Jamming With Your Toddler: How Music Trumps Reading For Childhood Development - part I

Forget the Mozart Effect and Baby Einstein, take it easy on acquisitions for your two-year-old’s private library, and don’t fret if your three-year-old hasn’t started violin lessons just yet.

The key to unlocking a child’s potential intelligence and happiness may indeed lie in music, but succumbing to the commercial juggernaut that is the baby-genius-making industry may not be in either your child or your wallet’s best interest. Instead, try making up songs with your toddler. 

A new study suggests that regular informal music-making with very young children may even have benefits above and beyond those of reading. But there’s an important, interesting, and somewhat beautiful catch – for best results, make it shared music-making in your home.

In an analysis of data generated from a study involving more than 3,000 children, a University of Queensland team investigated the associations between informal home music education for very young children and later cognitive and social-emotional outcomes.

The team found that informal music-making in the home from around the ages of two and three can lead to better literacy, numeracy, social skills, and attention and emotion regulation by the age of five.

By measuring the impact of music and reading both separately and in combined samples, the researchers were able to identify benefits from informal music activity over and above shared book reading, most strongly in relation to positive social behaviour, attention regulation and to a lesser but still significant extent, numeracy.

Part of an Australian Research Council funded study titled “Being and becoming musical: towards a cultural ecological model of early musical development”, the study aims to provide a comprehensive account of how Australian families use music in their parenting practices and make recommendations for policy and practice in childcare and early learning and development.

Last month, the team was awarded the inaugural Music Trust Award for Research into the Benefits of Music Education.

Science has shown that music’s effect on the brain is particularly strong, with studies demonstrating an improvement in IQ among students who receive music lessons. Advantages in the classroom have been identified for students who study musical instruments, and the effects of ageing on cognition may even be mitigated through lifelong musical activity.

Info from IFLScience

Introducing the Artiphon Instrument 1

"Strum a guitar, bow a violin, tap a piano, loop a beat – on a single instrument. Artiphon's instrument 1 is an intuitive way to create music and play any sound."

This multi-instrument consists of a force-sensitive fretboard alongside a digital string-like interface and built-in speakers. It's designed to be played in various ways, mimicking different instrument depending on how it's held, from strumming it like a guitar to putting it on your lap and using the frets as piano keys.

Info from GizMag

Read more about the Artiphon Instrument 1 project here

Music as a language - Victor Wooten

Music is a powerful communication tool - it causes us to laugh, cry, think and question. Bassist and five-time Grammy winner, Victor Wooten, asks us to approach music the same way we learn verbal language - by embracing mistakes and playing as often as possible.

Info from TEDed Lessons worth sharing

NOTE that this video has subtitles available in portuguese!

12 Amazing things scientists discovered about MUSIC - part I

In 2014, scientists looked closer than ever before at why exactly music makes us feel so powerfully. And they found some amazing and unprecedented things.

Studies revealed that music can shape our personalities and behaviors. It can help us choose our sexual partners. And it can be used to cure certain ailments. The deeper researchers dig, the more we realize how powerful of a force it truly is. 

And these findings could not have come at a more perfect moment in time: School systems continue to slash arts and music budgets around the country and the war over how much we pay for music is fundamentally a question of how much we value music. In this crucial year, scientists delivered infallible reminders of what any music lover already knew: Music is more than just entertainment. 

Here are 12 amazing things we discovered about MUSIC this year:

1. Learning an instrument at a young age can provide improved executive function.

Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital found that early musical training helps children improve their executive functions. Executive functions are incredibly important; they enable people to retain information, regulate behavior and solve problems more effectively. 

Children that started playing music at age 6 showed enhanced activation in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that owns executive functions. And they performed far better than control groups on tests requiring them to shift between mental demands. Executive functioning is also a "strong predictor of academic achievement, even more than IQ," said study senior investigator Nadine Gaab. "Our findings suggest that musical training may actually help to set up children for a better academic future."

2. Rhythmic ability has been linked to language learning.

One of the first skills that children need to acquire when learning to read and speak is how to pick up on the rhythms of speech. They gain this ability to detect rhythms and define boundaries between words and syllables long before they can actually speak. So having a good sense of rhythm is very important to learning language. This year, we discovered just how important it really is.

