Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

Wednesday’s edition of All In The Mind featured a study on the effect of rudeness (in the workplace) on creativity and productivity. The study by Amir Erez of the University of Florida and Christine Porath of the University of Southern California, discovered that even witnessing rudeness can affect cognitive performance, memory and incliantion to help out.

This discovery is at odds with our culture of humiliation as seen in Britain’s Got Talent; X Factor; The Weakest Link; Dragons’ Den; The Apprentice. The first two of these are extremely popular with pupils and, before hearing of this study, I often used to wonder what message was being conveyed when the response to ambition was often mere cruelty.

Listen again here, or else! The article is the second of three in the programme.

David Byrne writes eloquently, resonantly and, in one sense, optimistically about the future of the recording industry in the indented paragraph contained here.

If I feel as nimble as he appears to when I’m 56, I’ll be chuffed:

Those involved in education, lucky enough to be in their cars by 4:30 tomorrow (Wednesday 18^th), might care to tune into Radio 4’s Am I Normal, which this weeks focusses on “how ‘gifted’ is measured and by whom.”

The title of this post comes not, as you might imagine from a stirring manifesto, but from a radio programme of the same name. Music Matters, which goes out on Radio 3 at 12:15 on a Saturday, is a magazine programme. Tomorrow’s sole theme is music education. Below is the content of the email newsletter which, if you are involved in education as pupil, parent, teacher, manager or concerned citizen, might encourage you to listen in or catch up on iPlayer. (the emboldening is my own).

We’ve a special edition this week: Music Matters is at MusicLearningLive!2009, the national festival of music education. We put together a panel of key policy makers and thinkers – National Music Participation Director, Dick Hallam, Katherine Zeserson, Director of Learning and Participation at The Sage Gateshead, Christina Coker, Chief Executive of Youth Music, Richard Morrison of The Times, and cellist and educator Zoë Martlew - to debate the present and future of music education, from primary school to conservatoire, in Britain. And there is no better place to chew over the issues than on stage in the theatre of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, with contributions from festival delegates.

There is a lot to discuss: the government’s £332 million settlement for music education, announced at the end of 2007, is being rolled out across the country, and there are schemes and enterprises galore: Wider Opportunities, the Music Manifesto, and most visibly, Sing Up, a £40 million scheme that aims to have every child in primary education involved in singing before 2012. So everything looks good, right? Well, no: there are looming crises in music education, revealed in two recent reports on primary education from the government’s own inspectorate, Ofsted, and in an independent Cambridge review, both published last month. Their conclusions are strikingly similar: teachers are dispirited by having to reach targets and get kids through exams, with the twin behemoths of numeracy and literacy objectives squeezing everything else out of the classroom. The arts and humanities are suffering, and music in particular.

And that means children aren’t getting the rounded education they should be, despite the fact that there’s a statutory requirement for schoolchildren to have regular access to music lessons until they’re 14. The irony is that, by marginalising music, schools are missing a trick: there’s overwhelming evidence that children who do receive music education are more likely to do better in Maths and English. There was real evidence of this at the RNCM from Abbott Community Primary School, one of many ‘Singing Schools’ in the Manchester area which use music throughout the curriculum: the kids sang songs about fractions, times tables, parsing words into syllables, even an ironic lyric on SATs, showing how music can help achieve those apparently all-important targets.

But that’s not the real point of music in schools. Music is important because it’s music, not just because it can help achieve academic or social outcomes The question is, what happens when children with talent come through the system? How are they supported once they get to secondary school? Is there any hope for a gifted child to progress in music, who isn’t lucky enough to have parents rich enough to afford instruments or expensive private lessons? The panel, with questions from the audience, reveal their hopes and fears for secondary schools and what they think will happen after 2011, when the £332 million has been spent. All that, and we discuss what students can expect as they emerge blinking from the hothouse of a conservatoire education into the harsh world of trying to make it as a professional musician; why teachers need more training in music education, the significance of projects like the Scottish and English versions of Venezuela’s El Sistema, and orchestral outreach work. Also, why western notation matters, even if you can get a GCSE without being able to read music. I’m not saying we come up with the answers, but there’s fuel for more debate, and real passion about why music, er, matters. Enjoy! As always, 12.15 tomorrow.

Listening to the latest edition of Leading Edge on the topic of the unreliability of memory, I was prompted to wonder how accurate my own memory is and some of the assumptions which rest upon these memories.

Specifically, I don’t recall being frequently tired as a teenager. Looking into a sea of pale, tired, distracted faces at yesterday’s East Lothian Guitar Ensemble rehearsal, I found myself wondering if, in my high expectations, I have conveniently forgotten exactly what feels like to be that age. In the end, a productive and encouraging rehearsal emerged from an underwhelming beginning. However, early in the rehearsal, I found myself wondering if we are going about this in the right way. Is Friday* afternoon the best time for a 2-hour rehearsal sandwiched by 30-minute bus journeys?

The edition of Leading Edge can be heard here until Thu 26^th at 21.30 – scroll forward to 9:00 for memory articles featuring Karl Sabbagh, Martin Conway and a consideration of the effect of high blood sugar and memory, along with links between memory and attention.

* many instructors are not employed on a Friday

I understand that employees of ELC can access cut-price podiatry. Is there similar access to voice care? Why is this on my mind? Am I suffering from problems at either end? Not as far as I know, but I’ve just been listening to a review of Voice Work: Art and Science in Changing Voices by speech and language therapist Christina Shewell.

