Speech - Kate Sommer

           

            Imagine if your favorite musical artist didn’t exist. Think about it. The music you listen to in your room, in your car, practically anywhere, doesn’t exist. It’s hard to imagine.

            Now imagine if band or orchestra didn’t exist. To most of you it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But to a few of you, band or orchestra has been a constant in your life for many years.  More and more music programs are being eliminated and downsized each year. And while most of you probably couldn’t care less, there are so many advantages to learning about music.

            Music is the one of the only things in a student’s life that requires them to be perfect (Stamp). In most of our other classes a majority of students and teachers would be perfectly fine with a 95%. But you can’t be fine with a 95% in music. Musicians of all kinds are always striving for perfection. A large portion of music is chords, which are multiple notes played at the same time. If one of the notes in a chord is just slightly out of tune then the whole chord sounds wrong, changing the way a song sounds. Imagine if you were at a concert and during your favorite song the guitarist played a wrong chord. It’d startle everyone and put a bad taste in your mouth for the rest of the night. Music students always have to play the right note no matter how many times they play it.

            Not only does music require students to be perfect but it’s one of few subjects that uses both sides of the brain at the same time. The left side of the brain takes care of all the technical aspects. Music is basically a foreign language. If you don’t know how to read music and you see a piece of music it’s just going to look like a bunch of dots and lines on a piece of paper. But to musicians those dots and lines tell us how to position our fingers, how long to play the note, and exactly when to play the note. Musicians have to know in an instant what to do to make the music sound right. We can’t be thinking ahead in a piece or we’ll lose where we are and possibly mess up the song. We have to be constantly attentive and constantly counting. To quote Dr. Jack Stamp, “they’re taking something that’s black and white and turning it into beautiful colors”.

            Then on the right side of the brain comes the musicality and creativity. We use the right side of the brain to decipher which notes should be emphasized more than others and to decide how to apply dynamics to the notes. Music is part knowledge, part interpretation and the right side of the brain deals with all the interpretation. After all music is an art and, like all arts, interpretation plays a crucial role. You know this if you’ve ever heard a cover of a song and the cover artist’s version is not identical to the original song.

            So from all of this information you can conclude that being a music student is pretty demanding. Which in turn requires them to be very disciplined. To do well in music you have to practice. There’s no question about that, very rarely is there someone who can just pick up an instrument, be great at it, and never have to practice. Even huge music stars like Beyoncé and Maroon 5 have rehearsals before they go on tour or do a show. Music also helps with time management. Often the band and orchestra will have after school rehearsals as they get closer to a performance which requires the students to manage their time in order to attend the rehearsal and still get all their homework and other requirements done that night. Also, if you happen to be in marching band you can have practice up to 4 hours long and then have to give up your whole Saturday for competitions. More often than not marching band members are forced to improve their time management and prioritization or they’ll begin to do poorly in school. These skill sets are reinforced by band directors who hold their students accountable by checking their grades periodically. Many would argue that the time management, self-discipline, and focus required of music students will extend beyond their formal academic years into professional environments.

            But there are many benefits to studying music far beyond those skill sets. Music also supports core academic studies. Research has shown that children who grow up learning music perform at a higher level in subjects with similar skill sets as those in music, such as math and language. Music tends to help with language development, the effects of which can be seen in the left side of the brain (Brown).Music has also been shown to have a direct correlation with math. Why? Because every note value is fractional. At the beginning of a section we have a time signature, which tells how many beats are in one measure. Then the notes in the measure tells how many beats that note is worth.  For example if you have a 4/4 measure, there are 4 beats in the measure. Then if you have a half note in that measure then the note gets 2 beats. It’s all division. So it shouldn’t be a huge surprise when a study showed that high school music students scored an average of 39 points higher on the SAT than non-music students (Cox & Stephens). In fact there are many studies that show that kids who have had a higher level of music education do better in academics. One study shows that kids exposed to superior music programs scored up to 20% higher on standardized tests than other kids (Brown), while another shows that students participating in band and orchestra have higher GPAs than those who don’t (Cox & Stephens).  

            So, if music helps students develop crucial skills - not only in academics but in the “real world”- why are music programs experiencing so many cuts? Well, one major reason is that when the “No Child Left Behind Act” was passed in 2001 it decreed that music wasn’t a test worthy subject (Blake). This made many school districts decide that there wasn’t a point in investing the funds to teach music and instead redirected the funds to the subjects deemed test worthy. But look at all the benefits music gives us. While there aren’t any tests that test music specifically, the skills we learn in music help us score higher on all our other standardized tests. So my proposal is that there is some kind of basic music theory or education taught at some point in higher education. Most of us had basic music class in elementary school but let’s be honest, most of us probably remember a quarter of what we learned at most. We already have a required arts and humanities class so even if we just took a small portion of that to learn basic music theory it would probably help us in the long run. I’m not saying that everyone has to learn an instrument but imagine how much more appreciation you would have for those that do after you learn about all that goes into it. Many countries don’t even have equal music opportunities for all economic classes. For example, multiple schools in Ireland have had to take music education into their own hands (Music Changes Lives). The students at these schools have a half hour violin lesson every week and since these programs have begun the kids’ behavior and grades have improved drastically. We have the ability to offer music to all schools, so why don’t we take advantage of that? State mandated education could help the overall test scores of the entire country. This correlation is shown by the fact that the top 3 performing countries in the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement all have state mandated music education (Blake). This isn’t just coincidence. There are scientific correlations to why music improves our education. So why are music programs being eliminated, when in reality, they should be created.

             

           

             

Works cited

Music Changes Lives. Perf. St Agnes and St Ultan's Primary Schools. RTE Television, 2011. Television.

Stamp, Jack, Phd. "Why Music Matters." Pennsylvania Region 5 Band Concert. 22 Dec. 2008. YouTube. Web. 30 June 2014.

Cox, H. A., and L. J. Stephens. "The Effect of Music Participation on Mathematical Achievement and Overall Academic Achievement of High School Students." International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology 37.7 (2006): 757-63. Web.

Brown, Laura L. "The Benefits of Music Education." PBS Parents. N.p., n.d. Web.

Madden, Blake. "Why Music Education Actually Matters." Trust Me I'm a Scientist. N.p., 3 Feb. 2014. Web.