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How playing the piano tunes your brain

Music is one of life's most wonderful pleasures.

The effects of music are well documented and whether you're looking to relax and wind down or dance your socks off, music is a key catalyst for such activities.

One only has to listen to the score of any movie to realise just how effective music can be at triggering your emotions and I'm sure we've experienced the sound of a long-forgotten tune bringing back distant memories as if they were yesterday.

There is something about the stringing together of melodic notes and rythmic beats that seems to excite a very primal part of our brains.

And now there's a study that suggests learning to actually play music, rather than being just a passive consumer of it, can significantly boost cognitive abilities and lift mood.

According to this piece running on the Science Daily website based on a study done at the University of Bath, "A randomized control trial led by psychologists shows the positive effects learning to play music for just a few weeks has on cognitive abilities".

As someone who has never learned to play an instrument but has always wanted to, this is good news.

I was actually offered a violin scholarship when I was in primarly school. Although I can't remember all the details, there was a day when the entire class was given a number of simple tests to do in order to establish the kids' inate musical ability.

Apparently I scored well enough that I was one of just a tiny handful in the entire school that were offered free violin lessons in order to cultivate my potential.

Sadly, when we went to the local music shop to buy a violin they had none (there was obviously not a high demand for such instruments). My parents' response was "oh well, never mind" and that was the end of that.

Since then, primarily due to a total lack of use, my inate musical ability has withered and died. Whilst I certainly enjoy listening to music I can't play a note of any tune on any instrument.

Perhaps, in light of the Bath University study however, I might pick up a cheap Casio keyboard and teach myself the basics. That might be fun and, if the study is to believed, it could have some useful benefits far beyond the challenge and reward that learning a new skill offers.

Whilst on the subject of music I have to comment on how broken the YouTube copyright system remains.

A few weeks ago I received a copyright claim on a video I'd posted months earlier, meaning that any and all revenue the video might generate would go, not to me but to the party claiming the copyright on the few seconds of music being used. I had downloaded the track from a "copyright-free" website that offered such things but it seems that in the meantime, someone had registered a video with that music with YouTube's ContentID system so now any other video (like mine) was being automatically claimed.

Fighting such claims is such a pain in the arse so I decided just to unlist the video until I had time to edit out the offending piece.

Yesterday, I got a second claim on the same video.

WTF?

Surely the copyright for a piece of music can't be owned by two parties at the same time?

Why isn't YT's contentID system smart enough to realise that two parties can't claim for the same piece of music and when they do, who actually gets the money that video generates?

This is just the tip of an iceberg however. I've heard from a lot of people who've posted original musical works (penned and played by themselves) only to have those videos claimed by a copyright troll with seemingly no practical way to fight those claims. It's outright theft but YouTube doesn't give a damn... regardless of what happens, YouTube still gets its 50% of the ad revenue so why should it care?

Music... the source of so much joy... and sadness.

Carpe Diem folks!

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