Are You Crazily Crazy About Music..?

By Author: Chandan
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People with musical intelligence love music. They appreciate rhythm and composition. They are gifted with the ability to compose, sing and/or play an instrument(s). Able to recognize sounds, tones and rhythm, they have a "good ear" for music. They learn best through lectures and often use rhythm and music as a way to memorize things.
The majority of musical capacities localizes in the right hemisphere.However, Rhythm, naming songs and musical notations are left brain activities.

Ways to Enhance Musical Intelligence:
• Include music in lessons where appropriate
• Allow students to include music for independent projects
• Connect music to a lesson (i.e. what music was popular during certain historical periods)
• Use songs to help students study for exams
• Play Mozart or Beethoven as students study in class

Common Characteristics of a person with Musical Intelligence:
• Have good rhythm
• Can easily memorize songs
• Notice and enjoy different sounds
• Often singing, whistling or tapping a song
• Talented with an instrument or singing
...
... • Can tell when a note is off-key
• Often have a song running through their head
• Have an unquenchable passion for music
Career matches for the people with Musical Intelligence:
• Musician
• Singer
• Conductor
• Composer
• Songwriter
• Music Teacher
• Music Director
• Choir Director
• Record Producer
Psychologists are divided about how to interpret the individual’s response to music. Is it merely a set of conventions (that have arisen within a cultural context) or is the brain “wired for music” in the same way as Chomsky suggests that we are genetically predisposed to learning the language? Although there may appear to be parallels between the way we process music and the way we process language, we appear to develop particular schemas that are particularly dedicated to hearing the music. Gardner cites Jeanne Bamberger, a musician, and developmental psychologist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who insists that “musical thinking involves its own rules and constraints and cannot simply be assimilated to linguistic or logical-mathematical thinking.” Igor Stravinsky maintained that composing was not only independent of language and words but also of thinking.
In this sense, an interesting experiment at Wales Elementary School in Wisconsin taken up, students who have taken free music lessons had shown a remarkable improvement in their problem-solving ability. Students who signed up for the twice-weekly piano lessons scored 50% higher than other children. Frances Rauscher, professor of psychology at Wisconsin University, explains that “Children are born with all the neurons they’ll ever have, but the connections between neurons are formed after birth, and it’s those connections that determine intelligence.
(Times Educational Supplement 18 December 1998)

Edunext provides Dermatoglyphics Multiple Intelligence Test (DMIT) that assesses the quotient of different modalities. Based on which you can make more aware decisions about your life and career.