Where does this leave us?

 it's not unreasonable to think that serious music training might hone skills of relevance to non-musical cognition.

For instance, students of music are required to

• focus attention for long periods of time

• decode a complex symbolic system (musical notation)

• translate the code into precise motor patterns

• recognize patterns of sound across time

• discriminate differences in pitch

• learn rules of pattern formation

• memorize long passages of music

• track and reproduce rhythms

• understand ratios and fractions (e.g., a quarter note is half as long as a half note)

• improvise within a set of musical rules.

IN THE GENES....

In the genes?

It's not simply a case of genetics—-i.e., that people with more grey matter volume are more likely to become musicians. Research suggests that the brains of non-musicians change in response to musical training.

In one study, non-musicians were assigned to perform a 5-finger exercise on the piano for two hours a day. Within five days, subjects showed evidence of re-wiring. The size of the area associated with finger movements had become larger and more active.

So it's reasonable to think that the brain grows in response to music training. Are these brain differences linked with differences in intelligence?

Maybe so.

Music And Intelligence

Music and intelligence:

How musical training shapes the brainBrain scanning technologies have permitted neuroscientists to observe the activity of living brains, and the results are clear:

Musicians are different.For instance, in one study, people who played musical instruments as children showed more robust brainstem responses to sound than did non-musicians.

Other studies have reported that kids assigned to receive musical training developed distinctive neural responses to music and speech,  evidence of more intense information processing that was linked with improvements in the discrimination of pitch and the segmentation of speech.

And it's not just a matter of differences in brain activity. There are also differences in brain volume.

If you examine the brain of a keyboard player, you’ll find that the region of the brain that controls finger movements is enlarged.

My Interest in Music

I have always had an interest in music. When I worked the stage, I learned a lot about music; I had to read scores to determine lighting, sound and rigging cues. Since then I have improved my music reading skills, at a hobby level. It is interesting to read a piece of music and to appreciate its structure.
Once I started reading music, I also wanted to learn how to play it!

My View....

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.

By-Bradley Whitford

Infuse your life with action. Don't wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen... yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.

Sir Albert Einstein

You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.