The Dynamics of Life
Joshua Stukenborg
The Dynamics of Life
Joshua Stukenborg
Dedication This book is dedicated to my friends and family for always being there for me and helping me through hard times.
(also Casey and Colin)
Left to right- Casey Brohard, Colin Whitcomb
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Acknowledgements This book never would have existed without the help of my English teacher Mr. Greco or my design teacher Ms. Parkinson. Thank you to my Dad who was my community reader and helped me fix a lot of my grammatical errors. A special thank you to my partner Amanda who helped throughout the project. Without her this paper would not have been as fun to make.
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Table of Contents: 9.
Preface
11.
Introduction
13.
Music is a Language
15.
Music is a Teacher
17.
Music is a Drug
19.
Conclusion
Preface This documentary project has been a wild roller coaster of emotions throughout the entire process. There were very high highs, but also very very very very low lows. I chose to do my documentary on music because music is a huge part of my life. It was a lot of fun researching the ways music impact people and society. Interviewing musicians and music educators was one of the most interesting things I’ve ever done because I got to hear about how music has changed different people’s lives. The parts that I thought I would enjoy was very different from what I actually enjoyed about the project. I normally hate to write, but writing this book was some of the most fun I’ve ever had in school. On the other hand there were lots of things that did not turn out so well for me. I missed over a week of school right in the middle of the project which really set me back. While I did really enjoy writing the book, it was very hard for me to get started on the book. I had a really hard time finding what I wanted to write about so my outline went through about 10 revisions before I figured it out. The other hard part for me was the design aspect of the book. The program we used to put our book together, InDesign, is really confusing for me and I had a really hard time figuring everything out. As I was writing this book I never really had a specific audience I was writing to, I was just writing stuff down. In reflection on this experience and the points I was trying to make in this book I realized that I wanted parents and people who have influence over kids to be reading this. I want as many people to get into and start playing music, and the best way to do that is to get parents to understand that music helps their children in a plethora of ways. If parents understand all the benefits music brings, then more and more kids will start to play music which will just make the world a better place.
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Kevin Murray
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Introduction
ave you ever cringed while listening to someone sing when they hit a wrong note or danced out of sync to a groovy beat? As humans we react to music in different ways because the fundamentals of music are hardwired into our brains. We understand when music doesn’t sound correct because our brains determine what sounds good and what doesn’t based on expectations it creates. In a study performed at Max Planck Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, researchers found that subjects were able to tell when chords were out of tune even though they had never had any sort of music education. Stephen James O’Meara, an experienced author, analyzed the results, concluding that “our brains create expectancies and monitor incoming sounds to determine if they satisfy them; if they do, we enjoy the music. When music doesn’t meet our expectations, we cringe.” These expectations are very similar to when people are super excited to go see a movie or read a new book. If the movie or book doesn’t live up to their expectations, they won’t enjoy it as much. Every time a human hears a note, their brain is lighting up in anticipation to hear the next note. So if the note lives up to the expectation their brain has built up, then the brain douses them in endorphins which makes them feel good. This means that even if someone has never studied music in school, it is ok that people cringe at a second grade choir concert because those
kids don’t yet know how to sing, and the human brain understands that. For a guitar to sound good, it must be tuned. To tune a guitar one must careful and precisely turn the tuning pegs until the string plays the correct note. The 21st century is all about progress and making the world a better place, however it is also the age of mental illness. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, “one in six U.S. adults lives with a mental illness (44.7 million in 2016).” With mental illness being such a prevalent part of today’s society, there is a need for ways to help these people with mental illnesses. Music is an excellent way to help with a plethora of the mental illnesses that are affecting millions of people. Things as simple as listening to relaxing music can help with anxiety or stress and music therapy can help with depression and dementia. Music doesn’t just help with mental illnesses, playing it also helps develop important life skills in people that are essential to progressing society and the world as a whole. Just as one tunes a guitar to make it sound better, music tunes people to help them make a difference in the world.
