Episode 220: This is Your Brain on Music with Anita Collins

Hello and welcome to the Choralosophy Podcast. This is episode 220. This is Your Brain on Music with Anita Collins. One of my go-to TED animation videos to play for students at the beginning of every school year is the one that explains compellingly the story of music as the, the best full-brain workout. But choral vocal education is not really included in that research.

Scoff.

The researcher behind that video is this week's guest, You're not going to want to miss a minute of this conversation. Dr. Anita Collins joins me this week from Canberra, Australia. We had a lively and informative discussion about the intersection of music education and neuroscience, as well as the connections between language and music. Anita and I discussed the cognitive benefits of music education, mostly focused on instrumental music education because that's where the research is, emphasizing the importance of music for all students' cognitive development, not just those who are interested in music as a career. More importantly, we went into aspects of this topic that are often unknown to the general public, as well as to many of us music educators. We also discussed many of the myths and misconceptions surrounding the science of music education and the importance of flexibility in music related to our picking our favorite methods for things. Lastly, we discussed the potential benefits of research on how children learn through music, the importance of rhythm and beat in music education, and Anita's own organization, Bigger Better Brains, and their efforts to advocate for music education and how they can help you advocate in your community. So we both in this case hope you tune in and have your thinking stimulated and challenged, then weigh in yourself over on the Choralosophers Facebook page or on the Substack at choralosophy.substack.com. Don't forget, it pays to listen to this show if you are a music educator. The list of discounts and benefits for listeners just keeps growing, so your checklist for back to school means getting your sheet music at graphitepublishing.com. Or endeavormusicpublishing.com. Sight reading materials from sightreadingfactory.com along with your student memberships every time you renew. Choir folders and other classroom materials from mymusicfolders.com. And now most recently, your sub plans, your ready-made activities and assessments related to music theory can be generated for you with your 3minutetheory.com membership. All of these Great vendors accept the Corelosophy discount code when you check out. You're going to get money saved for your program that helps you take your school year farther. So make sure you hit all of those websites and it supports this show. Lutus, the platform trusted by thousands of organizers to power their event ticketing, marketing, and fundraising, has just upped its game with an incredible new feature: volunteer management. Now you can streamline your volunteer coordination like never before. Volunteers can easily sign up for opportunities and shifts online while you effortlessly approve signups, track hours, and manage your volunteer team. Say goodbye to volunteer management headaches and hello to seamless coordination with Lutus. Try it at lutus.com/corolosophy and revolutionize your events. Underwriting and crucial support for this show comes from listeners themselves who choose to subscribe on Patreon or now on Substack. Subscribers get access to the private podcast feed as well as my Google folder full of goodies and much more. The producers on Patreon are Brian Long, Venture Studios, Jonah Clickspull, Angie Schilling, Danel Eckert, David Kowalczyk, Kyle Peterson, Max Jackson, Michael Herron, Ryan Main, and Steven Cathy Kokoczyk. All right, everyone. I am here with Dr. Anita Collins, and I have been really excited for this conversation for a while because I, as most of my audience already knows, am fascinated with ideas related to how our students' brains are working when we teach them music. And it's been something that I've been trying to do my own independent study on outside of my teaching practice. And so I think— I feel like I have finally roped in a true expert on this topic to bounce ideas around with. So Anita, welcome.

Thank you very much. It's fantastic to be here.

Now, where are you coming to us from today? I know somewhere in Australia.

Yes, I am in Canberra, Australia, which is actually the capital city. A lot of people go, no, it's not, it's Sydney, but it's actually Canberra. So we're about, I don't know, 2.5, 3 hours drive south of Sydney.

Okay, that's great. Now, have you— did you grow up there? Is that your home or are you a transplant?

No, no, no, I am a born and bred Canberran, which is quite odd because this city, it's of course where all the government is, all defense forces. There's a huge number of people who come in and work here for a period of time in their life and they leave. But actually a true born Canberran is something you don't find that often. But I find it an amazing city to live in and it's easy to travel from, so it's great.

Okay, so you're kind of like a unicorn.

Yes, I am in so many ways.

Okay, that's great. So tell us the story before we dive into the nerdy stuff. of what got you interested in music in the first place. So, I know that you do have a background as a music educator as well. Where did that love come from?

It's really funny. I wouldn't say it's a love, and it was never a love to start with. It was actually quite a convoluted story that I didn't do very well at school when I was younger. And the main part of that is that I couldn't read very well, and I had to work very hard to read. And I was honestly trying to hide that I couldn't read. So, um, I was a reading pretender, if you want. That's one way to put it. And so school was very stressful for me, but I didn't let anyone in on that information. But what happened when I was about 9 is there was a school program. It was a band program, and they, you know, you got to learn a flute, clarinet, oboe, or bassoon. And I was very lucky that I was selected to do that, and it was the first thing I could do that I was really good at. And before that, I just had this concept that I was a really stupid student. I was really dumb. I was really— I couldn't achieve. And no matter how hard I tried, because everything was such hard work. And I used to watch my friends and see that they— it seemed to be easy for them, and it was just really hard for me. And I was hiding all— I was, I was just ashamed of this thing that I couldn't do that everyone else seemed to find easy. But then when I started to play the clarinet, I, it was easy. It was really, really easy. And I have since understood that, um, I'm physically very suited for a clarinet. Um, I have the right size and shaped fingers. Um, my coordination is quite good. Um, my auditory processing is exceptionally high. And one of the reasons is I was a really poor reader, so I was picking up so much information from all the sounds around me because I was, I was trying every single day to just hide that I couldn't read the letters very well in front of me.

Mm-hmm.

So music was the first thing I was good at. So there wasn't a love of music. It was a love of feeling like I could do something.

I see.

And then what happened is I learned how to read music at the same time. And about 6 months later, my reading improved significantly. And I think the reason I have studied all of this research ultimately is to answer the question, did learning music and having that opportunity to learn music fundamentally change my life trajectory because it actually helped my brain figure out how to read. It is still really hard for me today, but it's not nearly as hard as it used to be. So, wow, that doesn't really answer your question, but it wasn't love. There's not passion. There's nothing else. It's like it's actually changed me as a person and made my life very, very different.

