Your teenage daughter can rattle off the lyrics to her 320 favorite tunes on her iPod but doesn’t remember you asking her to babysit her younger brother on Saturday night. Your high school senior can improv the sweetest guitar riff complexities by ear on the spot, yet blanks out during the chemistry lecture at school.

What is it about music that imprints a solid memory in adults and teens? Are there ways to use music to improve communication and high school performance? How important is listening? Can music improve parent and teen communication? How important is ear training for young musicians and teens?

Music and Teen Identity

What is your teen thinking?

Every parent attempts to answer this question. Try paying attention to your teen’s latest playlist. Listening to music has become a large part of identity in Click to read the rest…

Ear training doesn’t have to start when you are in elementary school or college. Music activities like ear training benefit you no matter what your age, from eight months to eighty.

This article provides useful information for:

• Older adults who want to discover the benefits of music
• Music students and health professionals interested in creative ways of working with the geriatric population, and
• Family members who want to use music to communicate with elderly loved ones in their lives.

So, what are some ways that ear training and music help older adults? Does musical training increase mental capacity and overall quality of life? Can music increase happiness?

1. Music therapy techniques, such as listening to live music, significantly increase the quality of life in elderly patients. Benefits included more restful sleep and a need for less medication. [1][4]
2. Musical activities increase communication in patients with dementia and reduce overall anxiety. Activities like singing and listening to music lightens mood and help elderly patients suffering from dementia self-express. [2]
3. Exercising to music can help older adults maintain balance and reduce falls. In fact, exercising to music yields better results than similar exercises performed without music. [3]
4. Studies suggest that leisurely enjoyment of music increases psychological well-being in the elderly, allows for self-expression, and can “facilitate successful aging.” [5]
5. Even musical interactive video games like Nintendo’s Wii Music can benefit the overall health of the elderly in long term nursing home facilities by increasing balance and reducing falls. [6]

Geriatric music therapists have discovered that Click to read the rest…

With the explosion of audio technology, at any one moment you can listen to your favorite band on an iPod, video chat on Skype, tune out typical office buzz, watch a singing cat on YouTube, and talk with a friend on Bluetooth. With dozens of sound sources striking your ears at any one moment, how can you train your ears to listen and not just hear (and ignore) sounds? How can you filter out the unimportant noise in your life and focus on truly listening to what matters?

“We know more about hearing than listening.” – Pauline Oliveros

Legendary composer Pauline Oliveros developed the concept of Deep Listening as a unique way to develop the ear in relation to actively listening to sound and not just hearing. Deep Listening fosters creativity in the arts and technology by cultivating improvisation and an “appreciation of sounds on a heightened level.”[1]

In other words, by training your ears and mind to actively listen to sounds, instead of tuning them out, you will enjoy an increased level of audio understanding, deeper levels of creativity, and connectivity with your environment.

In between concerts Pauline Oliveros took the time to share her insight about Deep Listening with Easy Ear Training:

“Deep Listening explores the difference between hearing and listening. Though we receive sound waves through the ears these waves are transduced to electrical impulses by the mechanisms of the ear and transmitted to the brain where listening takes place. The ear does not listen – the brain listens.

Listening is a lifetime practice that depends on accumulated experiences with sound. Listening can be focused to detail or open to the entire field of sound. Listening still is a mysterious process that is not the same for everyone although we have consensual agreements on the interpretation of sound waves delivered to the brain by the ears. We know more about hearing than listening.”

- Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening institute

Click to read the rest…