MUSICAL ACTIVITIES for Guaranteed Fun

Music has the power to calm, soothe, energize, and make everyone have fun! Try these ideas at your child's next playdate or sleepover for a guaranteed good time. 

1. Jamming Art: Turn on some music-upbeat or mellow-you decide. Without looking directly at the paper, draw pictures and designs to the beat of the music. Make several drawings from different types of music.
2. Animal Walk Parade: Play your favorite tunes on the radio and dance and walk the way your favorite animal would. Remember, the more friends you invite to play, the more fun your parade will be!
3. Music Maker Box: Fill a small trunk, box, or dresser drawer with musical instruments for when inspiration strikes. Purchase inexpensive instruments at garage sales, or make your own including tambourines, strands of jingle bells, and film canister maracas.
4. Dance Party: Invite your friends over for a dance party! Ask each guest to bring along a cassette tape or CD with his or her favorite music. Play a song or two from each CD and dance the night away. For super cool invitations, use a permanent marker to write the details of the party on those free Internet CDs that come in the mail.

---

---

MUSIC - A pure joy

Music has been an inevitable part of our day to day life. Be it the chirping of birds, babbling of babies or the rhythm of nature you will find music everywhere. When you listen and hear sweet music tunes you are left behind with the weaving magic of one of its kind.

It is around 50,000 years back that music has evolved and now it seems to be an integral part of our body and soul. Music plays a great role in our lives:

1. It has been found in a research that children listening to music are more likely to become engineers, doctors and computer professionals because of the fact that music learning develops certain important areas of the brain responsible for reasoning and language. Therefore, it is also known for sharpening memory of an individual.

2. A child who has taken birth from the womb of a mother who had listened to music is much intelligent than others.

3. Music is used widely for many therapeutic purposes so as to heal mental problems and other learning disabilities in a person. It also heals diseases such as hypertension, brain trauma and provides relaxation during stress.

4. It teaches a person how to coordinate, self-express himself, work in a team and follow discipline.

5. Even plants are known to thrive towards music as they too respond to sound in the same way as a human does.

6. Music brings a devotee closer to his god and this is the reason why religious hymns lift up the heaviness of the mind and free the soul.

7. It is also used for meditative properties used for training, healing, exercising and releasing tensions.

8. People perform better when music is played because it erases the mental tension and introduces lightness in the body.

9. Music and songs have always captured feelings, passions, agony, and distress more efficiently during love and romance.

10. It is also used by scientists to map behavior and functions of the human mind.

Classical music is known to soothe and open the channels of the mind whereas rock music sets your pulses to racing and chants can send you to trace. The future of music business has also taken manifolds in the recent times due to these advantages. Music has different effects upon various human beings depending upon the use.

---

---

---

MUSIC EDUCATION And The Smarter You

Music education makes you smart. Smart people educate themselves with music. Both are true to an extent. What is it about music that increases you brains efficiency? From a teacher’s standpoint, the answers are quite obvious. Because music education is such a broad topic, let’s condense it to the studying of an instrument... more specifically the piano.

Teachers have noticed through the years that students seem to get sharper mentally with every lesson. Even the ones that don’t practice a lot seem sharper at the end of a lesson as compared to the beginning… although many teachers can think of a couple of past students who seemed to get more sluggish with every lesson. Thankfully, those types of pupils were the exception rather than the rule. So what aspects of mental capacity are improved by piano playing?

Hand eye coordination vastly improves with instrumental training on the piano. You can better judge distances between notes while playing of notes simultaneously, and there are a whole list of coordination demands that come from the gradual improving of fine motor skills.

Reading skills expand. If you think of music as a language, you are constantly improving your musical vocabulary with more compositions and technical exercises.

Memory, both visual and touch, is given a workout. In this regard, the phrase “use it or lose it” comes to mind. Musicians who constantly memorize new pieces just seem to be sharp in the memory capacity, provided they have a fairly healthy lifestyle.

EQ is forced to develop when performing the works of other composers. You really must feel and understand what a composer felt when composing a work; you will have trouble performing the work effectively for others if you don’t.

Apart from studying the piano, the study of theory and history go hand in hand with the study of any instrument. Knowing about the history of a composer helps you to interpret a piece and improves your music knowledge base. Interpretive improvement is also achieved through the comprehension of a piano piece’s structure. This understanding is obtained through theory knowledge. Music theory is often compared with math and it can be improved gradually, provided the student has a sound foundation.

---

---

Paul McCartney Joins MUSIC EDUCATION Cause

Even though experts have shown that music education improves performance in and out of the classroom, increases SAT scores and keeps kids in school, budget cuts have been breaking up marching bands and silencing school choruses across the country.

Paul McCartney in Prague, Czech Republic, 2004.
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To combat this trend, Fidelity Investments joined music icon Paul McCartney to launch a new public charity, the Music Lives Foundation, aimed at increasing funding for music education programs in schools.

"As a boy growing up in Liverpool, I was surrounded by music," said McCartney. "That's just the way it was. The problem is that more and more music programs are in danger of being eliminated. That's why I'm proud to join Fidelity in supporting the Music Lives Foundation. After years and years of playing in a band and making a living doing what I love, I can honestly say, 'Where would I be without music?'"

Initially, the foundation plans to raise funds through special promotions of a limited edition "Music Lives" pewter bracelet with McCartney's signature and "Fidelity Investments" engraved inside. Each person contributing at least $40 to the cause - the cost of putting one musical instrument into the hands of a child - will receive the commemorative bracelet for showing support. You can make a donation at www.musiclives.org.

"School music education programs mean more to kids than learning how to play an instrument or carry a tune; they significantly add to a student's academic and social life," said Robert L. Reynolds, Fidelity vice chairman and chief operating officer. "Music education is a critical program of study that gets scant attention and fewer and fewer dollars every year. The Music Lives Foundation wants to combat this trend and keep music alive in our schools for years to come."

Studies show that students who are highly involved in music and arts education have higher SAT scores, measurably better potential for math learning, lower drop-out rates and fewer disciplinary problems. 

"School music programs across the country are facing a serious threat as budgets are chipped away in favor of a narrow view of what kids need - despite the fact that music education actually helps kids achieve in all sorts of studies," said John Mahlmann, executive director of MENC: The National Association of Music Education. "Support by a musician of Paul McCartney's stature and of a leading corporation like Fidelity will bring much-needed national attention to this issue."