Last week, I posted a question on our Resound School Facebook page, Twitter, and Google+ page (which, if you aren’t following or haven’t “liked” yet, you really should) as well as my personal Facebook page and blog:
“Can you give me 3 words that sum up what learning a musical instrument has done for you personally, emotionally, professionally, whatever? Or, if you are a parent of a child who is taking or has taken music lessons, what are 3 words that best describe what learning a musical instrument has done for your child.”
The response was GREAT! And very, very enlightening. What always fascinates me about music education, as well as other liberal arts, is how much it affects a person much deeper, and even more personally, than the traditional academic tenets of reading, writing, and arithmetic, even though learning music actually strengthens the mind in those areas as well. There is something more intimate, more organic, and more fulfilling about it.
I decided to take all the words you provided and put them into a really cool online app that creates word clouds called Wordle. Here’s the result:
There is something about seeing it laid out this way that gives it quite a bit more punch.
The words that were most common: confidence, creativity, and joy, came as no big surprise. Some of the others were unexpected, funny, curious, and yet all very fascinating to hear.
Now, I’m not saying that you can’t feel these things learning a new algebra formula, or researching the economic significance of oceanic trade routes in Southeast Asia. But, if we had asked you the same question about, say, your geometry lessons, would they invoke such a passionate response?
That is what we love so much about teaching music here at Resound School. We get to watch the look on a guitar student’s face the first time they nail a power chord. We get to experience the moment when on of our piano students plays through their favorite song without making a mistake. We get to hear one of our voice students hit a note that was once outside their range with confidence and poise. We get to sit with a violin student who has written their very first original piece. That’s why we are here. Those are the moments we live for. The confidence, the creativity, the joy, and all of the other wonderful words that make up the image above.
You see, for us here at Resound School, learning music isn’t merely an education in an instrument, or how to read and understand notes on a page or screen. Learning music for us is an education in, well, everything.
