Science says non-musicians can express emotion with one note!
News flash! Even non-musicians can express musical intentions with just one note. At Cognitive Daily, Dave Munger describes a study:
A team led by Filippo Bonini Baraldi designed a musical task so easy that even an untrained individual could do it: Try to musically represent eight different “expressive intentions,” as described by three adjectives (like slashing, impetuous, resolute or tender, sweet, simple). There was just one limitation: the volunteer participants could only use one musical note on an electronic keyboard for each expressive intention.
The “non-musicians” did as well as the “musicians.” It’s great to read about this. My slightly sarcastic title for this post comes from the fact that for something like 25 years, Music for People has been promoting the idea that everyone can express him or her self through music, regardless of musical experience. And, of course, the study is rooted in a very Western dualistic paradigm in which there are musicians and non-musicians. My commitment, as is the case with everyone who has embraced the MfP philosophy, is that everyone can make music and that there are no “non-musicians.” (There are also, in my world, no non-dancers, no non-actors, no non-painters, etc. There are plenty of people who don’t make music or dance or act or paint, of course; but we each have the inborn ability to creatively express ourselves.)
To express emotion, all you have to do is feel emotion and make a sound that expresses that emotion. Each of us can do that, at any time. To do that it a particular musical language can take a LOT of work, of course, but the ability to express is, I assert, clearly part of every human being.
When I’m guiding people in exploring their ability to improvise, I often start with one-note activities. My workshops, when I do them at universities other than where I teach, are called “Expressing Yourself Through Sound: Music Improvisation for Everyone.”
Great to see this phenomenon documented in another way, and a tip of the hat to my colleague Scott Spiegelberg for pointing it out.
Recent Comments