Music is an interesting phenomenon for psychologists. Music is ubiquitous and fundamental to human culture. But the tools of psychology seem, at first glance, to be unable to capture the dynamic experience of music. I'm not sure if I will revisit this topic but I thought it would be fun to share some psychological articles I have read about music. First of all, what makes a person a good musician?
There are numerous anecdotes of musical giftedness - that success in music is primarily a function of some inherent quality within a person. But the research does not support this. One longitudinal study found that the significant predictors for success in music were practice and resilience against failure. Individuals who practiced more were considerably more likely to succeed as musicians. The resilience against failure is a somewhat surprising finding because the failure that was investigated was not related to music at all. Apparently, the ability to cope with failure in general allows people to overcome the frustration inherent to learning music.
Perhaps what is more notable is what was not significantly related to music: musical aptitude and intelligence. Neither of these variables predicted how good the individual would be at music. While it may be possible that giftedness could be related to success, the relationship is weak and nobody really knows how to discover that giftedness. So - PARENTS - if you want your children to succeed in music, stop trying to determine if they are gifted and simply encourage them to continue practicing and remain positive when they struggle.
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