capability wasn’t nature.<\/p>\n

I created a relationship with my piano that was based on audio and touch. I touched and the piano instantly validated my communication. In my first month, I started improvising.\u00a0 I don’t think the teach knew.\u00a0 Most teachers are teaching the basics and moving into the harder and harder classics.\u00a0 I spent more time playing with my piano than practicing the music.\u00a0 I usually practiced the music enough to avoid embarrassment at the next lesson.<\/p>\n

There was something satisfying about creating patterns of sounds that communicate a feeling, a mood. Improvisation gave me the ability to express my intended emotions. I’m not talking elaborate multi-key pieces.\u00a0 Even noodling on single note melodies was satisfying because I was creating it AND I was hearing my creations. Reacting to what I was hearing and creating more sounds from what I just played was like a co-creative process with me and my piano.\u00a0 Music is the universal language because it doesn’t require words.\u00a0 I can discerned variations in sound without processing a word-based language.<\/p>\n

I loved the part in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” were they tried to communicate with the aliens through an elaborate speaker system and a keyboard.\u00a0 Whether the alien ship was learning from the earthlings to talk our musical language or the earthlings found the sequence that meant something,\u00a0 the aliens and the earthlings started to jam back and forth like a duet.\u00a0 THEY WERE COMMUNICATING!\u00a0 This was a Steven Spielberg moving by the way who has learned of his dyslexia.<\/p>\n

Communicating with the Mother Ship
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