Music Video Lesson: What is the Mozart Effect?

Hi, everyone. This is Robert Estrin at Virtual Sheet Music as well as LivingPianos.com. Good to have you join me.

Today's subject is what is the Mozart Effect? You may have heard of this term before. Is it real? We're going to cover this today.

First I'm going to go back to a ground breaking study decades ago at UC Irvine not far from here in California by Gordon Shaw and Frances Rauscher. They did an interesting test. They took several youngsters and they divided them into three different groups. One group took computer lessons. Another group, they gave piano lessons. And the last group was the control group; they did nothing with that group.

They gave them lessons for an extended amount of time and before the text began they gave them tests, standardized tests. And wouldn't you know it? The math scores of the piano students went up. The computer students and the other students that didn't have any training at all remained the same.

Now here's something that a lot of you may not know. Their English scores of the piano student groups also rose relative to the beginning to the end.

So while the computer training did nothing to change the scores in math or English, and the control group, of course, stayed the same, people who studied piano actually increased their intelligence aptitude for both math and English. That's an astounding fact isn't it? Yet another reason to study the piano.

Well, the Mozart Effect goes one step further. They found that students just listening to music, that's right, listening to music while taking tests, had a bump in their scores. Specifically Mozart, listening to Mozart and other classical music seems to have some correlation.

There are some questions about the validity of this study, or more, the significance of it. But in the worst case scenario, you're just getting to listen to Mozart or Bach. How bad is that?

Music is good for the mind, it's good for the soul. So, spread the word and enjoy your music. There are yet some more reasons to take piano lessons.

Thank so much for joining me here at VirtualSheetMusic.com and LivingPianos.com, Robert Estrin.

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