That's fascinating, and it does make sense. I mean, one of the things that I've been on a kind of on a crusade, uh, on this show recently, and well, really since the show started 5 and a half years ago, is that is basically your story. But I want to put it to you in my terms, and I want to see how you react to it. So in your story, you talked about the way music— you, or that you feel that music impacted your academic success, uh, in, in other ways because it gave you a sense of belief in yourself, but also you were a struggling reader, and the, the learning to read music actually had impacts, whether it's a combination of positive outlooks that you had about yourself once you became a musician, with mixed with the cognitive benefits of music itself, um, you know, all those things. And, and, uh, and one of the arguments that I've made on this show is that even if, um, there was no future music performance goal for a music student in one of our classes at all. In other words, if, like, for example, I teach kids to read music, and I teach teachers how to teach kids to read music, and even if there were no future benefits for their music reading in terms of getting a scholarship to college or performing in a music ensemble or whatever, the argument I've made is that the neurological benefits alone are enough to justify solidifying a music training that includes literacy, among many other things, in schools. Thoughts about that? Is that crazy?

No, no, no, not at all. And I'm very much on the same path that we have this concept that you learn music for that scholarship or for that career, or it's a very, you know, it's not— we don't do art so we become artists. I don't know why we've got it into our heads. that you only learn music for a career path. And I think a lot of what is driving me is trying to address that narrative and just say, actually, no, it's fundamental for every child's cognitive development. And the endpoint, yes, we need pathways towards that endpoint for those students who want to pursue that. But there's a bigger issue in here and there's a bigger reason that is more fundamental to the next generation of students to be able to perform at their highest, whatever they might do. And I think music has this— is being narrowed and narrowed and narrowed. And I am trying to address it by saying, look, the science is telling us that it's actually beneficial for everybody and that every child not should be given the opportunity if they want to. I don't like that. It's actually being, being required to have that opportunity so that we can ensure that their cognitive development is as good as it possibly can be.

Absolutely. Oh my goodness, you're preaching to the choir here. Okay, so before we get too far into that, why don't you tell us a little bit more about what you do now? How would you describe a day in the life of Anita Collins professionally? What are you working on?

I love that question. I love that question when it comes to like scheduling haircuts. It's like, so what's a Wednesday look like for you? And it's like, no Wednesday is the same for me. No, any day is the same. And that's, that's actually really exciting for me. I think generally it's doing the work within Bigger Better Brains, which is the company I founded in order to help music teachers to just get this research out in ways that music teachers can use it. and they can use it as a normal part of their daily life, that they can advocate with ease is the main part of that. And I have a wonderful team that works with me on that. I do a lot of— and I think the most fundamental work I do is I consult to anything from a single school to a whole nation's education department to say, look, this is where music sits currently. You've read the research, you've spoken to me, you understand that actually maybe it's an opportunity that you're missing. And then going, okay, let's solve the problems to get you from where you are to ideally where you want to be. So I have long relationships with all sorts of organizations all over the world that are walking this path to making sure that the provision of music education is as wide and as high quality as they can make it. I'm still a practicing teacher. So I was at band this morning. We had band from 7:30 till 8:30 in the morning. And it was our senior kids who are very rusty after coming off 2 weeks of holiday. You could see them go, going, oh, and these brains going, oh, I've forgotten how to do this. And I still get to be involved with the school that I started with as well in all sorts of things, both musically but also helping them designing a new auditorium that we've just built and things like that. So there's all sorts of things. And then there's doing podcasts and media. I do a lot of media again just to try and be that voice that keeps music education in the forefront of everyone's mind. Right.

Now, you're an instrumental musician by background, and most of the audience of this podcast are vocal music and choral music educators, although I have discovered through some of my own research that the vast majority— the vast majority, we're talking about in the 98th percentile or so— of choral and vocal music educators were instrumentally trained.

Yeah.

Meaning there are very few. I keep looking, I keep trying to find, and I found a few out in my audience, which is, you know, several thousand educators around the world that are listening pretty regularly here. And I keep trying to find them, and it's very difficult to find them. So far I can count them on one hand of people who grew up to be music teachers but only received vocal music training, didn't any— didn't receive any instrumental training at all. No piano lessons, no band, no orchestra. None of that stuff, which I think is its own separate podcast. But, um, but my question for you is, uh, if there were some things— because you've said you do a lot of communicating about these, these topics and to music educators. So let's start out here, um, with if there were a couple things, 2 or 3 things about what you know about music and the brain that, in your opinion, if you could snap your fingers right now and make sure that every single person who teaches music, including us vocal music teachers, that we just knew these, these 2 or 3 basic things about the brain, the quality of music education would improve? I know that's a very broad question, but are there, are there certain things that you feel like they just all need to know, but we just don't know them?

Oh, that's a very big question. I think it's really hard to know how much music educators know, because I think they know a lot intuitively. And I think they know it through a couple of avenues. One is their own education themselves. They have come to understand the music learning process, but also they often see that they function differently from a cognitive point of view than people who haven't been musically trained. The problem we often have as music teachers is we tend to have music teachers as friends. And I have a theory that's because we have such antisocial hours that basically they're the only people that we can have as friends.

That's true.

But it means that we're not, we're not always out in the world going, oh, hang on, we all went to this meeting together and I came away with a very different view of what happened to the one you came away with. And a lot of that has to do with how our brains are actually wired. So then I think one of the biggest understandings seems so simple, but to actually say that we experience— musically trained people, and I use that term instead of musician for very specific reasons, and I'm really happy to go into them. But I think musically trained people experience the world every second, every single day differently to anyone who's not musically trained. Now, there's not worldwide research on this, but somewhere between 85% and 88% of the population are not musically trained. So it means almost everyone, you know, 1 in 10 people you run into in the general public will have an idea of what music training is, and they will have a brain that functions differently. So 9 out of the 10 have no idea about what that experience is, but also they don't see, experience, understand the world in the same way. And I think that's, that's the starting point to go, hang on, when I'm speaking to a parent and they haven't learned a musical instrument and I'm talking in a particular kind of way, they've got no point of reference.

Yeah.

