So I have nearly finished my dissertation…I say dissertation, it was in fact an extended essay of only 5000 words instead of 10000. This is because I have chosen to weight my final year on my end of year recital which means that my final performance and repertoire exam will be worth over half of my overall mark for my degree…no pressure then.
My essay was entitled: The effects of music on childhood development from prenatal up until the age of five.
This is something I have always been interested in, and a topic I was keen to cover right from the start of my degree. Now I’m at the end of it, I realise how much I have learnt, not only from the research I’ve done, but about myself and my abilities.
Firstly, I honestly wasn’t sure if I’d have the motivation to write 5000 words, not just the writing stuff, I can ramble on when I need to, but the research it entailed and the attention to detail I needed when structuring each chapter and proof reading the final product. Although I had my moments where I was unable to find any words to fill any of the areas I wanted to cover, for the majority of the time, I found it relatively easy to motivate myself to write the words down and research all the topics precisely and effortlessly. I actually enjoyed most of it!
Secondly I learnt how much my writing skills have improved. My course is not overly academic, I’ve written a few ‘essays’ in my four year here, but they are nothing compared to what I was writing at school, most of them were more like reflective journals. At school I always held the belief that my writing was no good. I am mildly dyslexic, and when it comes to structuring essays, let alone the spelling and grammar, I really tended to struggle. However I must have done something right at school, maybe over my A-levels when I was writing long scientifical pieces of coursework, as a lot of my writing through my dissertation was well spelt, grammatically corrected, and structured in a way that not only made sense, but read easily! Yay for me and learning to write!
Thirdly was the amount I learnt about the subject. I always knew that music was beneficial at any age, it uses both sides of the brain, and requires many skills to be used that you may not use in other situations, such as memory, hand-eye coordination etc. and often at the same time. Now I have learnt that, when a child is developing, music can be one of the biggest helps in encouraging progress and stimulating the brain.
It starts from before birth, as the baby can hear from as early as 16 weeks. Scientists have noticed that breathing and pulse rates of a foetus will sync to the music it is being played. Then after birth, music will aid the development of: the brain, emotional understanding, language, spatial awareness, motor skills, mathematics and more. So many different skills we will all learn are linked in one way with music, a lot through the fact that the brain that is activated when listening to music is also activated when doing these other activities. The fact that music has such a large, beneficial impact on the brain shows how important music is to our lives, especially when we are young and are learning new things and developing daily.
The fact that I chose to do music at uni was often looked down upon by my peers and teachers at school as it was seen as a ‘doss’ subject. The fact that I do 12 hour days, without having any lectures, is enough to tell you that it is not, and it is by no means easy, and now, looking at the proof above, how can anyone deny music is good for us! Lets just hope we can continue to find a way to inspire the youth!!
XxxX
Spirit and Sound 