The benefits of early musical education

Nothing in the world compares to the immense potential of a young child’s brain, so full of neural pathways waiting to be connected. Yet an adult in attempts at “education” can mess up this opportunity permanently. All of society suffers the consequences.

Early musical education is perhaps the best developmental tool available for young brains. And music memory is retained better than all other memories.

Suppose a young child might be interested in playing violin. That sounds easy, it’s a small instrument to handle and not apparently very complicated. But do this wrong and you have screwed up massively. It is actually a very complicated task.

The worst mistake is handing a child a violin and letting them try to make some sounds. That apparently simple action sets off a large number of neural connections regarding pleasure (new experience) relief (not dropping it) aural sensation (creating a sound) motor skills (holding it, moving the bow), etc. These connections in the brain are made immediately as a learning process, and here’s the killer- these links are now embedded and you cannot erase them, they have initiated “habit.” To change these neural links, you can try to paper over them with new instruction, but there they lie, at the base of the child’s understanding of “violin.” They exist for the child’s life. This is a critical point in the nexus of education/memory/brain development.

How can you do better? Remember that teaching violin is a skill-set more complicated than teaching piano, and truly best left to the experts. If you must try this at home, try really hard to not initiate incorrect neural pathways.

To let a young child try a violin, first they must learn to hold it, and that does not at all involve the left hand. You would hold the (appropriately-sized) violin by the child’s neck, and determine if they require a shoulder-rest along with a chin-rest. For instance, my neck is long so it isn’t possible to hold the violin without an adjusted shoulder-rest. After that positioning adjustment, then have the child hold the violin between chin and shoulder for a few minutes at a time several times over the day for a week or so, to get the neck muscles used to this new job. The child’s left hand is never used, you place and remove the violin without the child touching it. You must get this holding process into their memory at the beginning; it is just too difficult to erase an old habit.

Meanwhile, in between these holding practices, try some bow instruction. You can find a cardboard box about 12” wide or a bit more, and about 20” long, and cut it down to a tray 12 x 20 with about 3” rim above the bottom on the 20, 12 and 20” sides, no side on one end. Now cut a 2” hole in each side, about 10” from the open end. You can rest the open end on the child’s shoulder and have the child pass a round rod such as 1/2 a length of a broom handle, through those two holes. That is the bow motion, as if passing it through two holes, which requires extending the elbow at the end of the down-bow. The right hand is moving in a straight line, not in an arc.

After getting these basic skills learned, you can try elementary lessons in bowing the strings in a proper plane for each string, always passing the bow through the invisible holes in the cardboard, keeping to the middle of the space between fingerboard and bridge and try some finger exercises. The fingers are always arched with the tips hitting the strings like little hammers. And perhaps try a simple tune like Frère Jacques. The chin holds the violin, not the left thumb, the bow for lighter notes can run along the away edge, for full notes it can lie flat on the strings. The bow might run closer to the bridge when playing on a short string (high register notes), otherwise mid position is better.

Now think these matters through and see how they might be helpful in other educational situations.

December 15, 2024 on CBC Radio, program “Checkup,” the topic was are kids getting ruder in class, and how can unruly kids in class be controlled? I have a simple answer, but hold your though on this, I need to add a second input.

Globe and Mail, December 14, 2024, page O1, “Youth violence is on the rise. Is social media to blame?” by Naomi Buck.

There are several quotes in this article from Dr. Scot Wortley, a criminologist at U. of Toronto. The article finishes up with Dr. Wortley stating that: “The question is how to give youth status beyond social media.” Naomi Buck follows that with “There’s no recipe for that, also no precedent. But for starters, social media needs to be reined in. This is a problem of adults’ making; now adults have to solve it.”

Mon Dieu, Mme. Buck! For those who hadn’t spend their lives wallowing in the mediocre muck of the middle class, the answer to both these presentations, CBC and The Globe, is obvious: early musical education. What you are seeing in disorderly classrooms and social media addiction is complete lack of depth of brain development. These children are actually lost, they lack moorings; all they encounter is superficial. Best to start anew with the next batch of youngsters; these children that YOU abandoned, sorry to say, will require constant supervision for years to come. You abandon your child to video games and idle play then to social media, totally missing the opportunities to develop that young brain, and then feel remorse when you figure out that the doors that were open waiting for development are now closed?

Somehow, a young child can learn and commit to memory long, complicated classical music pieces and play them from memory. This is showing me that music memory lies somewhere deep in the brain, in the area available for language, if not deeper. And the sad part is, use it or lose it. And most kids these days have lost it. And for giving youth “status”? How about if they could sit down and play Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 11 in B-flat Major?