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Myths And Truths About Your Brain On Music

June 7, 2017

by:

Joe Patti

Pacific Standard had an interesting piece about the misconceptions music teachers and students studying to be music teachers have about the neurological benefits of music and music education. The study was conducted in Germany so the author the article suggests that perhaps neurologists in the US do a better job of communicating the truth about music education better than their German counterparts, but I suspect that isn’t the case.

In the study, both music teachers and students were roughly equally adept (or bad) at separating myth from truth.

“Teachers and students correctly rejected 60 and 59 percent of the seven neuromyths,” the researchers report. Proven statements were correctly seen as true by 76 percent of music teachers and 78 percent of students.

That means there were a whole lot of wrong answers…

“The three most-trusted neuromyths included neuroscientific terminology, such as ‘brain hemisphere’ or ‘cognitive abilities,'” the researchers note. This suggests music teachers, like the rest of us, can be fooled into thinking an assertion is true if it is stated using neuro-jargon.

The researchers warn that this tendency may lead teachers to assign their pupils worthless or counterproductive homework. For example, 44 percent of teachers, and nearly 40.1 percent of aspiring instructors, believed this unproven statement: “The ability to improvise on the piano is controlled by the right hemisphere; special exercises can enhance the performance of the hemisphere.” In fact, such “exercises” would be a waste of time.

You can read the full study on the Frontiers in Psychology website.

The following chart from the study shows which of the myths and which of the proven statements the study participants correctly identified. As you can see in the myths category, among some of the biggest misapprehensions were associated with music improving calculus ability; relationship between dominant hand and speech and music processing; and the impact of music education cognitive ability.

Among the substantiated theses, answers started to get a little iffy on the subject of the conditions which contributed to the positive influence of passive listening.

As the article suggests, the language used in some of these statements can be a little difficult to unravel and may influence participants’ perceptions. (At least in English, I am not sure if German terminology is clearer.) Questions 7M and 8S deal with similar concepts and probably appeared in sequence with each other.

Given that the survey was administered to music teachers and educators in training, I am sure they struggled with 1M that suggests musicians are smarter than everyone else. The fact that 75-80% answered it correctly can probably be attributed to a suspicion it was a trick question.

Being aware of what claims of benefits of arts and culture participation have been substantiated and which haven’t can be important for advocacy efforts. You don’t want to get caught citing debunked data.

Back in December, I called attention to Createquity project to survey all the available studies and evaluate the strength of the findings: Everything We Know About Whether and How the Arts Improve Lives. That page is a good place to start if you want to get a sense of whether the claims you are making are borne out by research and how strong the results are.

Advocacy, Art(ist) Education, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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Holding A Note, Six Weeks At A Time

June 6, 2017

by:

Joe Patti

I recently became aware of the Young Professionals’ Choral Collective out of Cincinnati and was impressed at how they structured themselves to facilitate involvement by a younger demographic.

They position their identity in the following way:

Do you love to sing? Did you sing in high school/college/church and miss the music-making, the friendships, the fun and the community of a choir? Do you want to get more involved in Cincinnati arts scene? Do you want to find new friends to go with you to all the new bars and restaurants in OTR & Downtown Cincinnati? Do you want to sing in a choir but can’t commit to a full-year weekly schedule? Then check us out!

What impressed me most was that they structure participation in 6 week cycles. You only need to commit yourself for that period of time. Given that so many surveys about arts participation mention lack of time as an impediment to participation, I thought this was a smart way to respond to this challenge.

Currently they claim over 850 members. There are no auditions for their self-produced concerts nor do they place limits on how many people can participate in each cycle. Presumably, they work with whomever they have.

Of course, since they have positioned themselves as a place where people with an avid interest in choral performance can continue to practice their passion, new members are likely to have some degree of experience and coaching.

Socialization is definitely a primary ingredient in their organizational model. In a TEDx talk about the group, Artistic Director KellyAnn Nelson repeatedly jokes about the role of alcohol in their activities. They rehearse in bars and go to a different restaurant after every rehearsal as a way of publicly supporting area businesses.

