Unit 4 introduction - part 1 of 2

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From the course by The University of Melbourne

How Music Can Change Your Life

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The University of Melbourne

How Music Can Change Your Life

70 ratings

Did you ever wonder how music works? This course provides free video, audio and journal resources that explain six basic principles about how music can influence individual and community health and wellbeing. From biology and neuroscience, to psychotherapy and politics, the ways we engage with music can make all the difference. Music has always played an integral role in the lives of individuals and communities all around the globe. This course explores the ways that music can be used to achieve positive changes with a particular emphasis on the most vulnerable persons. Six different understandings will be explored, each with their own set of values and assumptions. The greatest thinkers in each approach believe that their way of explaining the power of music is right, but we will show that understanding music in its entirety delivers the best results in each unique circumstance. Once we understand the various ways that music can change the world, we can make informed decisions about how best to employ its extraordinary power. Learners who engage in this MOOC can expect to both deepen and broaden their understanding of how music can be used with individuals, groups and communities. Specifically: • To distinguish between how music works on the body, in the brain, through the unconscious, for bonding, as political action and in reflecting culture, • To design practical programs that utilise music to support individuals, groups and communities based on examples shared in the ‘on-site’ case studies. View the MOOC promotional video here: http://tinyurl.com/jnde3w3

From the lesson

How can music foster intimacy to strengthen relationships?

Have you ever used music to try and improve a relationship in your life? Playing the right background music is one thing, but what about singing with another person, or improvising on musical instruments in responsive and caring ways. Listening is the key to intimacy in any relationship and music can be the perfect vehicle to explore listening in new ways. We explore intimacy between parents and infants, therapists and clients and the ways that music therapists engage in musicking with people to build relationships that help.

Unit 4 introduction - part 1 of 25:50

Unit 4 introduction - part 2 of 26:27

Communicative musicality perspective10:17

Introducing Dr Stephen Malloch12:31

We are all musical12:10

Being present in music9:56

Meet the Instructors

Katrina Skewes McFerran
Professor
Melbourne Conservatorium of Music

Usually when we think about the ways that music can foster intimacy and

strengthen relationships, we think about love songs.

You might imagine sitting next to someone you care about and

putting on the right piece of music in the background.

And hoping that that will influence the mood so that your loving

feelings towards one another are housed in a more comfortable environment.

Now that kind of thinking is not what we're going to talk about in this unit.

Because that assumes a belief that music does something to you and

will lead to having the effect that you want.

And that was the focus that we adopted in unit one

when we looked at how music can influence the body.

In this unit we're exploring the ways that each of us has the capacity

to draw on our innate musicality.

In order to foster intimacy in relationships with those that we love.

The relationship that best illustrates that love is the one that occurs first.

An attachment theorist suggests that the foundations we develop for

all subsequent relationships begin in our experience of this first love.

In the relationship between parent and infant.

As you will see in our footage of Julia e Santiago d'Italia,

the ways that parents interact with their infants is almost always musical.

Whether its the way we sway and bounce our babies to sleep using lullabies and

rhythms, or the way we play and read together.

This early intimate encounters have many musical features.

And you will also see that the ways they sing and

play instruments together has many communicative features.

And it's on this basis that the label communicative musicality

has been coined by researchers Colwyn Trevarthen and Stephen Malloch.

We've interviewed Stephen Malloch for this unit about communicative musicality.

And the intrinsically musical nature of human interaction.

As Helen Shoemark describes in her review article on voices, baby talk,

or infant-directed speech,

has been explored by a range of researchers and theorists over time.

The interactions between mother and infant have been coded, and quantified,

and counted, and examined, all around the world, with very similar outcomes.

And note that I say mother and child.

Because one of the limitations of the research is that, with few exceptions,

researchers have relied on data from mothers interacting with their babies.

In the review article by Elizabeth McLean,

also available on the Voices website.

She points out how this reliance on mother and baby data potentially limits

what we can truly know about the relationship between parents and infants.

Because we've really only looked at one half of that

in the case of families with a mother and a father.

But even though it's called baby talk, it's not really like talking at all.

It's more like an embodied story, an exchange of emotions that is

expressed through what Daniel Stern called vitality contours.

A form of encounter that expresses our authentic being in relationship

with one another.

When parents and babies are interacting, in what Donald Winnicott famously

describes as good enough, the parent is not actually directing the baby and

teaching them how to speak and communicate in the future.

They are being attuned and responsive

in order to provide the child with a sense of power and being in control.

And although attachment theorists like Winnicott assume that responsibility lies

solely in the hand of the parent, communicative musicality research

documents how this is a co-created mutual encounter,

to which the baby also contributes.

This is more in keeping with Martin Buber's philosophical emphasis on

dialogue, rather than the more referential notion of communication.

Emphasising love over the psychological construct of development.

And the way this intimate relationship is performed changes over time.

As the relationship grows and develops its own unique narrative.

With all kinds of sweet, identifiable patterns that recur and

change and develop over time.

So each time a parent and infant interacts, like goo goo gaa gaa,

it doesn't occur out of nowhere, it's contextually laden.

So if in the previous communication the baby has responded well to goo goo gaa gaa

then it's highly likely that the parent is going to try and bring goo goo

gaa gaa gaa gaa into the next encounter and see if it has the same reaction.

And so communicative musicality describes what emerges in our

earliest intimate relationships.

With what Steven Malloch has identified as three inherently musical

elements of pulse, quality, and narrative.

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