Developing Creative Skills Through Music

October 14, 2021 | Posted at 6:46 am | by Mark (Follow User)

Music lessons have a beneficial effect on the development of any creative ability. We often underestimate the impact of music on people and do not even think that playing the guitar or piano has a beneficial effect on the nervous system, and participation in a band helps to develop teamwork skills.

How does music affect a person?

Many scientific works have been written about how music affects a person. To summarize and simplify, the correctly selected music, depending on the situation, can give a person vigor, cause him nostalgic feelings and memories, calm him down, anger him, push him to make unplanned purchases, scare, alarm, and even increase the pain threshold. Music therapy is a reality. The influence of music on human health was used in medical practice by the ancient Greek healer Pythagoras.

 

Creative skills

What do we mean by creativity? Creativity is an activity that generates something qualitatively new and distinguished by uniqueness, originality, and socio-historical uniqueness. The value of creativity lies not only in the productive side but also in the process of creativity itself.

All this fully applies to the art of music and music lessons. They can contribute to the development of productive, creative activity in people, i.e., developing creative skills in perception, composition, performance, improvisation, thinking about music, and the ability to rhythm plastic intonation.

Creative assignments help in shaping people’s musical thinking. Studies have shown that at an early age, musical thinking is facilitated by movements that help to feel the character, changes in mood, dynamics, texture. Visual visibility, combined with auditory, motor, and tactile sensations, helps people understand the characteristics of musical language. When completing creative tasks, a person has musical and extra-musical performances. Imagination is active.

By the way, creating your musical compositions can seem like a daunting process if you’ve never done it before. In reality, whether your experience is complex or straightforward depends on the music-making software. Many of them are suitable for users with different levels of musical knowledge.

 

Instrumental creativity

Creativity can manifest itself in each person differently, depending on natural inclinations and the development of basic musical abilities. Some people may show the ability to perceive music creatively, while others – to one of the types of performance or productive creativity. Some people develop their skills alone and learn more by themselves, while others like to study in a group of people in classes, study corners, or coworking spaces. Nowadays, coworking spaces are really popular. They offer productivity, flexibility, and networking opportunities. You can find them whenever you are, such as the great coworking spaces in Chicago. Therefore, it is necessary to approach developing people’s creative abilities individually, taking into account the characteristics of each person.

Instrumental creativity of people is manifested in improvisation – composition while playing a musical instrument. This is a direct, momentary expression of impressions. It arises based on the life and musical experience that people have. The accumulation and enrichment of musical impressions is an indispensable condition for creative manifestations. Listening to vocal, instrumental works both in recording and in “live” performance of teachers or professional performers, conversations about expressive means of the musical language, studying and comparing the timbres of instruments, their expressive capabilities are necessary for people for subsequent creativity, including instrumental.

 

Development of creativity

One of the conditions ensuring successful instrumental creativity is mastering the elementary skills of playing musical instruments, mastering various methods of sound production, which make it possible to convey the simplest musical images. Thus, for the successful development of creative abilities in musical activity, the following conditions are necessary:

  • ​​Observance of the principle of freedom;
  • Accumulation of impressions from the perception of art;
  • Synthesis of different types of musical activity (theoretical, performing, composing);
  • Development of basic musical abilities;

The consistent teaching of such forms of music-making as playing by ear, sight-reading, and transposition is a direct path to developing creative activity, initiative, and independence of musicians. Gradually, from the selection of what they heard, students, according to their abilities, will be able to move to improvisation, and in the future, to composing music.

Final word 

Music is inextricably linked with the people who listen to it, but it is even more connected with the people who create it. But who can indeed be called the creator or creator of music? Many will answer that only composers are such people – and they will be wrong. Making music is a highly complex and multi-step process. And everyone who takes part in it realizes their musical creativity.