Given how boisterous she claims they are at these dinners, I imagine it also provides some publicity for the group’s concerts and acts as recruitment for new members. They encourage members (and prospective members) who aren’t able to participate in a cycle of rehearsals to stop by, hang out and eat with the group when they can make it.

The ease of joining, stopping and rejoining, probably relieves people of internal distress over conflicting obligations and makes them more apt to join in the first place.

It may also create a sense of membership in people who only participated in one cycle five years ago. The ability to rejoin without much guilt may provide a sense of continuity with the organization that makes them more apt to evangelize about the group even if they never sing with them again.

If you have been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that I often use the example of people who sing in a church choir not seeing themselves on a continuum with Aretha Franklin. I am not sure if singing in a civic choir would necessarily solve that issue, but I would see a small victory if a person considered themselves a singer because they continued to identify as a member of a group five years after participating.

Art(ist) Education, Business Models, creativity, New Initiatives, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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The Arts Should Be Like…

June 5, 2017

by:

Joe Patti

Carter Gillies emailed me a question this morning relating arts with sports which set off a whole cascade of thoughts.

First of all, we often talk about how arts organizations and creators need to behave in relation to the frame work of other professions and industries, does anyone ever talk about how other industries need to conduct themselves more like artistic and creative entities. (Other than maybe Disney, Pixar and Hollywood?)

Second, I got to thinking that there are three general areas that the arts are compared with: Sports, Business and Religion.

Sports

My very first blog post, I cited a piece by Chris Lavin about “Why the Arts Should Be Covered Like Sports.” Fifteen years later, it is still a pretty engaging idea. In fact, back in 2008 The Guardian newspaper had their sports and arts writers cover each other’s beats. Jon Silpayamanant would occasionally write about arts and sports, making comparisons of their business models.

There are other stories I could cite, including perennial stories of after school arts and sports activities competing for the same funding in schools with the arts often losing. I offer some of these as examples of the way arts and sports are compared and therefore are accorded some equality. Like being a dog person or a cat person, there is a sense a person can’t be both an avid fan of sport and art.

Business

I think I and others have written enough about how the arts need to be run like a business (or artists need to be more entrepreneurial) in the last few years that I don’t need to do much linking. I don’t think anyone will deny that arts organizations need to take some lessons in operating efficient, making decisions informed by data, and being aware of effective methods of promotion and awareness building. But as my friend Carter Gillies will argue more eloquently than I, profit making should not be the driver of creation. Financial success is not a measure of artistic value.

Religion

It probably isn’t a coincidence that in my very first blog post, I talked about religion as well as sports. Religion and art have been intertwined throughout history. The first forms of theatre come from religious ceremonies. Religions organizations have long history commissioning works of visual art and music. Of course, religious groups have also sought to ban art. Art and religion have many similarities. Both tap into passions of their practitioners in similar ways in that they will say they feel driven by some greater purpose. You are supposed to practice for the sake of doing so rather than out of desire of some reward. There are claims that both will make you a better person. There are frequent calls for various reformations to enable better service of the community.

Which Is Right For You?

As I thought about these three general areas, it occurred to me that often arts organizations and the communities that coalesced around them could have a strong orientation toward one area over the others.

The identity of some places are primary focused on entertainment. That is what they do, that is what people are attracted by. They want to experience the newest big hit.

The identity of others is oriented more around success and prestige. They are the exemplar of the highest value. There are important people having important experiences.

The identity of still other places emphasizes the purity of experience and the enrichment of self. Authenticity, investment and understanding of the experience are valued.

These all roughly correspond with sports, business and religion. Obviously, not every organization is focused on providing a narrow set of experiences. Not everyone in the community who is engaged with a certain organization is focused on having the same experience as everyone else. One may be having a self-enriching experience while everyone around them is in it for the entertainment or prestige.

While I will admit that these insights may not be fulled developed at this point, I wondered if there was some value for arts organizations in taking primary lessons from the “thing” they are most like.

Instead of thinking your organization is similar to sports, for-profit businesses and religion, recognize that what you offer and why most people are drawn to you is akin to a religious experience. It won’t exempt you from keeping the books straight, practicing good governance and being prepared to discuss your identity and activities in an engaging context that doesn’t allow it to be dismissed as a niche esoteric pursuit.

