Learning more about neuropsychology in connection with music education

Early Learning Teaching Your Child Music
1

Hi, everyone!

I am currently working on parents/ teachers training putting Soft Mozart Academy together.
While working on materials/quizzes I suddenly realized that many of us have really need to know more about this science. As for my personal experience, many obstacles of teaching in general and especially in teaching skills could be easily understood with the help of neurophysiology.

What helped this science to develop and why is it relatively young (most of the discoveries, data and researches were provided just in 20-21 century)? Unfortunately World War 1 and World War 2 + modern wars contributed a lot to our knowledge about how our brain functions and how it affect not just our bodies, but also our minds. Brain wounds helped scientists to understand many (not all!) of the things that we should know.

There are a lot of literature on Internet about it. You may start from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuropsychology

I was working on the subject for decades collecting my data and research on that. My book ‘You CAN me a musician’ has a lot to do with neurophysiology as science http://pianolearningsoftware.com/collections/learning-aids/products/book-you-can-be-a-musician-by-hellene-hiner-downloadable_p_36-html

But it seems to me that I need to cut this ‘elephant’ to more pieces and write more little, but digestible information. I will try my best!

But my first question to all of you is: which hemisphere of every human being is getting to be developed first and at what age it passes it’s priority to another?

2

How Rhythm And Steady Beat Being Developed From The Neuropsychology Point Of View

Many think that beginners play music pieces or dance out of beat, because they don’t have sense of beat and this ‘sense’ ought to be developed first. We forget that every one of us, in our mother’s womb and during our months of nursing and bottle feeding got plenty of such training much before anything else.

Let me explain how ‘senses’ or ‘feeling’ of steady beat get connected with development of rhythm.

First, ‘beat’ and ‘rhythm’ are not the same. A good metaphor is that beat is the ‘skeleton’ and rhythm is the “meat”, Neurologically, we have all developed neuron connections in our brain to be able to ‘catch the beat’ and reproduce the beat by using very simple moves, such as clapping, beating drums or making simple moves.

In fact, our body has tendency to be ‘hypnotized’ by steady beats (because this sense already imbedded in our cortex) and easily connects to the similar waives from outside world.

In this regard, if music, dance, gymnastics (you name it) educators start training with clapping, marching, playing 1-2 notes or developing any other simple skill claiming that this is the necessary first step to learn complex skill, it is not accurate from a neuropsychology point of view.

ANY complex skill (ballet, gymnastics, playing instrument) is a COMPLEX skill requiring all of the neurons responsible for our general and fine motor skills to be connected and work as a whole.

Therefore, for example, in learning piano it is better to compromise playing rhythmically in order to thoroughly develop connection between each move of each finger with neuron pathways in our brain. It establishes strong foundation for developing a COMPLEX skill. If one of the necessary part of such foundation is missing (balance, visual perception of music text, use of only certain fingers instead of all of them), the gap will occur that could be an obstacle in future development.

3

I danced most of my childhood and early adulthood and I definitely do not agree with this. Sure we learned complex moves at the bar and without music, but we always learned them to a beat. Either to music or by vocals from our instructor. The moves were hard to learn and hard to make our bodies connect to but as soon as the music was played, we were able to make the unmanageable movements effortlessly. We never, never, never did any drills without a count. Some of my fondest memories learning whole dances are of my teachers dancing in slow motion, always calling out time. To the side, 2, 3, Move low down 4, swoop up 5, 6, and hip 7 AND 8. There was always a beat or a rhythm. A steady beat is the glue that holds the complex pieces together

Whether you are dancing with your whole body, or just your fine motor skills, you need to know where to move and when otherwise it would be chaos. And the reason why music and dance are so beneficial is because they expand and continue to develop the very FIRST thing we ever learned, a beat. That’s why we crave music and dance so much. Music would never have made it if we were to put beat and rhythm on back burners until we understood the complexities first. It would be like making sure a small child could put on their own socks and shoes before teaching them how to walk. The desire isn’t lacing up your own kicks. The desire is walking. The desire for learning music, is music.

4

I do not see any conflict in your post with our previous saying.
When we learn to dance and counting 1-2-3 we use established neuron connections as a point of support for coordination development.

5

You are saying that it is okay to not focus on rhythm while learning more complex skills. I am saying that the counting is the only way to learn more complex skills. There are a lot more counts than 1-2-3 in dance. Some moves happen at 5/8, etc. So, counting should never be put on hold. It is always building and keeping place. We have to have it. It can not be put on hold for some delusional greater achievement. You need it for the achievement. That is what I disagree with.

6

I have a question:
Would counting be a good choice to teach 1 year baby to dance?

7

Yes. I cannot think of any other way. Either the parent is keeping the timing and count for the child while music is playing or parent is moving baby’s body while keeping time or counting aloud or just moving to the beat of the music without saying anything but that is still keeping physical timing so it still a form of counting and timing with a baby. 100% yes. Even when we dance with a baby with no music, we keep time and tempo with our bodies otherwise the child wouldn’t be able to tell dancing apart from seizures.

