FIND YOUR VOICE
Singing - Fun or fundamental?
The writer, Roger Scruton, in the Sunday
Times Magazine this month queried
whether singing was a dying art: “Music is
no longer something you produce. It is
something you consume. And it is
available everywhere, for free, without
effort, in a thousand varieties. Why trouble
to sing when you can get a far better noise
by pressing a button?”
“IN THE PAST, WHEN WE WERE NOMADIC TRIBES, WE USED SINGING TO BIND OUR WANDERING COMMUNITIES TOGETHER. SINGING BECAME INTEGRAL TO RITUALS OF EVERY KIND, GAVE COURAGE BEFORE BATTLE, COMFORT AFTER LOSS AND, PERHAPS MOST SIGNIFICANTLY OF ALL, A VITAL BOND BETWEEN MOTHER AND CHILD IN THE EARLIEST YEARS OF LIFE”
We certainly do seem to be addicted to iPods and to
thrive on watching programmes like I’d Do Anything,
How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria, Any
Dream Will Do or Your Country Needs You, not to
mention our children’s fascination with US imports
like High School Musical and Hannah Montana.
A generation of children have been brought up with
TV talent and singing shows as a staple diet.
Many criticise these talent contests which encourage
children to pursue a “sure-fast route to stardom,”
known by many in showbusiness as “the X Factor
Syndrome,” as unhealthy as it sets children up for
inevitable future disappointment.
“Why trouble to sing when you
can get a far better noise by pressing
a button?”
Yet, look at it in a different way and what it does
show is human beings’ continued love of music and
song. The problem is the fact that these TV shows
and iPod technology are perhaps two of only a few
outlets today’s children think they have to
“participate” in music for fun.
Howard Goodall, award-winning composer and the
government’s Singing Ambassador, spoke at last
year’s MusicLearningLive2008! The National Festival
of Music Education about how there is a
subconcious need by all of us to “participate” in life.
He believes that phenomena like the coffee shop
revolution have come about through our need to
gather together and escape from our normally
isolated world where most of our work can be
achieved without being with others, through
computers, internet and machines:
“Because we are a brilliantly adaptive species we have
wanted to be with each other. People have wanted to
have meetings, to gather, to be around others.”
At the same time, he thinks that despite our ability to
produce, record and broadcast music from a laptop
in our bedroom, live performance of music is more in
fashion than ever: “We feel a great unspoken need
to participate, not to be passive but to participate
and to be there at that moment when they are
playing that number, to be in the room with other
people, to experience it with another person, not just
to see it on your computer screen on your own and
say, “Wasn’t that a very funny joke?” but to be next
to someone in a room where someone tells that joke
and to laugh with someone.”
Singing is one of the most positive
forms of human activity, supporting
physical, mental and social health
Participating in music is a way of bringing people
together to feel that missing connection. Singing, in
particular, is an easy starter point as we all have a
voice and it is not dependent on social class,
funding, instruments or resources.
However, for a lot of our children, singing together
is now rarely a natural everyday activity.
This demise in group music has fortunately been
identified and highlighted to the government by a
number of high profile musicians, educationalists and
scientists. In response, funding of £40m over
4 years was earmarked by the government in 2007
for a programme to make every primary school a
singing school. This programme is called Sing Up,
with Howard Goodall spearheading the campaign.
Over 10,000 primary schools are now signed up to
Sing Up, with regular training sessions for teachers
and parents on offer, activities organised in schools
and area leaders working across the country.
A Sing Up magazine and website, free literature and
downloadable online resources, sheet music and
audio files, along with a bank of 100 songs for
children are now available in the hope they will help
reinvigorate singing participation in schools and
at home.
The benefits of singing are numerous and far-reaching.
Professor of Music Education at University College
London, Graham Welch believes: “Singing is one of
the most positive forms of human activity, supporting
physical, mental and social health, as well as
individual development in the same areas.”
Singing is healthy
It promotes good breathing and posture
It exercises muscles in the upper body which
in turn improves the efficiency of the
cardiovascular system
It helps reduce asthmatic symptoms
It keeps colds at bay as it increases the amount
of oxygen in the blood, keeps airways open and
reduces the opportunity for bacteria to flourish
It gets the blood pumping which keeps you warm
It can provide therapies for speech disorders
such as stammering
Singing is good for the soul
It makes us feel better about ourselves and the
world around us
It enhances our self-esteem and creates a sense
of achievement
It allows us to release emotions like joy and
sadness
It gives shy and withdrawn children a means of
expression
Singing brings us together
It gives us an increased sense of belonging to
a community
It helps us communicate better
It encourages empathy especially when singing in
a choir or group
It allows us to work in groups in a noncompetitive,
highly supportive environment
It is a gateway for learning to play a musical
instrument
Singing helps us learn
Numerous research projects throughout the world
in recent years have found that:
It improves a child’s counting skills
It accelerates language and reading skills
Singing is a brain and memory turbo-charger
Last year US and Canadian neuroscientific research
showed that learning music improves memory and
the ability to learn other skills.
University students who played instruments were
found to be better at memory tests than those who
did not play or had not played an instrument for a
number of years.
But when the musical students were stopped from
practising music, the researchers found that their
test scores fell. Similar tests were carried out with
children with similar results.
So, music seems to
have an effect on memory and attention.
In order to make our memory work, the brain trains
itself to do “trace memory modelling”. A trace of
something that happened to us or an emotional
response is stored in the brain which can be
re-triggered by the brain and the sequence of
events, information, sounds, words or smell can be
later re-run.
Music seems to have an effect on
memory and attention
Explains Howard Goodall: “If during infancy you
don’t keep stimulating this process, you grow up
with a kind of default level brain setting. Fine, but not
exactly a Ferrari. But it’s possible for the child’s brain
to be accelerated, to be working much more
efficiently if this trace modelling is constantly being
asked to run. How do we do this with infants and
young children, then? Singing. Singing is the easiest,
most fun, most effective way of boosting trace
memory modelling in the young.
It stimulates the re-running of sequences of pitch,
rhythm, contour, timbre, lyrics and structure, time
and time again, effortlessly!”
Singing also appears to keep the brain flexible and
open to new learning of a variety of skills as we grow
up. From early childhood, the brain can teach itself
to keep circuits in our head linked up. Some
connections will be used for language, others for
running and walking, others for counting. If not being
used during early years the brain will realise it
doesn’t need the connection and shut it down.
Exercises like singing work to keep these
connections open during childhood. When singing,
we use six or seven parts of the brain at the same
time; sending instructions to our muscles to make
the sounds, using one part of the brain for language,
another for rhythm, another for pitch.
Singing also appears to keep the brain
flexible and open to new learning of a
variety of skills
So, the message seems to be that singing is good.
Concludes Goodall: “It is something we can all do –
indeed, very young children “learn” to sing without
anyone actually teaching them so to do, as if it is
hard-wired into us at birth. In the past, when we
were nomadic tribes, we used singing to bind our
wandering communities together. Singing became
integral to rituals of every kind, gave courage before
battle, comfort after loss and, perhaps most
significantly of all, a vital bond between mother and
child in the earliest years of life.”