An Interconnected World
How music connects school subjects, work, and lifestyles
I have an old friend who is a fine fiddler and a grade school music teacher. One time, after a 4th grade class, one of the students said to her, "You're pretty smart, for a music teacher."
Mary asked the little girl why she thought most music teachers weren't so smart.
"Because you only teach singing and playing instruments. Can you multiply? Can you divide? Can you do fractions?"
What a compartmentalized world we live in, that this little girl was learning music but wasn’t aware of the connections music has with everything else. We could call that a teaching moment, or an inspiration to teach kids and adults a more realistic perspective. I’m afraid too many school administrators think on the level of that 4th-grade girl!
Linking music to people's work lives, school subjects, decisionmaking, learning — this not only helps people learn music better, it also makes for better-rounded individuals, and a better community.
Here are some connections that might provide food for thought on this subject, and may explain why surveys show that kids who study music generally do better in other subjects than their peers — mostly without anyone quite knowing why.
Math
The little girl asked about fractions so let's start there. Music constantly divides and subdivides along a timeline. We work with fractions all the time — whole notes, half notes, quarters, eighths, and sixteenths, and multiple ways to combine them or even add a dot to increase a note's value by 50%. More importantly, perhaps, is that music makes counting physical. Many musicians do not actually count numbers while playing, but rather feel and work with beats and fractions of beats in a more sensory way. Maybe this is why many musicians are so intuitively good at math, computer programming, and the like. Scientists say learning music develops a part of our brain next to the language center, where information dependent on time, such as music or sign language, is processed.
Language
Musical expression matches up with linguistics, even if academic linguists haven’t caught up to this fact yet. Music is built from its own words and phrases, most obviously when there are lyrics to a melody. Good musicality involves thinking and playing natural rhythms that mirror our use of language, often with a call and response between phrases. Music learners who write words to match their music never have a problem with rhythm. One of the world’s greatest songwriters/poets, Robert Burns, wrote that he always had to have a melody in mind before writing his words. We place our musical beats the same way a speaker emphasizes strong syllables in order to be clearly understood. We use pickup notes the same way we connect words with conjunctions like "if", "and" or "but. Grace notes, which are a natural part of any song heard on the radio or any good fiddling, traditional music and much classical music, are used in the same way we pronounce consonants before the vowels in a word. In each fiddle style, or music genre, or in classical music where different eras and cultures produce different styles, there is a distinctive syntax, grammar, structure that makes language study a good fit for musicians.
Public Speaking
Music is only communicated effectively when the timing is clear, just as a public speech only works when it is delivered with convincing phrasing and tempo. Some of the most powerful politicians, preachers, and actors have also been musicians. With the demise of public speaking classes, music is sometimes the only way for students to learn good interpersonal communications skills.
Television and Film
These media feel barren without musical soundtracks to support their story lines, convey the emotional significance of what is happening, and foreshadow what is about to happen. A piece of music is often perceived in the same way, and is usually played better when, in the mind of the musician, the music is like a private soundtrack for their own story!
Physics
Music only exists because of sound waves. The physics of vibrations, and the various combinations of multiple vibrations has a powerful impact on our feeling for music. Shortening or lengthening strings or columns of air, or creating nodes to force a string to vibrate in harmonics — these facts of physics are what govern the learning and playing of a musical instrument, and can be used to help students understand the science behind them. I sat in a physics class at a good high school and was surprised to learn that the teacher knew next to nothing about the physics of musical vibrations. Fortunately, he was not an engineer designing constructions like the Tay Bridge, which collapsed in 1879 due to oscillations from powerful winds. The winds amplified the structure's vibrations like a violin string until it could not bear the stress.
Biology
Breathing is inherent in music, built into the flow of singing, playing, and dancing to music. Many biological functions are clearly musical, such as singing birds, crickets, frogs, or vibrations created by wings. A bee or fly flaps wings at about 200 beats per minute and therefore can be imitated by playing a G or G#; mosquitoes beat their wings at 600 times per minute — a wavering D# will instinctively annoy your friends and neighbors! The heartbeat of music is the pulse that makes us dance or tap our toes; it creates the intention that keeps us listening and makes sense out of the sounds we hear. In music, natural and emotive performing is never strictly in time like a metronome; good music ebbs and flows, has arcs of expression, connects phrases and connects musicians, just like our heartbeat. Scientists have learned that the only time our heart beats in strict, mechanical time is just before a heart attack, when the heart is no longer communicating with the organs and bodily sensations around it.
Social Studies
The playing of music with others, whether in an ensemble, a theatrical production, or a spontaneous session, is a study in group dynamics, leadership, and political interactions. The widely varying differences that produce musical styles are also a key indicator of cultural differences between countries, regions, and time periods. I teach a community college class where students do a presentation about a fiddle style of their choice. One student selected mariachi fiddling from Mexico because she knew her mother was Mexican, even though her father had always silenced any talk within the family about Mexican culture. By researching her 5-minute presentation about a fiddle style, she discovered that the mariachi band she selected to discuss in class had been her mother’s favorite band when she was growing up, and learned that her godfather was actually a mariachi musician. Music can be a surprising key to learning about the world. I’ve often told fiddle students about a tune that is well known in many countries, with origins traceable because or the structure and key of the tune. The tune is played roughly the same in Scotland and Appalachia, but in a different style and key in Ireland and Quebec. Through that tune, we can trace where the musicians and music lovers migrated, and when.
Business
No working musician can get by without using graphics, marketing, contracts, accounting. At some level all musicians are entrepreneurs. Typically, schools encouraging kids to learn about business will not tell students that there are about 2 million full-time artists, including musicians, in the U.S. — far more than there are doctors or lawyers, and their median income is above average. Many people go months, years, or even decades without consulting a doctor or lawyer, but nobody can go a day — or for many, even 5 minutes! — without some kind of music that’s paid for by somebody.
Teaching
All the skills of teaching any subject, and an understanding of the science of learning, are needed by successful music teachers. The weekly posts you read here derive from decades of experience in teaching music, and yet many of the topics are relevant to the teaching of anything and anybody.
Psychology
Whether establishing a rapport with an audience, or probing the needs of a music student, musicians develop strong skills in psychology. Some students use music quite directly as personal life therapy and depend on their teachers to help them with their communication and thinking problems. One student of mine used his lessons as therapy while he was under the stress of suing his employer for discrimination. Sadly, he lost his suit with the labor commission, and in his last lesson couldn’t help telling me all the details. Even more sadly for me, he walked out without paying, because we hadn’t done any music in that lesson. (I think he owed me triple for the therapy session!)
Parapsychology
One of the only peer-reviewed and published studies of ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) found significant ability among musicians at Juilliard to sense what slide was being shown in the neighboring room. If true, what does this say about the skills of musicians to sense the needs and intentions of others around them, whether in a musical performance or otherwise?
Social Work
Music therapists make direct use of music to treat patients in psychiatric or geriatric treatment in hospitals, nursing homes or chronic care facilities. They improve patients' daily lives and help them work through problems they have a hard time confronting any other way. My mother’s piano teacher became well-known in the 1930s for insisting on performing piano concerts for inmates at an asylum. He was ridiculed for this at the time, but eventually music therapy became a well-recognized medium for treating patients.
Can you think of other connections music has with the world around us?
Feel free to leave a comment below, or write a brief Substack Note with your thoughts and a link to this post, or get the Substack app and add a message in the Chat in answer to my question to all subscribers!