Some interesting statistics emerged:

• 1/3 of us use the voice at work
• 14.9 million people in the UK are unhappy with their voice
• open voices appear to be universally pleasing and nasal voices off-putting
• the average female voice frequency is 220 Hz i.e. vocal cords opening and closing 220 times per second – so 5 hours of talking over a day result in the vocal cords opening and closing more than 4 million times
• it was stated that men average half of this – I’m not sure if this meant 110 Hz or half the inclination to chat for 5 hours
• as an example of the contrast between singing and speech it was pointed out that a top C requires the vocal chords to open and close 1046 times per second
• the average pitch of the female voice is dropping in America but not in, say, Sweden
• when it comes to control, effective vocal vibrato requires that the modulations in pitch fall between 5.5 and 7.5 times per second – lower than 5.5 results in a creaky sound – higher than 7.5 results in a tremor

The author pointed out that while a literacy hour exists in school, there is no equivalent for oral skills – and that these skills can affect employability. She also referred to the bilaterally psychosomatic nature of the voice. A person’s voice gives away more about them than they might intend to convey. It also affects the body and mind of the listener – at the most basic level in their disposition to continue listening. Moreover, singers who develop vocal problems are loathe to seek help as they intuitively feel the ensuing investigations to intrude upon their sense of self.

Having listened to the interview and book review, I was left with the feeling that we know very little about the major tool for delivery of our practice. One always feels guilty suggesting further spending in an economic crisis. However, I feel that one centrally held copy of this book (or one per cluster) might be a case of prevention being better – and cheaper – than cure. And there’s always In Service….

Still undecided on the Cartesian Dualism vs Materialism debate? Why not let Professor Robert Winston contribute to the evidence by listening in to Robert Winston’s Musical Analysis, in which he “explores the relationship between the music and the medical conditions of composers who suffered mental and physical illness?” The upcoming programme features Robert Schumann. Most of us school-based people will miss the initial broadcasts but can catch up on the iPlayer.

On a day where news broadcasts debate the disengagement of some young people from science (scroll down to 0720), I was heartened to receive an email alerting me to the publication of an article entitled The Rhythmic Brain by Katie Overy & Robert Turner. Both contributed to a fascinating conference I attended at Edinburgh University in December*. Put simply, the article touches upon connections between music – specifically rhythm – and language, evolution, neuroscience, psychology, learning, memory & genetics.

What disappoints me in some attempts to convince young people of the relevance of science is the all too easy citation of computer games. I tend to agree more with Quentin Cooper who opines that “science is a perspective.” There is a scientific aspect to everything. That’s why I applaud the efforts of organisations like The Wellcome Collection and Edge to heal the rift between sciences and the humanities and pursue The Third Culture. I am strengthened in this belief that some of the best writing on music is the work of scientists – a great many of whom are musicians.

Consider this extract from the aforementioned article:

Rhythm is a basic organising principle of music, providing a strict temporal framework for an infinite variety of playful and expressive musical behaviours, from clapping and dancing in a group to a virtuosic violin solo. This temporal organisation exists on a number of hierarchical levels (the pulse, the bar, the phrase), allowing for the simplest forms of synchronisation and prediction as well as highly complex, large-scale musical structures.

Music is a difficult topic on which to write – precisely because it conveys in seconds what words would take minutes to describe. I would argue that the distillation of content in the short paragraph above is nothing short of poetic.

* My intention had been to write up the conference but, as it was built around a book entitled Communicative Musicality, I think it would be better to write on the book once I’ve read it.

Having mentioned Alex Ross’ book The Rest Is Noise a couple of times here, I was interested to see that it features as this week’s Book of the Week on Radio 4 (details and Listen Again here). The possibly puzzling title is dealt with in the first few moments. It concerns our relationship with 20^th Century music – the classical component of which remains problematic for many listeners. I’m sure the same sad state of affairs obtains, although to a lesser extent, in the visual arts, literature, dance etc. There seems to be something about sound which brings out the conservative in many of us.

I yet to read this read this book but have to admit to having being impressed by Alex Ross’ demeanour at the 2008 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. One of six finalists, he looked genuinely delighted for Kate Summerscale whose book, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: or The Murder at Road Hill House won the award.

There’s no better way to end the working week than listening to a polemicist and Bill Drummond is a polemicist supreme. This one time member of the K Foundation was invited to contribute to the Free Thinking Festival. His purpose was to rail against the phenomenon of recorded music and to enthuse about what he sees as its inevitable end. Ironically, I was only able to hear this talk as I’d recorded that particular edition of Radio 3’s Night Waves, which you can hear again herefor the next 6 days. However, I don’t think that inconsistency would trouble Bill Drummond at all as he seems sufficiently mature to be at home with life’s inconsistencies. One further irony is that his piece doubles as a very good potted history of the recording industry and its effect on music of all sorts – in ways which contemporary onlookers would have found it difficult to predict.

Lest I portray the idea as negative (by having used the expression, “rail against”) let me encourage you with a couple of positive titbits. He is convinced that musicians of the future will be intent on a performance which is to do with “time, place & occasion” and also that forthcoming musicians will want their music to amount to more than something in the background while people get on with the drudgery of life.

p.s.

It occurred to me as an afterthought to writing this that, while the average person’s musical diet might well consist mainly of recorded music with occasional live gigs, the average life of the instrumental pupil is quite different - mainly live performances with the occasional recording. It further occurred to me that most people - particularly those whose time at school was uninspiring, might completely overlook modern school life as a possible contender for living the very dream they espouse.

p.p.s.

While looking for a link to the Free Thinking Festival, I noted with interest that there are videos to watch again of Will Self, Tony Benn & John Gray - none a stranger to polemic.