Musicality Book Club, (7)

Music as Mirror

Chapter 7 is exploring music as surface where we can understand more about ourselves. The sections for Human experience and and evolutionary aspects were quite accessible for me. However his other ideas about Cosmic reflection and Cosmic/Human reflections stayed with him - I just could not strech my brain to comprehend his ideas here!

In several occasions he diminishes the value of contributions we usually attach to single individuals and distributes the same to all existing today as well as to the generations to come and already gone. "Music is not made by individual musicians.." "..each piece of music comes from a swarming population of musicians with ancestors tracing back to the first motion in space."

He was firm in his idea about the future generations being part of a composers work. I never really understood his idea about future generations - the only idea I could think was his goals. The only way for me to get good work done is to have a goal in future - I maybe not involve the coming generations but I reach the years they will live.

I was quite inspired about his idea to consider echoes as aural mirror. For him is a sounding body causing other bodies to sound another kind of aural mirror. Later I started to think it more as an reflection - the rock sending my voice back is the mirror. But I am not sure if I got it right - Mathieu continues some pages later: In the vibrational mirror of music we practice and alter, and notate and edit, and practice some more until it sounds right.

Heart beat - Creativity and surpris!e

Radio program presented also some of the basics for creativity and mechanisms for a surprise. Both needed and occuring in my dance!

Creativity was defined as capacity to produce several new ideas in short time. It is interesting that creativity is disconnected from IQ level - it is an unique separate capacity. You maybe know someone with high IQ but producing nada interesting ideas!

Ceativity  has a shared genetic base with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder via low levels of dopamin receptor, D2. When information enters brain it will be filtered in a structure called thalamus which prioritize the material allowed to go further to cerebral cortex. When D2 levels are low more information is flowing further. If your other brain structures and functions are stable you can enjoy great creativity and mental health. But if your other functions are more fragile you may have schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.


It is a known fact that creative persons do have relatives with these disorders. By the way there seems to exist a new trend to boast with the mental problems as sign for artistic capability; something to list on the CV!


Strong cultural experiences reach deeper in your brain compared to ordinary reasoning dialogue and it reaches your consciousness via two different paths.


When we listen to happy music it enters via ears to the thalamus and is then transported fast to the emotional brain. If this music has quality of joyfulness and maybe your memories connected to this song are happy too, resulting in a massive activation of cell structures for joy. ( Program indicates that several feelings have their own cell structures - ( I wonder...)  )


Now your body knows that this is a happy moment! You are stricken by joy and you can feel it! But it takes longer time for information to come to higher levels of brain where you become aware of the music.


This timing difference is a problem if you need to lie! Your body will blow your secret before you become aware of the reaction needed for your lie!

Heart beat - Music and Brain

Some ideas from a radio program with researchers, therapists and artists talking about what happens when brain meets music!

It seems difficult to define what music is but this is the definition one of the researchers in program used: A sounding artform which is not speach.

When listening your hearing, sound processing parts of brain are activated as well as the emotional system. Motoric system is activated even when you do not perform any visible movements. Shadow activities at miror neuron area are observed.

There is two kind of listening:

* When you have musical tranining you can focus on the structure. Your right ear takes in the sounds and the left side of brain is analyzing the music.

* Emotional person does it differently

Just based on these few facts in the program there could be four groups. One split line goes between the groups trained or not and the other if you are emotional person or the opposite.

In music production and learning an iterating vision-tactility-vision proces in motorical system is performed. An amateur musician has lot of activity in higher brain areas for planning, consentration, error correction and motoric systems. A professional musician brain is more quiet; some activity in motoric system and less in the higher areas.

The best predictor for performance is the quantity of training. This was his main point - quantity of training! And he actually redefined the musically gifted person as one, who is clever to pick a suitable training method and is interest to train a lot.

The ability to produce a constant, steady, exact pulse on drums is a good predictor of intelligense. The pulse must be controlled in milliseconds. The smarter you are the better you can keep the pulse constant. - Maybe a new line on you CV when candidating for your next job!

Rhytm experience is in left brain where gramatical and analytical processes take place.

Melody experience is in right brain where psycological, visual and primitive language centers are. Children learn first to recognize the melody pulse and the basic pulse comes later.

All this information can be used to analyze location and range of a brain damage as well as to be used when reactivating the deeper layers of damaged brain with music therapy.

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Personally this could explain why I have been dancing all the years without recognizing tangons rhytmical pattern: ONE twoTre four. I am ALLWAYS using my left ear when speaking in phone - I have a feeling not understanding when using the other one. It means I always activate the melody recognizing, right brain when listening. Thats what I do also when dancing!

Which is your favorite ear?

In future this could be implemented when creating  the training for these people with strong left/right ear preference. Maybe first train the melody part for left ear group to have a good start and then focus on the musical structures which needs more training.

Training week starting 18/4

No Monday training this Easter week but Saturday training is still there. We will see how the dancing will be this week. Anyhow on Wendsday to start with!

Brain and Music needs to be writen down....

Detlef and Melina continue...

El Choclo continue...

Rhytmic training is tempting me again.

Book Club has come to chanper 7, Music as Mirror.

In the background I plan the training for May and hopefully something new in autumn. Some teaching for autumn is already booked and some more is in pipeline.

This week seems to be some kind of catching up kind of week. It is also a shorter one and  Easter activities with friends and sibblings will be a nice change!