What is it that drives people to undertake music research? Such interest frequently grows from on-the-ground experiences as learners, performers, facilitators, composers, arts administrators, and educators. It can emerge, for example, from music teachers trying out new teaching methods, performers wishing to know more about how to improvise effectively, educators pursuing the most effective ways to structure music curricula, musicians aiming to explain why their music enhances wellbeing am...

Musical Excellence offers performers, teachers, and researchers, new perspectives and practical guidance for enhancing performance and managing the stress that typically accompanies performance situations. It draws together, for the first time in a single collection, the findings of pioneering initiatives from across the arts and sciences. Specific recommendations are provided alongside comprehensive reviews of existing theory and research, enabling the practitioner to place the s...

Musicians are continually 'in the making', tapping into their own creative resources while deriving inspiration from teachers, friends, family members and listeners. Amateur and professional performers alike tend not to follow fixed routes in developing a creative voice: instead, their artistic journeys are personal, often without foreseeable goals. The imperative to assess and reassess one's musical knowledge, understanding and aspirations is nevertheless a central feature of life as a pe...

Nursing Research and Statistics

**NATIONAL BESTSELLERNeuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author of This Is Your Brain on Music Daniel J. Levitin reveals how the deep connections between music and the human brain can be harnessed for healing.**Music is perhaps one of humanity’s oldest medicines as well as its most universal: from China to the Ottoman Empire, Europe to Africa and pre-colonial South America, cultures have developed rich traditions for using sound and rhythm to eas...

Master the essential skills for designing and conducting a successful research projectEssentials of Research Design and Methodology contains practical information on how to design and conduct scientific research in the behavioral and social sciences. This accessible guide covers basic to advanced concepts in a clear, concrete, and readable style.The text offers students and practitioners in the behavioral sciences and related disciplines important insights into identifying ...

Practicing is an essential part of every musician's life, but we are rarely taught how to practice in the most effective and efficient way. Many of us find ourselves frustrated when we sound good in the practice room only to embarrass ourselves on stage or in front of our teachers. We feel overwhelmed by the amount of music we have to learn, unsure how to balance everything. Playing from memory can feel terrifying and an insurmountable challenge, and overcoming bad habits can seem impossib...

Child prodigies. Gifted and Talented Programs. Perfect 2400s on the SAT. Sometimes it feels like the world is conspiring to make the rest of us feel inadequate. Those children tapped as possessing special abilities will go on to achieve great things, while the rest of us have little chance of realizing our dreams. Right?In Ungifted, cognitive psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman -- who was relegated to special education as a child -- sets out to show that the way we interpret ...

What is it that accounts for the differences between musical beginners advanced music makers and world class performers? Virtually everyone likes music and has the capacity to be musical in some way (despite what some may say about themselves). Yet far fewer people come to be so involved with it that they identify themselves as musicians and fewer still become musicians of international class. Psychology for Musicians provides the basis for answering this question. Examining the processes ...

Why are some performers exhilarated and energized about performing in public, while others feel a crushing sense of fear and dread, and experience public performance as an overwhelming challenge that must be endured? What are the factors that produce such vastly different performance experiences? Why have consummate artists like Frederic Chopin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pablo Cassals, Tatiana Troyanos, and Barbra Streisand experienced such intense music performance anxiety? This is a disorder ...

Music therapy is growing internationally to be one of the leading evidence-based psychosocial allied health professions, meeting needs right across the lifespan. Music therapy is a relational therapy in which the therapist and client collaborate to discover how music can be used to strengthen positive relating skills, attending to the client's immediate and longer term needs through assessment, treatment planning, implementation, and evaluation of a music therapy programme. Music therapy i...

'You are the music / While the music lasts' T.S. Eliot, The Four QuartetsDo babies remember music from the womb? Can classical music increase your child's IQ? Is music good for productivity? Can it aid recovery from illness and injury? And what is going on in your brain when Ultravox's 'Vienna', Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht or Dizzee Rascal's 'Bonkers' transports you back to teenage years?In a brilliant new work that will delight music lovers of every persuasion, music psycho...