From: Patrick Wilken <patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au>
>There was a recent article in Nature/Science suggesting that music training
As a long time musician (+15 Years) I am absolutely convinced that music is
no more than a stylised abstraction of the human language!
>in childhood permanently raised verbal IQ. I haven't read the article so
>can't comment, but it seemed to have surface plausibity. The argument that
>similar (same?) areas of the brain are used by both.
Music consists of rythm, tone and pitch. When I hear my kids learning to speak they don't say the words right at first, but the rythm, tone and pitch is in place long before that.
My youngest girl is called Clara and when she tries to say her name it comes
out as ara or aha.
My oldest son is called Magnus and she pronounces that as arhus.
When she tries to say "thank you for dinner" (tak for mad) it comes out as
"ak or ad".
In fact everything she tries to say comes out as a "musical" version of the
right words and sentences. Even when it's all garbled the rythm is usually
right.
It would also explain what a musical genre is. A dialect of a musical language. When the dialect becomes too different from it's root language it becomes a new language.
Any music we don't know ususally seems boring and superficial. That is probably because we don't understand the "language" and "dialect" of that genre. Thus we cannot enjoy the details, which is what usually defines a genre.
Max M Rasmussen, New Media Director http://www.normik.dk Denmark
Private mailto:maxm@maxmcorp.dk http://www.maxmcorp.dk
Download my latest album in high quality MP3 format for free at:
http://www.maxmcorp.dk/html/musical.htm#MaxMCorporation