12/21/20
Happy Holidays from Edge Music Academy!
We have been very busy this holiday season using our extra time at home to decorate, bake and of course, make music. We have also spent time making merry holiday memories with all of our students in music lessons.
Our “24 Days of Holiday Cheer” was a bigger success than we had ever imagined. Every day in December we had the joy of posting a new video of a student playing a holiday song on Facebook! If you haven’t had a chance to check out our guitar, bass guitar, ukulele and piano students making holiday music, check out our Facebook page for a full recap!
“24 Days of Holiday Cheer” brought together our students in a new and exciting virtual way. We never could have foreseen how much joy it brought us to see all of the fun videos that were sent in. We got to virtually sit by your Christmas trees and share memories with you or your kids. One of the greatest joys of being a small business is feeling so strongly connected to your customers, or in our case, our students.
We hope that seeing other EMA students playing holiday songs brought you joy, and it seems like it did! We were so excited to see words of encouragement on each other’s videos, parents and grandparents sharing, and friends and family cheering their family members on through social media. It’s amazing what technology can do when it’s used as a tool for good.
In the new year, we are excited to keep bringing you joy through bass lessons, guitar lessons, ukulele lessons, and piano lessons, and sharing our love for music with your families.
Have a safe and happy holiday season!
9/18/20
Music Gives Students (Of All Ages) A Mental Edge!
You’re a good parent. You care deeply about your student’s performance in school, their grades, and their overall future success. You’ve probably heard word that music is good for kids, and that it helps them learn and gives them some sort of competitive advantage. At Edge Music Academy, we firmly believe in the benefits of music and music education on young minds —socially, academically, life skills…you name it!
In the spirit of back to school, we thought we’d dive into some of the research behind these claims. After all, with e-learning and kids stuck at home, you need every advantage you can get.
Here’s a look at some of the research we found:
The first thing we found was this USC Study on Children’s Brain Development. Basically, the study took students who learned to play the violin and compared their brain development to that of kids who learned to play soccer or had no after-school activities. They found evidence linking studying music to faster development of the auditory processing system in the brain. (The brain’s ability to process sound). According to the article, “The auditory system is stimulated by music…this system is also engaged in general sound processing that is fundamental to language development, reading skills and successful communication.”
Music’s effect on the mind is so profound that there are entire college courses dedicated to it- as evidenced in this article about a college course at the University of Central Florida called “Music and the Brain.” Apparently, music is so powerful that people with diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s have positive cognitive outcomes when they listen to music.
Check out the amazing interactive brain map on this page as well! One of the coolest things we learned in this research is that “professional musicians use the occipital cortex, which is the visual cortex, when they listen to music, while laypersons…use the temporal lobe — the auditory and language center. This suggests that [musicians] might visualize a music score when they are listening to music,” according to one of the professors!
The greatest thing about all of the research on music and the brain is that it shows it’s not just kids who can benefit from listening to and playing music. An article from Johns Hopkins on brain health in adults says that ““There are few things that stimulate the brain the way music does…if you want to keep your brain engaged throughout the aging process, listening to or playing music is a great tool. It provides a total brain workout.” This is good news, as we’re all looking to keep ourselves mentally and physically youthful—we have to keep up somehow! EMA provides lessons to ages 4 and up, and some of our most successful, passionate and long-term students are adults!
So no matter how smart you think you are, your brain can always benefit from music- whether you’re a student yourself or just an avid fan! Spread the good news by sharing this great proof of just one of the ways that music gives you an EDGE!