It may help add clarity to your mission and objectives if you aren’t promising to consistently and simultaneously provide an experience with broad commercial appeal, at the highest level of excellence and prestige, and soul-enriching authenticity.

Understanding who you serve, what people value about you and making peace with the fact you can’t be all things to all people can take a bit of pressure off yourselves. (Or can shape decisions of a direction you want to go).

You obviously can’t focus on one type of experience to the exclusion of all others because no two people are going to have the same degree of motivation for participating. Also, you can end up reinforcing the negative side of all these types: too commercial; pandering to elites/lowest common denominator; too inscrutable, etc.

But there are also some frames of reference that will never provide a shortcut allowing people to relate to the arts. A few weeks ago, a Basquiat sold for $110 million in auction. You can liken it to a bidding war for an athlete all you want, but it isn’t likely that a significant number of people will decide they need to pay closer attention to the arts.

The fact there was a record setting competition for the painting doesn’t help people understand the value of the work. If it had sold for $110, fewer people would have a negative impression of rich elites, but their journey to understanding and cultivation of an interest in visual art would be equally as long

Art(ist) Education, Audience Relations, General Musings

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You Want A Tarantella On A Violin, I Want A Tarantula

May 31, 2017

by:

Joe Patti

Almost as soon as I published my post yesterday about building community around augmented reality, I started thinking about how that might work with live performance.

One of my first thoughts was that augmented reality could allow everyone in the audience to experience the event the way they wanted. When symphony orchestras project things behind them while they play, purists often complain that it detracts from the experience.

With augmented reality, some people could watch the concert with some sort of animated overlay while others watched without any enhancement at all. There could be different “channels” of programming available at an event. One might have the animations, another might have program notes, another might have subtitles in your chosen language. There may be a choice of animations geared toward different age groups.

Credit where due, a recent repost of one of Holly Mulcahy’s blog entries with a picture of a tarantula crawling on her violin started getting my imagination going about what sort of things might possibly be overlaid on people during a concert.

The features could be educational as well as entertaining. During a concert, you might be prompted to “catch” notes cascading from a changing selection of instruments which would help people learn different orchestra instruments. Granted, this might result in wild physical movements that others might find distracting so an organization would obviously need to be judicious about what they used when.

The technology might also open the possibility for people to create custom overlays that demeaned whatever was being looked at, reinforcing attitudes about art by placing statues, paintings and performers in lewd context.

That same possibility for custom augmentation also provides the opportunity to engage a larger community in live experience of art and culture. Whenever I start thinking about how to leverage technology to benefit the arts, inevitably I think about the cost of having someone create this content and getting staff to implement it.

But the cost and staffing needs don’t necessarily need to be burdensome. I am writing this post using the Firefox browser adorned by a custom skin someone made. If there was enough interest, there might be people around the world who would create program notes, animations, editable supertitles for operas, games, etc that could be licensed for use.

Part of the promotion for the event could include mention of program notes by a famed Japanese commentator, animations by a Brazilian artist, or maybe contributions by a local person of note.

The opportunity to tap into the expertise and passion of a worldwide pool of creators could be very beneficial by creating stronger bonds between members of an international community.

The local community and audiences might also be involved in providing content. You could have little QR code or other visual cue attached to an actor that a phone might pick up so that people could understand the character’s backstory during an opera. Audience members might submit questions or make comments that could either contribute to a clearer packet of information in the future or could be answered live by on-duty staff.

Obviously, too much of this type of interaction touches on the current debate about technology and live performance. Specifically, what is the value of live performance if your experience is mediated by technology? Clarifying information can be valuable to attendees, but a chatroom environment which occupies the majority of a person’s attention becomes problematic.

While I tend toward keeping distracting (both to oneself and seat mates) technologies out of a live experience, I will admit that I would really be excited to see how imaginative different people could be in creating new contexts for familiar works. I also wonder if we wouldn’t see more people trying out unfamiliar experiences if they knew they could consult a guiding source of information. Indian dance and Kabuki performances might pop up in more unexpected places.

Arts in an Age of Technology, General Musings, State of the Arts

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