Did you know that music benefits your brain, your academic achievement, sense of self-worth, social-emotional health, critical thinking, and your soft skill development (time management, flexibility, responsibility, teamwork, leadership, and more)? Find out more below. This is why you should be a student musician!
Learn More
Top 9 Reasons to Learn Music and Continue all the way to RHS
1. We’re awesome! We regularly score highly at competitions and receive positive feedback from the community!
2. Looks good on your college applications.
1500 students at RHS participate in a sport. It's almost a prerequisite and is an awesome part of the culture at RHS. However, only about 225 students participate in music. It's a great way to distinguish yourself from your peers and have something that the majority of students do not.
3. We have a great time. Just ask kids that are in the program.
4. De-Stressor built into the school day
Instead of taking an elective that might be more academic in nature that requires a lot more stress, you can decompress and play music. Over 90% of our music students say that they look forward to coming to music classes because they can forget about everything else for a little while and work on something that’s fun to do and relaxing.
5. Increases your test scores.
Music has been proven to have a direct correlation to success on standardized test scores, including the SATs. There are many studies listed below.
6. Continuity
Adjusting to higher grade levels is something a lot of students worry about. This would be a great way to ease the transition and give you some stability with something you’re already familiar with, and with people you know.
7. It’s Rewarding!
In addition to all of that, you can’t help but feel proud of yourself after participating in one of our performance events.
8. Music Makes you Smarter
Well into your early adulthood, your brain continues to develop. Your IQ is capable of being increased until somewhere between 18-22. Playing music fires more neurons in the brain than just about any other intellectual activity. Specific research cited below.
9. All of Your Friends are doing it.
Well, maybe not all! But a lot of them will. It’s a great way to make new friends from the other middle school, see your old friends in the same place, and make some new friends with kids that are in older grades. It’s quite a unique and bonding experience, and we hope you will want to become a part of it!
Scientific Research: Benefits of Music
Higher Test Scores
Music students out-perform non-music on achievement tests in reading and math. 5 out of the 7 RHS National Merit Scholars in 2020 are involved in Ridgefield music. Skills such as reading, anticipating, memory, listening, forecasting, recall, and concentration are developed in musical performance, and these skills are valuable to students in math, reading, and science.
- B. Friedman, “An Evaluation of the Achievement in Reading and Arithmetic of Pupils in Elementary
School Instrumental Music Classes,” Dissertation Abstracts International.
A ten-year study indicates that students who study music achieve higher test scores, regardless of socioeconomic background.
- Dr. James Catterall, UCLA.
Strengthening the other Academic Disciplines
Music is all the subjects wrapped up into one.
Reading is interpreting symbols to sound. So is reading music. Good readers have a good flow with appropriate pauses and inflections when they read aloud. In music, we call this rhythm, phrasing, articulation, and dynamics.
Mathematics is defined as "the systematic treatment of magnitude, relationships between figures and forms, and relations between quantities expressed symbolically." In music, the figures are the notes. The forms are the structure of an entire piece. The relations between quantities expressed symbolically are measured, with each note contained therein being a specific unit of defined time in relation to a constant pulse.
No wonder students of music (particularly string orchestra) perform 22-25% higher than the national average on SATs.
Music is science, particularly physics. The system of tuning and our 12 tone system is based around the Fibonacci Sequence. The frequency of pitch is very specific. Without dividing the string into the right proportion with our fingers when playing, melody as we know it would not exist. It would sound like dying cats. Harmony? That glorious resonance that occurs only when we are perfectly in tune playing different notes? Simple physics. The major chord...the fundamental element of our harmonic system...is built on three notes whose amplitudes are of the ratio 6:5:4. Elegance in simplicity creating beauty. That's how Einstein stumbled on his laws of relativity.
Music is physical education and motoric. The bow hand, the left hand, using both hands if you're a wind player, tapping the foot, the reading, the physical mechanics of synching all of those things up...
...the counting of the rhythm, the physics of the intonation, the lyricism of phrasing, articulation, and dynamics...you're literally learning all the subjects simultaneously. The ultimate brain food. In fact, no other subject is as good for your brain.
Researchers Find Active Music Making Expands the Brain
In the April 23, 1998 issue of Nature, Researchers at the University of Munster in Germany reported their discovery music lessons in childhood actually enlarge the brain. An area used to analyze the pitch of a musical note is enlarged 25% in musicians, compared to people who have never played an instrument. The findings suggest the area is enlarged through practice and experience. The earlier the musicians were when they started musical training, the bigger this area of the brain appears to be.