So the big thing I find with music teachers is I have to help them be able to see that world and then go, okay, if I didn't know any of this, because most of us started with music when we were extremely young and not only that we were very good at it usually, and we then took it on as a career, and then it's become our life's vocation and passion. Like, we are wedded to this thing. What's it like to then go, okay, if I didn't have music in my life, what, what would I be experiencing the world like? And I think that's the biggest difference, the starting point of going, okay, let's start with how other people experience the world. Because then when you start talking about the brain changes, If we do it in a fluffy kind of way that you just feel so good and it makes you feel great and all those things, it's like, yeah, but for some people exercise does that and for other people wine does that. You know, there's all sorts of different ways we do it. And I think it's really important to, to be able to say music is specific and different and universal. And I think that's the, that's the biggest change again. So I think many things. We experience the world differently to the way everyone else does. It's both a blessing and a curse in many cases, but it's, it's a, it's a different way that the world works. When we talk to others who don't understand how it works, we need to explain it in ways that they understand and that they can relate to. And I very, very regularly relate it to sport. Most of us, almost all of us had to do sport on prescription at school.

Mm-hmm.

So we get that. It's a, it's a commonality between us. So it's like, okay, we've all done sport. It's like this, but then I have to talk about what's the different thing. And then I think the biggest misconception I find myself having to— there are some really deep underlying myths around musical learning that I find are the very first ones I have to break down before I can even start helping someone else understand the actual benefits of it. And one of those—

Sorry, sorry to jump in. Do you, do you mean myths? Do you mean myths held by music educators?

No, myths held by the general public.

I see. Okay, got it. Go ahead.

Um, the— I can't remember which order I was doing them in. Um, one of the biggest ones is that only children who are talented and interested should do music. And now, as music educators, I totally get that because teaching a talented and interested student is so much easier than teaching one who doesn't want to be there and really may not be completely set up for success at the beginning. But actually, that's the kid that needs us more. That's the kid that really, really needs music education. The ones who are talented and interested, however you define that, are going to be okay no matter what, because actually what it's really showing is their brain is exceptionally well-wired for anything. So that's the original, you know, the talented and interested part of it. The We are here to produce musicians. Now, when I, and I do this all the time with crowds and I go, okay, when I say the word musician, what does it bring up? And every single time it's 3 things. It's someone who is exceptional at what they do. Like I'm talking wildly amazing as a musician. So technically amazing, does that thing on stage and gets paid for it as their main sort of income. So, yep, it's exceptionally good on stage. It's a job.

Yeah, absolutely.

But then if we go, okay, oh, we're, you know, we're all musicians, I'm producing you into musicians, and some kids are going, I don't want to do that, or that doesn't interest me, as opposed to going, music is an amazing art form. It's something that we all need to have an experience of so we can have the cognitive and the musical benefits from it. Um, and the aim is not this very rigid, 3-pronged version of musician. The aim is, how can I help you be the best human you can be? And music is part of that recipe.

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And I think, Shane, those are the main big things that I know I'm trying to change. The science just backs up what I'm saying, but I've taken a very long time to understand what are the beliefs sitting out and the myths sitting underneath all of this that even when I present the science, they go, yeah, cool. But it doesn't, doesn't move the dial, doesn't change their mind, doesn't make them ask questions. But if I address those fundamental ones, and then I kick in with the science after that, they go, yes, I can see what you mean. Right. That's interesting. Yeah. Let's hear more about that. So it's a way of changing and opening up doors, I find.

Right. That's, yeah, it's interesting. And I agree. And I definitely noticed those things, those myths about the general public that you point out, that those are just as common over here in the United States, uh, as I would say you might see over in Australia. Now, one thing I do notice too is I, I hinted at myths in music education by educators too, and I do think that exists as well. And so, uh, for example, uh, there are many theories of music education, and there have been, you know, there's Edwin Gordon's music learning theory, there's Kodái, there's John Kirwan, and there's Dalcroze and Orff and all of those things. And, you know, those are all great. And I think my view of those types of theories is that those all have some, some piece of truth in them, kind of like, kind of like world religions, right? You could, you could make that argument that the world religions all have found some piece of the great mystery of the, of the universe. And I think music I think education theories are no different, but one of the things that I run across, and I want to see if you have ever come across this too, if I try to present something I've learned from scientists, even such as science that people like you have gathered, or the neuroscientists directly, and I try to make observations from that, what I get a lot from music teachers is, well, it's ultimately, it's whatever works for me. Whatever works for me is what I will do for the teaching method. And I get— that frustrates me a bit because I think, well, then why aren't— but why aren't we talking about what works for kids' brains? Why aren't we talking about, uh, what works in the human brain for learning music? Because that, to me, in 2024, we have a lot of science related to that. Um, you know, what is going on? What is that fireworks display that's going on in our brain when we do various musical activities? So in your view, A, is that something that you've come across in music for music educators? And B, What is going on with the latest research related to how kids learn music?

Okay, 2 very big questions. I think I'm not quite— I don't quite agree with the way you've put it, that the concept that what is going on with kids' brain, like every child's brain, with the concept that they are the same. There's, for me, as I've learned about these, there's so many. Yeah, the variable starts with their genetics. It then goes to their gestation. So yes, they get these genetics, but what happens as they're growing in mum's belly? What happens at birth? And that's actually a really important thing to what happens for brain development. What happens from the nature and nurture point— sorry, the nurture point of view from the first 5 years versus what happens after those 5 years? And all of these will tweak all of the dials like on a fantastic recording desk, and they will change how those if we want to use fireworks as an example, those— your fireworks and my fireworks would look different. It would be a whole different display. And that's because of all of these variables that have come through. So it makes sense to me that we— there are different— every single child learns differently. And we can have these methodologies that for me sit as a foundation and a way of starting that journey. But the magic comes with the music teacher when they go, yes, I subscribe to this particular methodology, but every single child in front of me is different, and I'm going to adjust and change for those kids. I often find with the particular methodologies is you'll get the kids who thrive in it, and they're the easier ones to teach. And we all understand that, oh my God, this child is an absolute blessing, and it's just a joy to teach them the whole time. But actually, that's because cognitively, potentially, they were incredibly well put together genetically from the start. They had good nurture situation when they were young. Their brain has grown incredibly well. Um, they might also be— and I know this seems like such a strange thing— they might also be older in their year group. So there's so much research around the fact that the, the kids who are the older 6 months versus the younger 6 months of any year group in a school, they will perform better because they're just that little bit older and further along that pathway.