8

Sorry, maybe, I didn’t spell my question clear enough… Will try to re-phrase:
Do you MAKE your 1 year old baby’s muscles keep the steady beat and dance, when he/she still develop skills to walk and use his/her balance properly?

9

Maybe if you tell me where you are going with this so we can go from there. And I am not sure if you have children or not, but I don’t MAKE my baby do anything. We do things together according to my more experienced mind and body. That’s something babies love us for. And yes, I have physically moved my child’s body to a beat while I have counted.

10

Will be happy to! I will start with very plain example. Marionettes. Each string connected to a body part. If to cut one - one movement is gone.

Neurons of our brain should have connections with each muscle of our body. Each of our 5 senses also build strong foundation for the future development with children’s cortex. This what I call ‘rule of stationary bicycle’. If we run stationary bicycle, we won’t be able to learn how to manage the real one with no training of balance.

http://softmozart.com/our-library/articles/47-the-impact-of-vision-on-learning-musical-notation.html

In Soft Mozart one can see, when and how exactly fine motor skills and piano technique built, because every delay of coordination is measured. Therefore, we teach students to keep steady rhythm and beat, when muscles responsible for the task are developed and ready to cooperate.

And I am not sure if you have children or not, but I don't MAKE my baby do anything. We do things together according to my more experienced mind and body. That's something babies love us for. And yes, I have physically moved my child's body to a beat while I have counted.

I have thousands of children. lol

11

You are one with many hats. A Marionette Master, Cycle Instructor, and Neuroscientist. I guess by the time we are done learning things, we all are small masters in many different areas as things seem to become related to one another. I like to use Strider bikes in our home yard to teach proper balance and train my children on bikes. Tehehe. I’m not sure how it relates to teaching dancing. Those connections are made in our daily life, through our daily activities. Not through dance instruction.

Dance instruction, or piano, is more than that. Like I said, Dance and Music instruction EXPANDS upon the connections that have already been made to create an art form. One that would not be complete without rhythm and beat. I help my kids develop their fine motor skills by doing puzzles, large motor skills by letting them play outside. These connections shouldn’t have to be developed during dance instruction and piano playing. Dance instruction and piano playing is a time for refining those skills and turning them into art.

Maybe I am missing something. Could you clarify how steady beat and rhythm fit into your marionette analogy?

12

We thoroughly develop piano technique first using timer that counts each delay in muscle development and after that moving to the next stage - playing with metronome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNlqK0um3vc

On this video you will see some parts of the piece being played with metronome and without (0:44). There in the left hand is 7th, 2 notes that need spreading of a little hand. Therefore, the child can’t follow the beats and need more time to work 2 fingers coordination first.

Here how we do it with no teacher at home:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6HJqOS5IsA

13

I thought you found it best to put rhythm and beat on hold and that is what we were disagreeing about. But now you are showing that you don’t put it on hold…? Well, there seems to be a disconnect. And since you posted your wonderful videos, I would like to share mine as well. Mine is of my little girl age 4.5 at her first recital here at home. She knows 20 songs and we chose 6. She has been focusing on rhythm, tempo, and proper key strikes at the same time for each lesson. She began playing 3 months ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JQWfjOP4JA

14

She has a few mistakes but that is only because she didn’t pre-drill the chosen 6 before her recital. I think she does super well for not having practiced. Thanks for your time.

15

Thank you very much for sharing your video! Your daughter is brilliant! She obviously enjoying to play piano, has naturally good ear, music memory and voice… your attitude towards her is just right. You care and she has enough motivation from you.

16

Ah, thanks! That’s means a lot to us.

17

Well, I will continue my explanations in this thread.

One of the most important rule of neurophysiology is to use with young children as many ‘channels’ of perception in learning something new as possible: vision, hearing, voice, touch even smell!

With Soft Mozart we also use fairy tales to explain very abstract music concepts. This year we are starting Soft Mozart Theater for exactly the same purpose:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v5vCAzegQ8

18

There are 2 pictures that explains, what it takes to learn playing instruments successfully and how we get to abstract thinking through our main channels of perception.

19

As you can see on the first picture, there are 4 ‘legs of table’ that we need for successful piano learning:

  1. SPEECH MEMORY - this skill every child develop from birth by mimicking the words from people around. This is very strong point of support in learning music notes on speech level. To repeat ‘do do so so la la so’ is much easier for a beginner then to ‘c c g g a a g’
    Russian school of music, Yamaha and Suzuki has a lot of success teaching beginners with the use of Solfeggio. It simply links speech to pitch. It also promote music memory, develops music ear and voice.

Here is an amazing video of students, who sing jazz song with Solfeggio syllables. I won’t be surprised that after such training all of them will develop ability to write this music down, transpose and create their own pieces:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyVeQI84Bdc

20

Here is a video about VISUAL PERCEPTION in learning music literacy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sMGHC3A2aM