Developmental psychologists at Northwestern University found that testing children for this rhythmic ability is a good way to detect potential language-based disabilities that may hit children later in life. Those that can hold an even drum beat score also higher on early language tests. The study's authors suggest that parents and educators use rhythmic tests to try to identify and address any possible linguistic deficiencies while children's brains are still young and malleable.

3. Music training can help close the achievement gap.

Nina Kraus, a Northwestern researcher also involved with the previous study, found that music can be vital in helping schools close the achievement gap — the massive inequality in academic performance between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Kraus studied the neural activity of kids beginning their music education while working with the Harmony Project, a nonprofit after-school program that teaches music to children in low-income communities in Los Angeles. Using EEGs, Kraus found that brainwaves of disadvantaged children were "noisier, weaker and more variable" in responding to verbal stimuli than children from more privileged backgrounds. 

But after two years of musical training, she discovered something very different. She found that students with musical training had gotten much better at making clear neural responses to consonants and vowels. This faster processing power will likely have huge benefits for these children's language acquisition and concentration. Music might be one of most effective ways to help give children from disadvantaged backgrounds the cognitive tools they need to escape poverty.

4. It can combat ADHD.

Three scientists from the University of Graz uncovered a startling pattern in a recent longitudinal study investigating what musical learning does to a brain's plasticity. It turns out that kids who learn music boasted significantly thicker grey matter in brain areas linked to attention and concentration. The kids also demonstrated enhanced right-left hemispheric synchronization, which led to high scores on attentional, linguistic and literacy tests. 

In short, musical training builds the same brain structures that are markedly deficient in neural scans of children suffering from ADHD. The scientists hypothesized that early music training can be major benefit to helping children reduce the negative impacts associated with ADHD.

Info from Music.Mic

Charles Limb: Your brain on musical improvisation

Musician and researcher Charles Limb wondered how the brain works during musical improvisation — so he put jazz musicians and rappers in an fMRI to find out. What he and his team found has deep implications for our understanding of creativity of all kinds.

Info from TED

How playing an INSTRUMENT benefits your BRAIN

When you listen to music, multiple areas of your brain become engaged and active. But when you actually play an instrument, that activity becomes more like a full-body brain workout. 

What’s going on? Anita Collins explains the fireworks that go off in musicians’ brains when they play, and examines some of the long-term positive effects of this mental workout.

Skoog: The easy-to-play instrument for everyone.

Music-making is an important part of every child’s education. The benefits are well-recognised and include improved concentration, language, sympathetic engagement and social interaction. 

A new musical instrument has been created specifically for disabled users: the SKOOG. This video gives a quick overview of what it is, how it works and has some clips of users making music with the skoog.

Tap it. Shake it. Squeeze it. Give it a little twist.

The Skoog software allows you to customise the instrument's sensitivity to suit your playing style, which means that anyone can rock out to their favourite tunes, or use programmes like GarageBand to open up a new world of amazing music and sound.

Skoog plugs straight into your computer’s USB port.

Dynamic sensors within the Skoog are cleverly arranged to respond to your every move, no matter how gentle or forceful you are feeling.

Play the Skoog with any part of your body!

Designed to adapt and fit with your own natural movements, the Skoog sets you free to explore sounds and music in your own way. By adjusting the Skoogmusic software you can challenge yourself and grow as a musician. Whether you have very limited mobility or bags of agility, you can make your Skoog fit your style.

How to play the Skoog?

You play the Skoog by physically interacting with it. Dynamic sensors within your Skoog are cleverly arranged to respond to your every move, no matter how gentle or forceful you are feeling. By pressing, squeezing, rubbing, stroking, tilting or shaking your Skoog in different ways you control how the different instruments sound.

Info from http://www.skoogmusic.com
Visit to find out more

APCC vence Festival Europeu da Canção - vídeo

A Associação de Paralisia Cerebral de Coimbra venceu o Festival Europeu da Canção para pessoas com deficiência, em Estocolmo, no dia 2 de Maio de 2014.

Músicos: Paulo Jesus, Pedro Falcão, Paulo Casal e Márcio Reis. 

Diretor artístico: Paulo Jacob. 

Chefe da delegação portuguesa: Rui Ramos, ARCIL (Associação para a Recuperação de Cidadãos Inadaptados da Lousã).