In sports too.

Sports, exactly the same. Hockey. I love the data about hockey and the fact that, you know, those that play at incredibly high levels are always the older ones. They always won in 3 months.

Yep.

So there's all these variables that come through. And I think, yeah, I struggle with that idea of one methodology beats them all, just like one religion beats them all. It doesn't. They're different ways of— they have different foundations for— with religion, it's belief and faith. With music education, there's different bases to which we know that music learning can occur at different ages and different progressions that go through. But every kid is different in that, and every student will go through different processes. And they'll have times when they're flatlining in their learning and they're going through neural pruning and nothing's going on in there except stuff's getting thrown out because they need more space. They're not going to do learning at that point, but then they're going to do heaps of learning after that.

Right.

So I think it's a slightly different take on what you said before, which is that there's lots of variables that come into it. The magic in the middle is actually the music educator and how flexible and plastic, if you want to use a brain word, they can be around tailoring their music education for every child on that given day. Because kids are also different on different days in different years and all that sort of stuff as well. So I think it's really good that we learn methodologies. I don't think it's really good that we stick to them and go, well, this doesn't— yeah, rigidly. I don't think the rigid works. I actually think ultimately, as music teachers, we are creative beings, and sometimes if we stick to a methodology too strictly, then actually we're losing that opportunity for the magic that can happen through music.

Yeah.

And we need to be into it. I do get, however, that it is a really nice, solid, comfortable basis to base everything else on, right? So I get why people do it that way, but I also don't think it's beneficial for the bigger picture.

Now, yes, and I agree, and I appreciate you pointing out that because in the way that I phrased that, I don't want people to think that what I think is that there is one way that humans learn music and we just simply need to hook up an MRI to discover it.

Yeah.

That's not what I'm suggesting. However, I do think there have been some pretty cool things that we've learned in the last 20 or 30 years about things that are going on in the brain that I believe— this is my opinion, and feel free to disagree with this— but I just, I think that those music learning theories that have come about, you know, 100 years ago or 50 years ago could now be more powerfully combined with these interesting things we're learning about how— what's going on in the brain on average. Like, so, like, in the— not necessarily the— in every kid's brain, but there are things that we now know about what's going on in the brain that we didn't know when Kodály, for example, was coming up with his theory, right? Is that something you ever think about, of just like a way to combine the old with the new science? Yeah, yeah.

I don't know if it's the old and the new. What struck me even when I first started reading the research is I sort of went, oh, that's why that works. So, so much of what I know I do, and a lot of other music teachers, is we go, I know I see this kid doing this, and I know if I do this, then it'll fix it, and they'll get on to the next step. But we never understood why it worked.

Right.

And so the research for me has been telling me is why these things worked. And Kudai and Orff, for example, are really good examples for me of why does singing and moving and playing instruments, you know, together in that traditional style, why does it lay such good foundations for auditory processing? Why is it so good for actually then moving on to musical instruments once you've got these sort of very basic movement patterns and things like that? It kind of reinforced, I think, what Kudai and Orff in particular, and Delacroix to a point, learned over time through trial and error. And all the brain science is doing is going, yes, but then now we know why it works. And it's because honestly, that again, the mechanism around motor connection and the making of music, but then also how it's understood and processed within the brain is the main connection. And that happens for all sorts of things. It happens for sport, happens for all kinds of movement like our gait, our walk kind of thing, all this rhythmic entrainment that's running around our body. is actually really important to understand and that's why Krye Offendaal-Crows kind of observed things and went, well, this is how kids seem to be learning naturally, so what if we transferred that into a methodology? And that's why it's come that way. So I don't see it as melding old and new. I see it as reinforcing a lot of the basic tenets of those methodologies, but I also think it's beneficial when you get the student and there's always every— It's about the third question I always get asked is, you know, I've just got this student who doesn't seem to get it, or a student who's neurodiverse, or a student who seems to really struggling, and that's the student who needs music education the most. And yet if we're not flexible with our method, we can't adapt to help them. And I think that's where the science could feed into go, okay, the method works for 80% of kids. Here's the 20%, and here's some more information that might feed into understanding that and helping you be a better practitioner. For every student.

Now, what's your opinion about, uh, the— so we've mentioned Kodály already. Um, how familiar are you with Edwin Gordon's music learning theory stuff?

Not as familiar.

Um, but yeah, it's kind of like, it's kind of like a taking of Kodály and then, you know, bringing it a little bit further into, uh, the realm of audiation, the idea of just like hearing the music in your head and how important that is for young music students. And so what I'm curious to see— and we'll just put it in Kodály's terms then— would you agree that the brain research that we know about kind of confirms the certain aspect of what Kodály believed, which is that music instruction really should begin with singing, that singing is kind of the foundation of getting the brain to then— hear the music happening because we're using our voice and we're almost like a spoken language. Like, we're learning music more similarly to a spoken language when we sing versus when we, you know, push this button at this time, like on the piano or whatever, and then a note will come out. Which I think that has to be, I feel like, a different neurological process than I'm going to sing a note that I hear happening in my head in the same way that I'm going to say a word that I hear happening in my head. Thoughts about that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, I'd put it a slightly different way.

Yeah.

