Music & Education

  • Music & Education,  Music and hearing,  Music Psychology

    Will music make my child smarter?

    Hello Dear Reader Today we are going to do things a little differently. Instead of commenting on a new paper, my usual format, I have written a short opinion piece in response to something I read in a UK newspaper a few weeks ago.  Please bear in mind of course that this is just one person’s response, and opinion. And it’s just a taster of the debate! There is much more coverage in my book, for anyone who wishes to know more. OK, on with the words…. Access to music education has been on the decline, at least in UK schools, for years. I have experienced this regression from many…

  • Music & Education,  Music & The Brain,  Music and development,  Musical Expertise

    Musical times, they are a-changin’…

    Hello, dear reader. This week I thought I would write about the changing world of defining and measuring musicality. Once upon a time it was a simple case of asking someone how many years they had been training as a musician. Maybe you might stretch to how often they had practised in the past or now. But essentially, that was it; one or two numbers which defined an individual’s musicality. And we learned a lot  using this method. If it did not work, if it did not throw up fascinating group differences, then it would have disappeared a long time ago. But the fact is that it fostered decades of…