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Music is a language
hen you think of music, who do you think of: Mozart, The Beatles, Billy Joel, The Wiggles? As a current student and listener of music, when I think of music, I think of fire alarms. They are so loud and so annoying and people just want to punch out the wall so the noises will stop. Those fire alarms are music to my ears. BEEP BEEP BEEP …. BEEP BEEP BEEP …. Laying down the beat like its just waiting for me to sing and groove along. Maybe dancing to a fire alarm is not the smartest idea (as you should be walking at a brisk pace away from the fire), but it shows how music can communicate messages to people. When people hear that fire alarm they know exactly what is happening and what they need to do. Music is its own language able to communicate ideas, emotions, and concepts by itself. All around the world people came up with different styles of music to express themselves and communicate, similar to how so many different languages developed from all corners of the Earth . From Afrobeat to country blues, Celtic music to acid jazz, math rock, kawaii metal to reggae, there are thousands of different styles of music that came from different corners of the Earth. Remember how human brains are hardwired to understand music, the brain is also able to understand the emotion and feeling behind people’s music even without understanding the words(if there are any). This means that even if people
don’t speak the same language, messages and feelings can still be conveyed through music. As defined by Merriam Webster, emotion is “a conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body.” As humans, communication is essential to everyday life, and to be good at it people need to understand feelings and emotions. Music is a great way to understand how people feel, as music is an frenzy of emotion. Without emotion, music’s effect would be diminished. The song, Happy, for example is meant to lift people’s spirits, make them dance, and make them happy (shocking I know). While not all songs messages are as blatant as Happy’s, people are still able to understand, not just by the words, but also by the tempo, the rhythms, and the notes of the song. Understanding the feelings and emotions of music helps us humans understand other people better. We can understand what others have gone through, their victories and their losses, their ups and their downs, their Emoji Movies and their Citizen Kanes. We as humans can always strive to better our understanding of people and their emotions, and music is the perfect key to unlocking our understanding of that. 13
Music is a Teacher
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earning music isn’t just learning how to play an instrument, or how to play a song correctly. It is also learning skills that can be applied not just to music, but to other areas in life. Take marching band, for example. Marching band is an ensemble of brass, woodwinds, percussion, and dancers that march around on a field while playing music. While in marching band participants practice the same music and the same show for months on end trying to make it the best it possibly can be. Colin Whitcomb, a high school percussion instructor, said “it’s the idea that until you’re perfect it still isn’t good enough. So it(marching band) teaches you to be very persistent as a person and to continue your high work ethic regardless of successes because you should always aim for a higher goal than what you already accomplished.” Learning to be persistent is an important skill as it can be applied to many other parts of life such as academic classes and places of work. It teaches young individuals to have that drive for success, to push themselves, to play the music better every time, to bring that B up to an A, to finish their English documentary
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book, to find that cure for cancer. It is what leads to progress in the world, and the more musicians we have, the more people we have to make change for the better. Another skill that music helps develop is the ability to problem solve. According to Dylan Savage, a university piano professor at UNC Charlotte, “The practice and performance of music presents a constant flow of problems, which musicians must solve.” As many problems arise as a musician practices a piece, that they must learn to overcome them. They have to figure out how to play quieter at this section of the music, how to play that rhythm properly in that measure, how do I fit in with the rest of the band when I play this part? They have to constantly think of solutions to problems as they arise. You know where else lots and lots and lots of problems show up? Literally in every single part of life. Being able to solve problems as they come up is integral for achieving anything in life. Being able to work well with other people is an important skill to have as a musician, coworker, student, and person. Casey Brohard, a producer at E2K Entertainment, talked about his experience working as a musician for Blue Devils
“It’s the idea that until you’re perfect it still isn’t good enough. So it(marching band) teaches you to be very persistent as a person and to continue your high work ethic regardless of successes because you should always aim for a higher goal than what you already accomplished.” -Colin Whitcomb
Entertainment: “People who are easy to work with, those are the ones that tend to last longer, not the ones with the best flam drags or the best sound quality. Those guys tend to go away if they are not really observing the environment and enjoyable to work with.” Musicians have to be good at working with other people; otherwise they won’t have a job. Playing music in ensembles and bands helps to develop the ability to work with others because the musicians are constantly playing and interacting with people. While playing, their minds constantly have to think of how their part fits in with the ensemble. Being able to work well with others is just as important in school and the workplace. Depending on the job, employees have differing levels of interaction with other coworker. If they aren’t able to work well with them, then they probably won’t be keeping that job for long. This is also true in school for group projects, except instead of getting fired the individual will getting a bad grade and probably making some enemies. This ability to work well with others is essential for all people to learn so that they can succeed in today’s society.