Um, song, song is our first language. So at birth, babies can't speak. And even if we look from an evolutionary point of view, before we had speech, we had communication. And that communication was melody and rhythm, basically. It didn't have necessarily speech sounds involved, but it had grunts and it had ways of communicating information. And if we look at, at the concept of all sound is music to the brain, then that's actually where we started. Song is our first language, and we often find that when we are injured, we need to go back to song in order to then learn how to speak again. And in the brain, babies start with song, and you can hear it by their sing-songy way that they, they make sounds. Even the way the parents, um, then speak to their children when they're very young— parentese— which I always love. It's the same for babies and puppies. It's exactly the same sounds that we make, and we're infusing our whole spoken language with this particular melody that gives more information. So I think what it is, the way around I think about it, is if song is our first language, out of song rises speech, but also out of song rises auditory processing. So advanced auditory processing, the ability to, exactly as you put it, hear the sound in your head before you have to make it. So that follows through for reading. It's exactly the same thing. But what happens is this: the, the words have to go through the eyes. The brain then has to hear the sound related to the symbols given to the eyes to the brain, and then has to make the sound. Song is exactly the same. So the basis of it is going— in some cases, I would put it— is going back to our first language, which then is the foundation for all other types of communication that we have, including the pushing a button on a piano at a certain time. That's a type of communication. So even when we're playing music on an instrument and we're not singing, the language network of our brain is active, which I find fascinating as a concept that our brain perceives that we are talking because it is a language. And so what's happening is song-first language, we hear it in our brain, we then talk to our body to go to make the sound that my brain is hearing, you have to hit these these things in this combination. It's an extension of it. So it's really interesting. You said when you started that your audience is mostly instrumentally trained who are now working as, as, um, songwriters, choir directors, and singing teachers. For me, as I've looked through, and I get this question all the time, is like, is it better to be a singer or is it better to be an instrumentalist? And I don't believe in either. I say it's better— an instrumentalist needs to know how to sing and a singer needs to know how to play an instrument. for the highest level of cognitive development that we would hope for.

Yep, I would agree.

So again, a different way to put it, but yeah, along those similar lines.

Yeah, that's incredible. And now, would you— so the thing you said about the piano, playing the piano as also kind of functioning in the brain as communication, I think that's interesting. I want to drill in on that for a second. So I think the thing that keeps sticking for me though, Is that if I'm 4 years old, for example, and I don't have any piano training, but you were to show me how to play a C, an E, and then a G, and then I played them in sequence and then played them all together, it would make a chord and it would make a C, an E, and a G accurately. But if— but for a singer, they, they would need more training than that. Like, they would need— like, they could mimic it, of course, but for them to read it would take significantly more training than me to be able to just take a 4-year-old and show them where to put their fingers and tell them to put it down. So I struggle— I would struggle to believe that the neurological process is the same because I would need to— partly because that is what I do. Like, I teach kids by the thousands to look at a piece of sheet music and know how to make it sound in their head. And part of that is my pedagogy is kind of abnormal and unique, which is that we don't play notes for kids on the piano. We make them learn to hear it first.

Yeah.

And so that's a sticking point for me because I feel like there's got to be something in that language, that spoken language for the singer, connection. And I'm not sure that that's as well studied actually as a musician playing an instrument.

No. Well, no, no, it's that with the biggest gap there sits in the research is the fact that neuroscientists study it to understand how the brain works. They do not study it to understand how best to teach music. So we've got this big gap.

Yes. Okay.

And we have— that's why we have to be so careful of the application of the research into music education. There are some things like It wasn't done for this reason and we can't reapply it through that way. I think your 4-year-old is a great example because musical skill development is very much dependent on brain maturation across particularly childhood. So 4-year-olds, they play so much better as piano, even if they start on piano as a 4-year-old, if they are taught in a way where they sing it first and then they replicate it on their fingers.

Yeah.

If not using that first language is part of the pedagogy, then as musicians, they're going to strike a point where they just don't improve very much because we haven't sort of given them a foundation to do it. So, you know, when I go to all sorts of different ensembles that use instruments, the use of singing prior to like, okay, let's sing this little tune through and we're going to move our fingers along as we do it. Very common practice, but actually it's the thing that makes the brain go, okay, I'm going to sing it out loud, which means I'm going to understand the melodic contour. I'm going to move my fingers at the same time. So actually, it's kind of like I'm connecting my brain and what it's hearing with my body. And then when I have to actually put that instrument in my mouth and make it, I've kind of almost taken like a little step beforehand. And we know that that's the stepping stones that we go towards learning an instrument. I still think a lot of instrumental teachers that I observe never learned that way themselves, and therefore they struggled to teach that way because it wasn't part of their traditional—

Right.

Their mental model of learning, unless they've gone out and done a lot of work within their pedagogy to go, okay, there could be better ways to actually do this.

Yeah.

So I think we have an issue within our profession that our developmental stage is so long because we have to go from ourselves as 4-year-olds through to when we become teachers somewhere around 22, for example, all that time we're only learning from a small number of people and in a small number of types of pedagogies. If we're lucky enough to get one that's got that singing part through, great, we'll just carry that into music teachers. If we had the traditional, no, you just play the instrument, for example, on piano, it's going to be really hard to add that in as a new thing as a music teacher. So I think that's where the science helps us go, and I do it with all of my when I often go out and talk to music teachers, there needs to be singing, moving, and an instrument involved, and that has to happen all the way through their education. Now, if I have an early childhood teacher, teacher of year 4, for example, they'll go, of course, that's all we do all day. But then I go, okay, let's take a teacher who does band for middle school. Nope, it's often not part of what they do.

Yeah.

And so that's a real challenge to them to say singing, moving, and an instrument, and they have to be done all the way through. How can you incorporate that appropriately In your context. Yeah.

And I think now in vocal music instruction, the solfège system with hand signs is a really good example of that, of that kinesthetic connection that otherwise kids who are learning simply to sing in an academic context at school, they wouldn't intuitively have that kinesthetic connection. And the hand signs, at least in my experience as somebody who teaches vocal music, but I also was, like I told you before, was raised Playing, you know, the piano not very well, saxophone not very well, but like I did grow up doing those things. And to me, that feels in my brain very similar to some of those kinesthetic, like things I have to think about in order to get the pitch to be right. And the brain and body connection is huge in all of those art forms.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think, I mean, I often use a triangle as an example that The 3 senses that have to align for music learning are auditory, visual, and motor. Eyes, ears, body. The hand signs are the perfect example of it. You're singing at the same time as moving your body, at the same time as visually taking in information. So it's an example of this is why it works. Because if we connect those 3 together, not only does music learning occur, but actually we know that they are the very basis of all other learning. So when that triangle is connected, reading, writing, understanding scientific concepts, catching a ball, being socially responsible, all is built on that triangle coming together. It's kind of like it's a necessary step for the brain to go through in order to then grow from that. And it's a, again, the Kirwan Hand Signs are for me that perfect example of why is it so effective? It's because it's getting that triangle working as early as possible.