Research made between music and intelligence concluded that music training is far greater than computer instruction in improving children’s abstract reasoning skills.(Source: Shaw, Rauscher, Levine, Wright, Dennis, and Newcomb, “Music training causes long-term enhancement of preschool children’s spatial-temporal reasoning,” Neurological Research, vol. 19, February 1997 )
The University of Montreal researched brain imaging techniques to study brain activity during musical tasks. Researchers concluded that sight-reading musical scores and playing music “activate regions in all four of the cortex’s lobes” and “parts of the cerebellum are also activated during those tasks.” (Source: J. Sergent, E. Zuck, S. Tenial, and B. MacDonnall (1992). Distributed neural network underlying musical sight-reading and keyboard performance. Science, 257, 106-109. )
Researchers in Leipzig discovered through the use of brain scans that musicians had larger planum temporale, the region of the brain associated with reading skills. Also, musicians had a thicker corpus callosum, the nerve fibers that connect the two halves of the brain. (Source: G. Schlaug, L. Jancke, Y. Huang, and H. Steinmetz (1994). “In vivo morphometry of interhemispheric asymmetry and connectivity in musicians.” In I. Deliege (Ed.), Proceedings of the 3rd international conference for music perception and cognition (pp. 417-418), Liege, Belgium. )
Students who can perform complex rhythms can also make faster and more precise corrections in many academic and physical situations, according to the Center for Timing, Coordination, and Motor Skills
- Rhythm seen as key to music’s evolutionary role in human intellectual development, Center for Timing, Coordination, and Motor Skills, 2000.
A 1997 study of elementary students in an arts-based program concluded that students’ math test scores rose as their time in arts education classes increased.
- “Arts Exposure and Class Performance,” Phi Delta Kappan, October, 1998.
First-grade students who had daily music instruction scored higher on creativity tests than a control group without music instruction.
- K.L. Wolff, The Effects of General Music Education on the Academic Achievement, Perceptual-Motor Development, Creative Thinking, and School Attendance of First-Grade Children, 1992.
In a Scottish study, one group of elementary students received musical training, while another group received an equal amount of discussion skills training. After six (6) months, the students in the music group achieved a significant increase in reading test scores, while the reading test scores of the discussion skills group did not change.
- Sheila Douglas and Peter Willatts, Journal of Research in Reading, 1994.
According to a 1991 study, students in schools with arts-focused curriculums reported significantly more positive perceptions about their academic abilities than students in a comparison group.
- Pamela Aschbacher and Joan Herman, The Humanitas Program Evaluation, 1991.
In a 1999 Columbia University study, students in the arts are found to be more cooperative with teachers and peers, more self-confident, and better able to express their ideas. These benefits exist across socioeconomic levels.
- The Arts Education Partnership, 1999.
In a 2000 survey, 73 percent of respondents agree that teens who play an instrument are less likely to have discipline problems.
- Americans Love Making Music – And Value Music Education More Highly Than Ever, American Music Conference, 2000.
Music will help you get into college and give you an edge in competition for scholarships.
College admissions officers continue to cite participation in music as an important factor in making admissions decisions. They claim that music participation demonstrates time management, creativity, expression, and open-mindedness.
- Carl Hartman, “Arts May Improve Students’ Grades,” The Associated Press, October, 1999.
Employers look favorably upon musicians.
One in three of today’s school-aged children will hold an arts-related job at some time in his or her career.- Education Commission on the States
It's true.
To paraphrase a remarkable music educator from Virginia named Anne Rupert: It has been said by an employer, a lawyer with his own practice and a team of lawyers that work for him, that there are two activities that really say a lot about a person...being a boy or girl scout throughout high school, or being a musician. These two activities show dedication and that you can do something for the long haul. They show that you can take one thing, focus on it, and be good at it. Both of these activities show teamwork and the ability to work with others. By being a musician, you declare yourself a proven intellectual and someone who has the substance of character and focus. You have proven that you have class and are sophisticated. You have proven that you can work as part of a group to accomplish something. You have also proven that you can sit down and pay attention to something for more than 20 minutes! These are qualities found in good people, and that's what it's all about. We're not just making music when we teach kids...we're making people.