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Music is a Drug
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here is a wide variety of applications for music therapy which span from helping people regain the ability to speak to helping with psychological problems. One incredible thing that music therapy does is help kids and people with disabilities learn life lessons and skills. Anne Spector, a former music therapist, said that she used
“rhythm instruments and things that you didn’t really have to know how to play to learn how to take turns and just kind of basic things that kids need to know that if they have a lot of psychiatric issues they might not be able to do those things so we would use music.� -Anne Spector In addition to being a tool to help kids with disabilities learn, music therapy can be used to help stroke patients, who had lost the ability to speak, speak again. The left side of the brain is the part that controls speech, and when some people have strokes it destroys their left side of their brain leaving them unable to speak. Music therapists are able to help these patients learn to speak again through singing. Singing is controlled by the right side of the brain, so through lots of session and practice these people are able to speak again through song.
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While music therapy is one way music can be used for medical reasons, there are many other ways music can be used. When anyone is stressed out, calming music reduce the stress hormones which allows them to relax. When doctors are performing surgery sometimes they put on music to calm their nerves and steady their hands. Another amazing thing that music can do is reduce the amount of pain that is felt if someone is suffering an injury. In a study done by Kris Chesky, assistant professor of music at the University of North Texas in Denton, and Donald Michel, renowned expert in music therapy and professor emeritus of Texas Woman’s University, at UNT found that when exposed to music and
music vibrations, the subjects felt reduced pain (these were kids with fibromyalgia which is a bunch of muscle pain). So start listening to “Staying Alive� by the Bee Gees cause that song is reduce pain and keep everyone staying alive. In all seriousness, music and music therapy have the incredible ability to make people happier, healthier people. 17
Conclusion Music is one of the greatest tools for helping humanity progress socially and technologically. From its incredible applications in medical science all the way to its use in teaching life skills, music can change lives. That is one of the greatest things that music can do, change people’s lives. It can help them express themselves and communicate with others and help heal their mind and their body. Whether one is practicing scales alone on a trumpet, or riffing through guitar solos with a band they are becoming a stronger, healthier version of themselves that only music can bring about.
However, what makes music the cream of the crop is its ability to make people happy. There is nothing else on this world that is similar to music, and that is truly amazing. Because whether or not someone goes to college to major in music education or music therapy, whether or not they listen to Journey or BeyoncĂŠ, music can make them smile, laugh, sing, jump up and down, and dance. The fact that music can do all of that, is the coolest thing in the whole world.
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“I kinda joined into this group without any preconceived ideas about what it was. So I think I just fell in love with it when I did.� -Colin Whitcomb
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Works Cited Collingwood, Jane. “The Power of Music To Reduce Stress.” Psych Central, 22 Mar. 2018, psychcentral.com/lib/the-power-of-music-to-reduce-stress/. Accessed 19, Apr. 2018 “Emotion.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emotion. Accessed 19, Apr. 2018 “Overview of Learning Styles.” Learning-Styles-Online.com, 2018, www.learning-styles-online.com/overview/. Accessed 19 Apr. 2018. O’Meara, Stephen James. “Why we love music.” Odyssey, Mar. 2002, p. 6+. Student Resources In Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A84367178/GPS?u=moun43602&sid=GPS&xid= 7b846082. Accessed 19 Apr. 2018. Savage, Dylan. “Sustainable teaching & learning lessons for life through music.” American Music Teacher, June-July 2012, p. 12+. Student Resources In Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/ doc/A292992130/GPS?u=moun43602&sid=GPS&xid=1a5275c2. Accessed 19 Apr. 2018. Petress, Ken. “The importance of music education.” Education, vol. 126, no. 1, 2005, p. 112+. Opposing Viewpoints In Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A136846797/GPS?u=moun43602 &sid=GPS&xid=e7172173. Accessed 19 Apr. 2018. “Mental Illness.” National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Nov. 2017, www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness.shtml. Accessed 6 May. 2018 Whitcomb, Colin. Personal interview. 5 Mar 2018. Spector, Anne. Personal interview. 2 Apr 2018. Brohard, Casey. Personal interview. 3 Apr 2018. 23
About the Author Josh Stukenborg is a junior at Mountain View High School (MVHS) and Freestyle Academy, who likes to waste away his life making and spreading memes. Josh spends the majority of his time drumming with friends, playing video games, procrastinating on homework, and looking at cute dog pictures. He is currently studying film and enjoys using the tools Freestyle Academy offers to make quality memes for the whole world to enjoy. He is an avid member of MVHS marching band and Winter Percussion and hopes to further pursue drumming and film once he graduates (hopefully) from MVHS.
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The Dynamics of Life
Joshua Stukenborg