My entire life, I have played music.
My mother participated in band from middle school through high school, and my grandfather taught her how to play the piano from the time she could sit up straight.
She did the same for my sisters and me.
When we were toddlers, she started teaching us the keys of the piano and taught us how to read music. We played and played and when we each reached the age of 5 or 6, we picked up the violin and my dad brought us to music lessons at the town’s elementary school where he too learned how to play the violin. When I was in 4th grade, I began to play the flute, Willow, the trumpet, Taylor, the Clarinet, Schuyler, the French Horn, and even my dad, the Alto Sax. Our family might as well could have been it’s own orchestra or band.
Because we were homeschooled, we had to time to practice and concentrate on our music studies. We even got to perform and participate with the elementary kids, which was pretty neat. When I was in 6th grade and my sisters were in 4th, we joined the Green Mountain Youth Symphony.
Towards the end of our elementary years, my sisters and I began to attend public school. At our middle/high school, we joined the school orchestra, on top of participating in GMYS. From 7th grade through 11th grade I met with a private instructor, once a week. I learned how to play in a more mature and professional style, studying works of Bach to Bartok to Tchaikovsky.
After all these years of studying my violin, I wondered what the details were when it came to "intelligence" and the knowledge of music. I researched a little and found some interesting facts.
Studies have shown that children who play and study music growing up tend to be more smart and literate as they get older. The executive director of the National Association of Music Merchants Foundation, has said, When you look at children ages two to nine, one of the breakthroughs in that area is music’s benefit for language development, which is so important at that stage…..Growing up in a musically rich environment is often advantageous for children’s language development.”
According to a PBS article, studying music at an early age also raises your IQ. In an online article about such topic, I found a blurb on the higher IQ Scores:
“A study by E. Glenn Schellenberg at the University of Toronto, as published in a 2004 issue of Psychological Science, found a small increase in the IQs of six-year-olds who were given weekly voice and piano lessons. Schellenberg provided nine months of piano and voice lessons to a dozen six-year-olds, drama lessons (to see if exposure to arts in general versus just music had an effect) to a second group of six-year-olds, and no lessons to a third group. The children’s IQs were tested before entering the first grade, then again before entering the second grade. Surprisingly, the children who were given music lessons over the school year tested on average three IQ points higher than the other groups. The drama group didn’t have the same increase in IQ, but did experience increased social behavior benefits not seen in the music-only group.”
Hey, maybe my IQ is a litter higher than average. I've never had it tested, but growing up with a musical background came with my personal advantages. I knew how to read music and I could pick out certain composers while listening to the classical music station with my dad in the car. If you are musically educated, you are taken more seriously. Not just because you are constantly in your concert blacks, looking pristine and all, but because you can read music. You can count in hard time signatures, understand Eurythmics, and even talk about history regarding the time periods of your favorite composers. In a sense, being musically educated makes you quite sophisticated.
Throughout high school I wasn’t just associated with the jocks as I played hockey every day or endured brutal lacrosse games in 40 degree weather with pouring rain, I was also a musician. I was everywhere. People knew who my sisters and I were. They knew that we were in the Green Mountain Youth Symphony, who would travel around Central Vermont performing at elementary and middle schools while encouraging parents and children to begin studying music.
I am so grateful for being musically educated and talented. I feel as if music shaped me into who I am today, and who I will continue to be from now until forever. What I want you to take out of this piece is that you should raise your children on music. Not just music to listen to and sing loudly in the shower, but to play music. A simple guitar could suffice. Start your child at a young age because that way, when they get to be in high school, they could possibly be good enough to perform with the Philharmonic, just like I did (Barre Opera House, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, December 2012).