Yeah, I love the, the concept of the triangle. I'm curious, in your opinion, um, what would we lose cognitively, the cognitive benefit for music education, if we simply taught music without the reading part? In other words, if we didn't teach kids to read music at all, it was just singing because it's fun, banging on the drums because it's fun, improvising, which is valuable, all those things, but we took out that rung of the triangle, the visual part. What would we lose?

I think we'd lose independence. I don't know if it's a funny word to use, but ultimately, as music educators, what we're trying to do is get a student to need us less, to actually be able to go, to go, I want to play this piece of music, so I can read all the dots on the page and I can listen to it and also then go, okay, I can play it through. So the reading of music actually is the tool that takes us through so that students can play and make and create music themselves, I think, is the first thing. The second thing is the cognitive benefit of music actually comes from the fact that it is so hard.

Yeah.

It's a hard thing to learn and it takes years and it takes years of consistent application. And the fact that that has to happen, the brain goes, oh, this is really hard. Okay, I'm going to have to get stuck in and grow a whole bunch of new neurons and a whole bunch of white matter and a whole bunch of gray matter because you're giving me this thing to do which is really, really difficult and therefore I have to grow. So it's a promotional activity for the brain. What music reading does is take students through, okay, you can play this thing, great, let's go to that very next step. You can play this thing, great, let's go to that next step, very next step. And it walks us through a step. If we don't have music to read, it's very few humans who would go, I wanna try and do this, I wanna try and play this really hard lick or this really, really hard, let's sing this incredibly hard song just from a recording.

Yeah.

Most of us, because our brain is lazy and we are lazy, but it's all about conserving cognitive energy, we would just go, oh, that's a bit too hard. I'm not gonna do that. And the brain goes, great choice. Fantastic, because I don't want to work very hard anyway. The reading of music pushes us through into the things we didn't know we were capable of doing, and that is everything to do with persistence and resilience and the reason why we grow into the humans that we grow into. So for me, I think we would lose a lot, um, in terms of that cognitive development and that musical development as well.

Yeah, yeah. Well, of course I agree. I just, I think you might, one might be surprised at how often I have to make that case to other music educators.

I understand. I have to do the same thing.

Yeah, it is not a universally accepted phenomenon, especially in vocal music, because we can, you know, very much like spoken language, you can have a very developed auditory sense of a language and be very conversational in it. In other words, a person could never learn to read but be a fantastical— a fantastic speaker. They could be— they could never learn to read but be a, you know, a really interesting actor or poet. You know, those things would be harder, but they could do it. And so I think in vocal music in particular, we can, you know, we can just sing without reading.

Yeah, that's true. But also, I think, for me, as I work through all these issues, is vocal music has an extra strike against its name, unfortunately. And that is the world that we currently live in, which has a narrative around God-given or talent-born gift.

Yeah.

And it's created by the America's Got Talent and all of those kinds of shows where the narrative is spun that, no, I just sing when I feed the chickens or, you know, I've never sung to anybody else and I've suddenly got up on this stage and I have this extraordinary voice hitting this incredible range and And that's because that's a sellable story and that's one that people go, oh gosh, she's been plucked from nowhere and now she's amazing and she's got a record album and all that, you know, all these sorts of things.

Yep.

And then so I actually think that unfortunately many of your listeners, you actually have the biggest mountain to climb because I do believe that the current narrative around singing and singing ability is really hamstrung by this, this other narrative. And it's really interesting. I've met quite a number of people through different ways that have been on those shows and have been exceptionally successful. And every single one of them have said, yeah, I had this music teacher here and I had this here and I would— they'd gone through their whole music education history. And I've asked a couple of them, I said, why didn't you say that on the show? He said, because that's not the story they tell. Even if you said that, that's not how it edited in. And I think that's one of our really biggest issues. Is music is being seen as, again, talent that is given, not talent that is made through hard work.

Or just built block by block.

Built by block. And I actually don't like the word talent at all. I use it because everyone knows what it means. But I actually think that there needs to be another word that is about those people who do the hard work. Athletes do it. It's not like you say, oh, he's amazing. He can pole vault, you know, a world record, but he's never really done very much before. We would never expect that. So why are we expecting it in music education and music performance?

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's great. Now I have another question about the research to see what your knowledge or opinion is on this, because I, one of the things that I've noticed is that I go out in my own amateur way because I'm not a researcher, I'm a teacher, and I don't do that. I don't live in that world, but I try to dip my toe in as much as I can, partly for my audience here at the show. I want to tell them stuff that I find out, right? And I've really struggled to find anything on the internet about what is going on in the brain of a singer.

Yeah.

In other words, what is going on when a person picks up a piece of sheet music to read for a singer? I can find piano players, I can find cellists, Um, you know, I can find instrumentalists. I can't find a single study on singers. Am I just not looking in the right place, or is that a gap?

Yeah, it doesn't exist. Well, not that it doesn't exist. Sorry, it does exist. Um, but remembering that we talked about neuroscientists are studying musically trained people to understand how the brain learns and grows, that's their whole point, right? What they found very early on is that the impact cognitively on through music learning was much, much higher for instrumentalists. And so that's what they concentrated on. Prior to that period of time, we're talking 1995 when it really started, we have a whole bunch and we still have a huge amount of research on singing, but we have it really based on the wellbeing outcomes, the immune health outcomes, and some social connection outcomes. outcomes. So it's, it's a failing within the research that it's just not telling the group who want to research it anything new. So they're like, why would we do it if, if we're not going to find anything out that's new about it?

Right.

Um, so that's the reason why. It's because of the nature of how the field has developed, where they get their funding from, honestly, and the biggest sort of bang for their buck when it comes to research findings. And they have found that learning an instrument just has more identifiable benefits through that neuroscientific lens than it does for singing. Now, it could well be that they just haven't struck on the right methodology in order to investigate that.

