Does Listening to Music Benefit the Music Learning Process?

When I was a toddler, my mom would play records of music in our apartment every day – not just to fill our home with music, but with the hope that bits of it would seep into my brain in some way.

Of course, records don’t play on an infinite loop, so it meant having to run up and down the stairs all day, putting the needle back to the beginning every time the music stopped.

Eventually, she discovered the endless cassette tape, which meant that she could create loops of music for me to listen to while I played with my Lincoln Logs or Tinker Toys, without having to go up and down the stairs every 20 minutes.

My mom would also play those tapes as I was taking naps or going to sleep. And on our long drives to lessons, my mom would bring one of those portable tape players into the car so I could continue listening (this is before cars had tape players built-in).

All of this is to say that my mom went to a lot of trouble to maximize how much listening I was doing from day to day.

But was all this effort worth it? When it comes to enhancing or accelerating the music learning process, is there any research on what we might gain from listening to music?

Can we learn by listening?

Previous research suggests that we can improve motor skills by observing others. Like watching a teacher demonstrate a new technique. Or even by watching videos of expert performers.

But what about listening with just our ears, minus the visual component?

When you think about it, audio recordings do offer lots of clues about the motor movements involved in producing sound – whether it’s bow weight or speed, vibrato, use of air, or the kind of force involved in pressing down the keys on a piano.

So might it be possible to improve motor skills simply by hearing the music we’re working on?

A study!

A team of researchers (Lahav et al., 2012) recruited thirty-six non-musicians to learn a simple 15-note snippet of music. Everyone practiced until they could play this figure perfectly, without any note or rhythmic errors.

Then, after a 48-hour break, everyone returned to the lab on three consecutive days for one of three types of follow-up sessions.

One group – the passive-listening group – listened to the musical passage they learned for 20 minutes, while sitting quietly.

The distracted-listening group listened to the piece as well, but did so as they solved a jigsaw puzzle on the computer.

A third group – the nature-listening group – spent 20 minutes listening to nature sounds instead of the music they learned.

A performance test

A week after their initial learning session, everyone was asked to perform the music they learned – in just one take, with no warmups or opportunities to hear the passage again.

Then their performance was evaluated in three ways:

1. Did they play the right notes?
2. Did they play with the right rhythm?
3. Did they play evenly? As in, was their playing in a consistent dynamic range?

So…was there any difference in learning between these three groups?

Results

Note accuracy

Well, when it came to note accuracy, listening did seem to help!

The passive-listening group played significantly more of the right notes than either the distracted-listening or nature-listening groups.

Rhythm

Listening seemed to help with rhythmic accuracy as well!

When it came to rhythm, both the passive-listening and distracted-listening groups seemed to benefit from listening, as they both outperformed the nature-listening group by a significant margin.

Evenness

And finally, listening even helped with a more consistent dynamic range.

When it came to the evenness of their playing – keeping the loudness of notes the same, instead of some notes sticking out and some failing to speak – here too both the passive and distracted-listening groups performed much better than the nature-listening group.

Caveats

Well, one quick thing to emphasize is that this study was conducted on total piano newbies, who had no previous experience playing the piano. So it’s not 100% clear exactly how these results might transfer to experienced pianists, or other instrumentalists or singers.

That said, it’s possible that this sort of listening could actually have even more of an impact amongst skilled musicians, who have a better sense of which motor movements correspond with which sounds.

For instance, there’s this study of music majors taking secondary piano, which found notable benefits from listening and creating an “auditory model” before practicing a new passage of music.

Take action

At the end of the day, listening does seem to be a useful addition to the learning process – even when it comes to the most basic note/rhythm/dynamics aspects of our playing.

So whether you’re listening to some solo Bach while wandering around the grocery store searching for a jar of capers (they’re never where I think they’re going to be), or as you sit in the airport during a long layover, or are too sick to practice but have lots of notes to learn, there are usually little pockets of time in our everyday lives that could be filled with some active or passive listening.

And while it’s certainly no substitute for real practice, listening could be a pretty easy and painless way to supplement the learning process in a meaningful way!

A live class!

Of course, real physical practice doesn’t have to be as painful, dull, or frustrating as it can often feel as well!

I grew up thinking that practicing just meant accumulating hours, and getting in as many “correct” and consistent repetitions as possible. But it turns out this lack of variation from one repetition to the next can actually lead to more fragile motor skills that are less reliable under pressure.

This is why we can feel like something is well-learned, but then when we record it, or play for someone, we end up making lots of little mistakes that usually never happen.

The answer isn’t to eliminate repetitions, of course, but to do more varied repetitions. Which not only leads to more robust motor skills, but funner and more engaging practice sessions too.

If you’d like to learn how to do more of this sort of practice, and see more of your practice gains transfer to the stage – even under pressure – I think you’ll like the live Performance Psych Essentials class that starts on July 16, 2024. Over the course of two weeks, alongside a cohort of supportive fellow learners, you’ll learn effective practice strategies, as well as techniques for managing nerves, getting into flow states more consistently, and playing more confidently in performance.

Registration is open now through Sunday, July 14th 11:59pm Pacific. You can get all the details on the specific practice, performance, and psychological skills we’ll be working on, plus the class dates and times, right here:

Performance Psychology Essentials – Cohort 19

References

Lahav, A., Katz, T., Chess, R., & Saltzman, E. (2012). Improved motor sequence retention by motionless listening. Psychological Research, 77(3), 310–319. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-012-0433-0