Music can spark creativity in math and science
From records to boom boxes to CD's and iPods, music has long been
part of the lifeblood of being a teenager. Learning math and science in
class is not always such a priority.
Parag Chordia, director of the Music Intelligence Lab at Georgia
Tech, is finding ways to bring those two disparate realities together.
"How can music be used to think about scientific problems, how can
music be used to sort of catalyze our thinking in other areas?" asks
Chordia.
With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Chordia is
researching the neurological roots of the creative process. And music is
a key ingredient.
"We've never found a culture that has no language--we've never found
a culture that has no music. So, music seems to be universal," he says.
While music and arts programs are often the first subjects to be cut
when school budgets are tight, Chordia says that may not be the best
strategy.
"To be a great engineer; to really produce innovative products and
to advance the frontiers of science, you have to be creative. And it's
not just that music is a diversion or an extracurricular, but it's
actually something that's fundamental to life and mind," he says.
"One of the difficulties of teaching math and science is that it
quickly becomes very abstract. You have to have points of reference that
people can relate to and it becomes much easier. So, whether we're
talking about teaching basic mathematical concepts, or designing
experiments, you can design experiments around music," he explains.
Statistics, for instance, can be used to model music.
"For example, if you listen to a melody, a melody is made up of all
these different little motifs, and those motifs go together to make up
larger patterns and those larger patterns form bigger blocks that we
build on," says Chordia.
"So it's very similar to language, where you have these low level
acoustic units like phonemes, which form syllables, which form words.
So, what we are trying to do here represents that process of pattern
formation," he says.
Studies show that at different ages, music connections do work as teaching tools.
"At the college level, students who have access to music programs
are much more likely to graduate because it increases retention," says
Chordia. "And people have, in terms of early learning, shown that
exposure to music at an early age, intensive exposure in music does
improve cognitive outcomes."
Chordia understands the creative process from many angles. He is a
master of the sarod, a classic Indian instrument. He is also a
mathematician. And his research works to see how all those elements work
together.
"Is creativity just the gift of a few--just sprinkled on a few
people and that's it? I would argue no, that creativity is something
that we all have inside of us and what it's all about is finding out,
how do we unlock that creativity," he says.
Using tools like electroencephalograms (EEGs) and functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Chordia is investigating whether
"real-time creativity," like improvising in a jazz band, uses the brain
in a different way.
"When a person is improvising, are they entering into a uniquely
creative state, and if so, what is that state all about?" he asks.
Brain scans show a distinct difference when professional musicians
are playing composed music, versus when they are improvising. Future
studies could be designed to try to home in on exactly what is happening
when someone is experiencing deep creative insight.
Other work in the Music Intelligence Lab involves music and computers.
Graduate student Avinash Sastry investigates "computational
creativity." While that may sound beyond the scope of what we think
these machines usually do, the aim is to let computers do what they do
best, to free up human teachers and composers for their best work.
Sastry writes computer programs that analyze musical compositions; then, the computers write their own music.
"So we have a database of compositions, giving it [the computer]
some idea of what it is going to expect. So it analyzes all this, and
builds up this big tree of probabilities. It's going to try and predict
what's going to happen at every step and it's going to use that
information to try and compose its own sequence of strokes as it goes
on," explains Sastry.
Sastry says he has done some double takes when he hears original music composed by a computer.
"So sometimes you get these gems of music that just pop out, and we
are working on trying to isolate those things and use that in a more
constructive way," he says.
Sastry says he can easily see this as being an educational tool for
children, and even musicians. The human composer gives the computer
something to start with, and it can then try to help you compose.
"So the idea is to use everything together ... use their
computational ability along with our emotions, our ability, our
creativity, put everything together and make some sort of
collaboration!" says Sastry.
An iPhone app Chordia and colleagues created gives a psychological
boost to people who may not think they have any musical skills.
It's called
LaDiDa, and it now has more than ten million users.
"You sing into the app, it listens to what you are singing, and it
composes music to match. Our goal is to make music expression as
ubiquitous as social expression," says Chordia.
"I'm a terrible singer, and I think part of the whole point of this
technology is to let people like myself actually get the confidence to
make music."
There are many YouTube videos of
LaDiDa users, from Chordia
himself to Mishka the singing dog, using the simple app, and in most
cases, sounding much better after the app's music has been added.
"A lot of the people we are targeting are young people between 13
and 18, who are really engaged in music. And they want to have the
experience of making music. We get emails all the time, 'I was afraid to
sing but now it makes me want to sing all the time'," says Chordia.
And those musical experiences that feed the mind may also spark greater proficiency in science and technology.
"Creativity lies at the heart of the modern economy," he says.