Yeah, that's my first thought is like, but if they're also, if those brain scans don't exist because, or are there are less of them, then how do we know that there isn't a similar benefit? Because one of the things that I, it's one of the reasons that I think it might be a gap is because it is actually quite rare in vocal music education to teach the way that I described, which is that my students never have notes played for them. So in other words, an instrumentalist also has to pick up the sheet music and their instrument, and without a whole lot of like— you know, a cellist is almost never going to have a practice track of their part being played in their ear while they play Yeah. Right? They're gonna, they're gonna be expected from a very young age to pick up the instrument, see the sheet music, and start to put it together on their own. Right? And in my classroom, my vocal students do that too. So they, they, they, they're taught what pitch relationships sound like, but then once the music comes out, they're— they don't get any help. Like, they're working on it independently at their own pace. I wonder, and I'm not the only one who does this, but it's rare. And, and I just wonder if vocal music were being taught more similarly to how a cellist, for example, is learning, then maybe some of those neurological benefits would be more similar.

Yes. And I think you're very right because that decision about instrument versus singing was made very early on because they were kind of, it's very typical of any kind of research field. You have to narrow it. You go, I've got a hunch there's a thing here. And then they spend years and years and years and many, many studies narrowing down what is the thing. So very early on in the process, they looked at it and went, you know, if we, if we have to choose between the two, instruments definitely going to win out of this because we can see it. Now, you're absolutely right. I find the variety of pedagogy within the singing world that I get to observe as being incredibly varied. And it is, sometimes it's entirely oral. Sometimes it's with music, sometimes it's with tracks, sometimes it's— there's so much difference. As opposed to you go into a beginner band setting, and the reason why we can have method books is because it's really established quite well that, you know, on clarinet you learn this note first, and then after that, well, you learn this one, and then you learn this one.

Yep.

It's very sequential. So your method definitely sounds like it's mimicking that. So it is a big question to say, okay, well, If we looked at both, and this is a failing within the research until quite recently, is often they would say a group of musicians or kids learning music, but they would never detail the methodology behind it. So they would just make an assumption. And this was pulled up quite significantly in 2020 by a couple of researchers who went, this is a big failing in the research because the variabilities you've allowed to come in through that are enormous and could actually change all the findings. So after that, the researchers then went, and you've made a point, right? Let's look at this. And they've done things a little bit differently. But again, that's our question, is the next step of it to go, okay, do certain methodologies change, may mean that the brain develops differently? And again, you'd have to get the neuroscientists interested in a reason that was not musical to go, okay, how do we approach it?

Right.

Is this worth our time, money, and energy? So it's just one of the— again, we can't apply everything from the research across. We have to be discern about what we do and how we apply it.

So, so then maybe you would know who do I need to talk to? Who do I need to convince that this study needs to happen?

I don't know. They'd definitely be in the States, though. There's a couple of really good research institutes that look at those sorts of things. But it is, I think it's not so much the convincing. It's like, where does the money come from? And that's always what's driven, driven research is where's the money? to make it happen. Canada has always been very big on this research from the very beginning, and they've seen the reason to do it and the reason to understand how children learn through the lens of music being, okay, we can see musically trained kids have these brains that are faster, more connected, more consistent, more synchronized, healthier. That's got to be a good thing for every one of our students, right? How can we research it more? So it has to have a broader Social benefit, I think, is what I always find.

Well, and that's, that's, that's actually— I'm so glad you said that. It has to be a broader social benefit, and that's exactly why I'm so interested in it, because as a teacher of vocal music, um, the voice is the instrument everyone has. And, and, and especially if, um, from just from an, an equitable and inclusive view of, of music education, we are the one instrument that every kid has. No matter what their background is, et cetera. And to me, that's the social benefit of this kind of research, especially if all the other stuff— and I'm gonna— because I know we're getting close to an hour here and I want to be able to not monopolize you, but this is— I could do this, I could do this all day. Um, but, uh, and this maybe could be our kind of last area because I watched your TED Talk again for like the 5th time, um, right before we signed on. And one of the things you talk about in that TED talk from back in 2014 was the idea of, uh, the, the connection, the really interesting connections between, uh, our language brain and our music brain. Uh, and to me, that's, that's a, the social benefit of, of research specifically on the singer, because, uh, that is the— like you said, song is our first language. I feel like we could learn something really profoundly Um, impactful to just what it means to be human by, by, by more fully understanding what goes on in our brains when we sing, when we read, when we converse musically, uh, when we sing together, etc. Because I do like the soft skills and all the other reasons people study singing, like for the, uh, like that our heartbeats unite and it all— isn't that cute? And all of that stuff. But I feel like there's more. There's probably something going on in the brain that we should know about. Thoughts about that?

Yeah, I definitely— and there are some automatically, a couple of labs spring to mind of places where they do specifically look at that 0 to 5 years of age in order— and they use music as a tool to understand the human condition and the human developmental bit. So there are, there are, there is research being done in that way, and also how we communicate particularly and how we care. And it's that different thing we keep sort of separating out cognitive development and sort of those social development soft skills, whichever way, but they're all the same thing. And they're all in the same brain, which is even more important to remember. So I think it's trying to keep that in mind and to know that sometimes what we might call a soft skill, which is, you know, social cohesion, for example, or prosocial behavior, you know, that ability for kids to be empathetic and to have agency around their actions. That's really, really important for that cognitive and academic development as well, because the more they feel safe within their school, safe within their community, willing to participate, the more they're actually in a space where they can do learning, if that makes sense. So yes, song is part of that. To burst your bubble a tiny bit, there's also really important things about keeping beat and keeping rhythm, which is such an interesting one for me. Because, you know, and we do it a lot within whether we're in choir practice or within band practice or something like that. Keeping a beat, having an internal sense of beat, and then sharing that beat within the group is just as important when it comes to that cognitive development. But if I go, and they've done some research with this, in a band, for example, take my example, and choir might sit in an interesting part in this. Band has to sort of, we have to have this shared piece of internal pulse. In order to play the notes at the same place because there's so much involved in getting the air through the instruments to make the sound at the right time. So it's really important at the start. At the start, tuning, being in tune, intonation, not really as important because it's about playing at the same time. Orchestras go the opposite direction. So they are all about playing in tune from the start because if you don't, it sounds horrendously bad. And they're not so interested in beat. And so what actually happens is while we all get to the same place in the end, end, the different parts of the brains that are being developed through our selected pedagogies actually is changing and is different all the way up. Now choir and singing to me is sort of somewhere in the middle. I've seen choirs behave more like band.

