A way to provide our brains with moments of respite in a chaotic world…
What’s your special song or piece of music?
Almost everyone has one – it could be a tune that takes you back to being at a party when you were 17, one that reminds you of a fab holiday with friends or one even that brought you solace during dark times. The chances are that when you hear it now, your brain lights up in recognition, prompting a smile or helping you realise how far you’ve come.
Listening to music is good for you
As the world around us continues to change at a dizzying pace, we can often feel the effects on our mental health – despair, overwhelm, helplessness. But get this: music is a really powerful tool to support our wellbeing.
Take the activity of listening to a song. Really listening. It forces us to dedicate time to it; you can’t rush it, or you don’t hear the whole thing, let alone experience its magical benefits. This time investment creates space for your mind to be receptive to the sounds you hear. Not only this, music’s harmonic complexities touch different areas of our brains all at once, influencing our emotions and relieving stress – who would have thought one song could do all that?! This is what makes music so powerful. It’s an official therapy, after all.
The stats are in
The effect that music has on wellbeing applies across the generations. A recent ABRSM study (Associated Board for the Royal Schools of Music) revealed that 84% of children believe music supports their mental health. That’s a pretty commanding statistic right there, especially when you place it in the context of a mental health crisis in schools.
Researchers also found that 87% of music teachers believe that making music is important for students’ mental health and wellbeing – and that’s for child and adult students alike. A music lesson is much like the song we mentioned insofar as it creates space and time to dedicate your mind to it. When you find that your focus on a song or piece of music is all-consuming of your attention, that’s when it will have the best effect on your wellbeing. And if you’re actually playing it on an instrument, that takes things to the next level!
Music education is evolving
In the ABRSM survey, both classroom teachers and private music teachers indicated that their practice is changing in response to what students want to learn. And in a pressured world, doing music exams is not the preferred way forward. To be honest, I’m not sure it ever was for a lot of students. Nowadays, we are in increasing need of giving ourselves and our students a break to experience the benefits of music without turning it into a chore. Wellbeing benefits aren’t measurable per se, but the empirical results are certainly worth it.
Fifty four per cent of music teachers said they had changed their teaching style in the past five years, becoming more student centred and focusing on enjoyment (all teachers) over technical aspects or chasing exam grades (instrumental teachers). It’s a balance, of course. You can’t just skip all the technical aspects if you want to be a proficient or professional player and/or participant in music-making but making the process more enjoyable and less pressured is far more effective overall.
Music and technology
Technology is playing a bigger role than ever in music learning and composition. Exam boards like ABRSM provide apps and practice tools to help instrumentalists learn scales, get better at sight-reading and listening, learn music theory and more. There are even free resources for classroom teachers that link directly with UK music curriculums.
Alongside this, smartphones are opening up access to music-making, for example, Emily Jeffri started out by creating songs on her iPhone using GarageBand, and D4vd used BandLab on his. Both young artists are now achieving success with their music – no graded exam grind in sight!
And what about AI? Music generator apps such as Suno and Udio will provide ‘instant’ results from written prompts, but professional and amateur musicians are deeply divided on their use due to copyright issues. Some educators see them as easy wins to spark creativity in the classroom, but others appreciate that it’s the process of the student creating or playing the music themselves that provides the route to self-expression that’s needed to support wellbeing. It’s never simply about the end product (and that applies to all the arts).
Making space for music
Music has been with us a long, long time, handed down and down again through the generations; the oldest musical instruments ever discovered (bone and mammoth ivory flutes) are over 40,000 years old, so it’s no wonder music has become part of our DNA.
Making it part of your present-day life, whether listening, creating, singing or playing, can bring enormous benefits to your mental health (and that of your students), allowing a window for spontaneity and self-expression when so much of school life is tightly controlled.
So, if you feel a song coming on at any time – let loose and sing it out! You’ll feel a whole lot better afterwards, I guarantee it.