APCC vence Festival Europeu da Canção

Paulo Jesus, Pedro Falcão, Paulo Casal e Márcio Reis venceram, em 2 de maio de 2014, o Festival Europeu da Canção para a Pessoa com Deficiência Mental. 

Representaram a APCC – Associação de Paralisia Cerebral de Coimbra e Portugal, em Estocolomo, Suécia, depois de terem conquistado, em 20 de outubro de 2012, o Festival Nacional da Canção para Pessoas com Deficiência, na Lousã.

Acompanhados pelo professor Paulo Jacob apresentaram «Mundo de Contradições» que, com letra de Paulo Casal, conquistou o júri e lhes permitiu viver uma experiência memorável. Foi com este mesmo trabalho que Paulo Jesus e Pedro Falcão se estrearam em palco.

Nas palavras de Paulo Jacob foi para todos «uma honra» participar num festival europeu no qual competiram 12 concorrentes. Representaram a instituição e um país que, segundo disse o apresentador do festival, tem uma «língua exótica, suave e agradável».

Os colaboradores da APCC receberam, em 4 de maio, estes vencedores que chegaram a Portugal visivelmente felizes e orgulhosos por todo o trabalho desenvolvido.

Foi a segunda vez que a APCC venceu o Festival Europeu da Canção. Este é, aliás, o segundo título conquistado por Márcio Reis, pois em 2005, e acompanhado por Rita Joana, sagrou-se vencedor, em Áustria, com «Maior que o Mundo».

PARABÉNS!

Notícia de APC_Coimbra

Beamz: Interactive Music System

Beamz is an innovative and fun musical instrument that enables special needs kids and individuals of all ages to interactively create and play music. It is a great tool in a variety of special needs and rehabilitation applications, most notably including physical and recreational therapy with children and senior citizens, building inspiration without discouragement.

Beamz is universally designed so it is accessible to students of all learning and physical abilities—it’s switch accessible too! Beamz’ versatility in its application context is unmatched—you can work on cognition, processing, sequencing, cause and effect, motor skills, memory, literacy, math concepts, collaboration, music therapy, music education and so much more. Or, you can simply leverage its “cool factor” to engage students and reward productivity.

How it works?

Performance

Info from The Beamz

TENORI-ON: the future sounds like this

No, this isn’t the first good-to-go version of Minesweeper: this baby is for making beautiful music with.

The Tenori-on is an electronic musical instrument designed and created by the Japanese artist Toshio Iwai and Yu Nishibori of the Music and Human Interface Group at the Yamaha Center for Advanced Sound Technology. It consists of a hand-held screen in which a sixteen-by-sixteen grid of LED switches are held within a magnesium plastic frame. Any of these switches may be activated in a number of different ways to create sounds. Two built-in speakers are located on the top of frame, as well as a dial and buttons that control the type of sound and beats per minute v produced.

There are two versions of the device available. The original TNR-W (Tenori-On White) features a magnesium frame, 256 rear panel LEDs and can run on batteries whilst the more affordable TNR-O (Tenori-On Orange) features a white plastic frame, has no rear LEDs and does not take batteries. The modes and sound sets in these instruments are the same.

Both devices have an LCD screen on the bottom edge of the frame. Using the connection function, it is possible to play a synchronized session, or to send and receive songs between two of the devices.

Iwai's intention in creating the Tenori-on is to create an electronic instrument of beauty. In his own words:

"In days gone by, a musical instrument had to have a beauty, of shape as well as of sound, and had to fit the player almost organically. [...] Modern electronic instruments don't have this inevitable relationship between the shape, the sound, and the player. What I have done is to try to bring back these [...] elements and build them in to a true musical instrument for the digital age."

Hydraulophone - let's make music with water!

A hydraulophone or poseidophone  is a tonal acoustic musical instrument played by direct physical contact with water (sometimes other fluids) where sound is generated or affected hydraulically. In the first sense, it was invented and named by Steve Mann.

The hydraulophone combines the simplicity of the piano with the interface of the tin flute or recorder. You play it by stopping the jets of water with your fingers or hands. By blocking multiple jets you can even play chords. 
In other words, it works like a woodwind instrument, except the wind is replaced by water. Can you imagine it's potencial in the music therapy field?

More info at FUNtain