Mm-hmm.

That they, it's about sticking together and it's about being together. And if your tone's not quite right, that's okay because actually we're working on that. And then I've seen them all about, it's gotta be perfectly in tune, but they are wandering around the beat like anything. And again, there can be these different levels and types of development that if these kids don't continue, they might not get the full value out of it. So it does make me— I know that doesn't really answer your question, but it does make me wonder about our pedagogies and what we're— the brain development that we are encouraging through the way we've been taught then how to teach the thing we do.

Yeah.

Are we doing that? And what changes is that happening? So I think as music educators, we have It's on us to find out as much as we can about this, to then interrogate our own practice, to know that we are benefiting every child in the most way that we possibly can.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I like your observation about choirs maybe being somewhere in between. But I have another thing that I'm super nerdy about. I have lots of those things. But another thing I'm super nerdy about is the— is sound waves, the properties of the sound waves themselves. And how it might impact that. So, my response to what your observation is, is that in band, the sound wave— for people, most of my audience is audio only, so they're not going to see my hands here— but the sound wave for most band instruments starts at nothing, and then the very first noise that happens is like a shot up of sudden noise.

Yeah.

Which is why the beat is so crucial. For, for bands, because that burst of sudden noise has to be at the same time. Whereas the, uh, a stringed instrument, there's almost like a crescendo of noise from— because the bow across the string creates like a nothing sound, and then it blooms. So you can actually get away with slightly non-precise onset of bow to string. Now, of course, the vocal folds vibrating mimics that.

Yes.

Um, and, and so that sound wave starts at a crescendo right away. But then of course in choirs, if the sound starts with a consonant, then it's a sudden burst like in band. And so it makes sense that we would sometimes fall in the middle. But how was that the nerdiest thing you've ever heard?

Oh, it was fantastic. I would explain it one way, you would explain it another way. That's fantastic.

Right? Oh yeah, yeah, that's really good stuff. Like I said, I could do this all day, but what I'd like to do on the way out, if it's okay with you, is just share with folks, if you could, the stuff that you're doing now with the company that you do now. Are there things that practicing everyday music educators around the world could check out on your website? Do you guys do resources? Do you do— what are the types of things that music educators should know about what you guys do?

Okay, so much. We basically take the research and we put it into formats that music teachers can share with their community. So basically trying to advocate in the easiest way possible. We create resources, anything from like a research summary that has 3 whole pages of citations at the end. If you're going to a school board member, for example, and you're saying, look, I want to increase our choir program, it goes, okay, here are the benefits. Here's all the research that sits behind it. We've done all the work for you. It's just there to support you going in and saying, look, this is what I want. These are the reasons why I want it. Here's the research that says why it's gonna be good. And then the other part to it is, and this is how we're gonna show you that it's working. And I think that's another, that's another thing that we do. It's basically an investment pitch of going, this is the product and this is what it's gonna do and this is how the benefit's gonna happen. And that's really important. We do it in lots of different kinds of ways because we know every community is different. Some communicate on social media, some send home newsletters, some have presentations. So we've made— I think we've got— we counted them recently and it's over 600 resources that you can go through. But the exciting thing we're doing just this week, just tomorrow, is we're really— finally I've been able to nail down what I call the the BBB method. And that means what are the steps to advocate for something that you go through? What do you identify as the problem at the start? Who's got the problem? How do you understand their side of it? And then what resources do you use and in what way to help educate them about music education? Like I said, 85 to 88% of people that you talk to don't know about it. So I want to help music educators be able to share the value of the work that they do. And ultimately, that's what I want them— I want them to I want other people to understand the value of what they bring to any context that they're in, whether it's a single parent to a whole entire school or a whole entire school district. I want them to be able to tell others in a way that the others will understand that the work they do is incredibly valuable, not just for the performance on the football field or the song at the big presentation night at the end of the year, but actually what happens in lessons and rehearsals is where we're growing brains. And the value of that is so incredibly important. So it's— I'm very— you can probably tell— very passionate about it. And very— it's very important for me to bring that research to music educators who already do a fantastic job but are also very busy in a way that they can just go, great, I'll grab this, I'll pop it into there, I'm done. My advocacy is all set up and all I've got to do is just You know, build on top of that. So giving it, giving them a leg up or a step up in a way that is beneficial for them.

That is great. And what is the website called?

Bigger Better Brains.

biggerbetterbrains.com, .org?

.com and .com.au. And we're also all over Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and I'm trying to think who else. Oh, that'll do for now. But yes, we're all over socials. We try and make sure we're as out there as possible. And yeah, as I said, the method launches tomorrow and it's taken me this long. It's taken me 6 years to really nut down what all the steps are. But I think what I've done is I've actually learned from music teachers as they've used our resources and they've said, if we do it this way, it works every time. And it's like, right, it's time to share that.

That's amazing. And that is so great. I'll put the links to those things in the show notes as well so that people can see those. Well, Anita, thank you so much for your time. This has been incredibly informative, and I appreciate you allowing us— me to bounce some of my crazy ideas off you.

No, they're not so crazy at all. I think it's really good to hear almost the same thing, but then go, hey, there's another nuanced perspective to this. And I've really appreciated, you know, you coming back with with some of yours as well to, to again help me as I explain everything I do.

Great. Thank you as always for sticking around to the end of an episode. If you are still listening, that means you're one of the people who are MVPs of the Choraleosophy Podcast, the people who stick around to the end. Of course, the ways to help are to use the Choraleosophy promo code at sightreadingfactory.com, mymusicfolders.com, 3minutetheory.com, .com, endeavormusicpublishing.com, graphitepublishing.com. And of course you can join the Patreon, link is in the show notes. You can also subscribe at Substack and chip in a few dollars a month there. All of those things are great ways to help. And of course, like, share, leave comments, be part of the conversation. That's what this is all about. See you guys next time.