Chapter Eleven
Name That Tune; or, This Shouldn’t Even Count as a Chapter if You Ask Me
If you desire to have your offspring grow up to be musical illiterates, then say to them, as my father said to me when, at age eight or so, I protested the injustice of my early-onset piano lessons, “Someday you will thank me.” “Oh, no, I won’t,” I vowed, calculating that even if my father turned out to be right about music’s being enriching, the profits could never trump my current agony. Sure enough, today I regret that even “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” is beyond my plinking capacity. I took flute lessons, too, but was allowed to quit when I demonstrated that after three weeks of trying, I couldn’t produce a sound. There were also guitar lessons—years’ worth that resulted in my knowing seven calypso strums and one song (“Jamaica Farewell”). If I’d had a more successful musical upbringing, would I be smarter now or just more useful at a jam session?
The thesis that music can make you more intelligent was introduced in the 1991 French book Pourquoi Mozart?: Essay, and took hold in America two years later when an article in Nature magazine stated that listening to one of Wolfie’s sonatas augmented spatial reasoning skills for ten to fifteen minutes afterward. The alchemy of the press and public opinion turned this modest claim into: Mozart makes you a Mozart or at least a genius. It wasn’t long before hopeful parents were subjecting their newborns to Symphony No. 41 in C Major—and on a farm in Italy, buffalo were exposed to recordings of Mozart three times a day so their milk would make better mozzarella. (Is there such a thing as clever cheese? Is that what “head cheese” is?) The original study was eventually debunked. Subsequent randomized controlled trials found scant evidence that learning to play an instrument has much immediate cognitive benefit. No matter. Eighty percent of Americans persist in their belief that music makes you smarter.
Hold on. They could be right. Evidently the gray matter of those who’ve studied music is different from that of troglodytes like me. For example, the regions in their cortices that relate to hearing, language production, self-awareness, and executive functioning are larger. What’s more, they score higher on their SATs, are more likely to have graduate degrees, and, at least in the case of high school band and orchestra members in Texas in 1998, have lower rates of lifetime alcohol, drug, and tobacco abuse. To what extent can these achievements be explained by a song in the heart? Or could it be that someone who listens to her father is bound for success regardless?
Just in case, as part of my get-smart program, I spent several weeks practicing piano scales, an exercise that must have brought no amount of gladness to my neighbors in 8H. Imagine that I am banging out the following melodies. How many can you identify?
1.
Dada de-dah!
Dada de-DAH!…
2.
3.
La-le lad le le-le lah
Le-la lah
Le-la lah
La-le lad le le-le lah
Leh le le lah de lah…
4.
Ahh ah-ah ahhhhh Ahh ah-ah ahhhhhhhhh
Eh eh eh. Eh eh ahh…
5.
Nynah nnah ne nyah nah ne nah na-ah nah
6.
Whine whine, whine whine-o-whine
Whine a whinewhine a whine a whiner…
7.
You-yee you-you yu YOU
You-yee you-you yu YOU…
8.
Haaaah ha ha-ah. Haah ha ha-ha. Hee-hee
hee-hee; hee-hee hee-hee.
Ha he-ha heeee-hah…
Hoo hoo hoo!
10.
To toot-toot-toot toot-toot-toot too too toot,
To toot de to-te TOOT tee…
11.
Bah be bah bah bahh. BAHHH!…
12.
Fting! Ftinng! Ftiiiiinnnng!…
ANSWERS:
1. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony
2. “The Bridal Chorus,” aka “Here Comes the Bride”
3. “Mary Had a Little Lamb”
4. “Silent Night”
5. “Blowin’ in the Wind” (or any other song as sung by Bob Dylan)
6. “Hey Jude”
7. “Happy Birthday to You”
8. Oscar Mayer commercial for sliced turkey (“Hallelujah Chorus” also accepted)
10. The Mister Softee jingle
11. Hockey Night in Canada theme song
12. Rosie Wadia, age four, playing Beethoven’s Fifth at her first recital on the triangle
SCORING:
| 1–2: | You have no rhythm. Before trying to clap your hands in the audience, hire a tutor. |
| 3–6: | Better than André Previn |
| 7–11: | If we were playing for real, you would have won a dining room set and an all-expenses-paid trip to Atlantic City. |
| Perfect score: | Quit your job and join a band. |
Name That Sound
1. WhhhssHHHHHwhhhhssHHHHHhhhhHHHH…
2. Hrnnnhahnnnh. Hrnnhahnnnnh. Snnnghh.
3. Pffft, pfft.
5. [Silence]
ANSWERS:
1. Vacuum cleaner
2. Blowing nose followed by a little sniffling
3. Postprandial eruption of wind
4. Two people social-kissing
5. Sound of one hand clapping
So what if you can’t recognize pffts and whooshes? That is what closed captions are for.
Another reason not to despair: A professor of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard, Takao Hensch, is developing a drug, similar to one used to treat epilepsy, that he hopes will make it possible for adults to learn absolute (aka perfect) pitch. This ability to identify and produce a note without any auditory clues is found in only one in ten thousand people, a club that doesn’t even include Haydn or Schumann. If you were not born with this prowess, you have a shot at developing it during early childhood when your neural roadways are still extremely malleable. After that, join the rest of us who couldn’t say whether the car alarm is blaring in F-sharp minor or B-flat major.
Hensch aims to return our cognitive equipment to its nimble pre-seven-year-old state, where we might not only master perfect pitch, but painlessly and readily pick up new languages and learn how to operate the remote.