The Musical Human

WHO IS MUSICAL?

The Musical Human

Babies
You were a musical baby. Yes, you were. There’s no doubt about that, because all babies are. When you heard music you cooed, giggled, squeaked (that was probably singing), kicked your feet (dancing?) or flailed your arms (a conductor!). The point is that you reacted in an uninhibited, wholly musical way.

Everybody is born with musical ability. It’s a fact. There are a whole bunch of musical things that are easy to do. Anyone can learn them. I’m not saying that it is easy to achieve proficiency on an instrument or become the conductor of the New York Philharmonic. I’m saying that some things are easier to do than any layman would believe. Playing simple tunes by ear on the piano, creating accompaniments, understanding intervals, using chords and orchestrating pieces for various instruments – to name a few – are easily within the grasp of everyone. Most important, when people have the chance to find the musicality that is inside them, being musical becomes part of being human.

Theme and Variations
I have a need to hear music with beautiful harmonies. So much so, that I always assumed everyone heard music this way. As it turns out, this is not true. Harmonies that I call “juicy” appear to leave other listeners unaffected. Some people, when given a choice, prefer singing a song or hearing music with no accompaniment at all. This was an eye-opener for me – the realization that everyone does not hear music the way I do.

A few years ago I was watching a group of toddlers and young children responding to a piece of music, and I noticed something interesting. They did not all respond to the same music in the same way. Some children were bouncing and making mostly vertical motions. A few were making more horizontal motions with their hands and bodies. Some weren’t moving at all and others were singing along. Each child was showing a “talent” for connecting to music, but each was making that connection in a different way.

It seems reasonable to use these indicators to infer that people’s musical needs vary. One child is affected by melody, another by beat. While we don’t want to use these observations to label, we do want to use them to question an approach that puts everyone on the same musical path, for example, violin or piano lessons.

If talent can take many forms, then it stands to reason that each person’s way of being involved needs to be different.

Musical Intelligence
Howard Gardner, the Harvard psychologist known for his “Theory of Multiple Intelligences” and long time co-director of Project Zero at Harvard University includes music as one of his eight types of intelligence. Taking this idea a step farther, I say that there are many subdivisions of musical intelligence. For some people, singing is the most satisfying way of making music, while for others, it is playing an instrument. In the latter category, some people have a feel for wind instruments – their own breath transports their musical expression – while others feel their music coming through their fingers when they strum. Sometimes it is possible to notice a particular inclination the first time a child tries an instrument – he seems to have a feel for it. For other people, this reveals itself over a period of time. There are people who are inclined to create music, others who easily move their bodies in response to hearing it, and still others whose musical charisma flows through their movements when they conduct an orchestra. This list can go on and on. The important thing to be aware of is that musical talent takes many forms, depending on the needs, interests and inclinations of the individual.