Music to the Ears, and More

I’ve been teaching some of my Latin students how to scan Latin poetry—-how to figure out the meter by identifying long and short syllables, elisions of vowels, when there’s a pause for a breath (caesura). One student commented that he likes scanning more than translating and it is a different sort of way of dealing with a language, looking at the sounds and syllables of words and not so much their meanings.

I talk about scanning as attending to the music of the poetry, to its sounds, more than to its sense. I’ve often noted that Charlie’s always had an affinity for music. That’s the impetus behind efforts to teach him to play the piano and the cello. While Charlie’s long struggled to learn to read words, he figured out how to read notes and the basics of sheet music (for both instruments) quite easily. He and Jim have an ever-growing repertoire of call and response songs and I’ve often been able to figure out what Charlie is saying (he doesn’t always fully articulate his syllables) by the intonation, pitch, and rhythm of his voice. I’ve also noted that he often seems to figure out what we’re saying based as much on those musical qualities.

The October Scientific American has a brief overview of a Jaunuary letter in Nature, on ultra-fine frequency tuning revealed in single neurons of human auditory cortex. It seems that human’s brains are “wired” to hear fine discriminations of sound, down to the 12th of an octave.

The study revealed that groups of exquisitely sensitive neurons exist along the auditory nerve on its way from the ear to the auditory cortex. In these neurons natural sounds, such as the human voice, elicit a completely different and far more complex set of responses than do artificial noises such as pure tones. In this mixed environ ment humans can easily detect frequencies as fine as one twelfth of an octave—a half step in musical terminology.

The vexing question is: Why? Bats are the only mammal with a better ability to hear changes in pitch than humans do. Predatory species such as dogs are not nearly as sensitive—they can dis criminate resolutions of one third of an octave. Even our primate relatives do not come close: macaques can resolve only half an octave. These results suggest the fine discrimination of sound is not a necessity for survival.

It’s been several months since Charlie had his last piano lesson when his teacher moved away and we don’t practice nearly as much as we used to. Nonetheless, after a little warming up, Charlie’s pretty much back in sync with reading and playing. One of the last things his teacher taught him was to read and play sharps; Charlie caught on easily to this, and often correct himself if he plays a natural note when there’s a sharp, and quickly moves his finger to play the black key a half-step up.

There’s been a lot said and studied about the effects of studying music and playing instruments on children’s learning and intelligence. I don’t have any hard data, but certainly music’s been a key tool for communicating, teaching, and understanding with Charlie, and he with us. I know he can hear a 12th of an octave and this further leads me to note that Charlie hears everything said around him, and that (as we constantly have to remind those who don’t know him) understands most everything he hears. He’s a much better listener than some might think.

(And, perhaps, than many of us who don’t have any “communication disabilities.”)