Graham Welch: Everyone is musical, given the opportunity

From a lecture given at the University of London's Institute of Education by the Professor of Music Education

I was driving through London's rush hour one morning listening to a BBC interview with a member of a team who reporting on a study of pitch perception in the journal Science. The authors' conclusion, based on experimental data from identical female twins, was that "heritability for tune deafness is 0.80", or that 80 per cent of the observed variability in pitch perception among twins was genetic in origin.

He claimed that "these results demonstrate for the first time the powerful influence of genes on the ability of humans to recognise correct pitches and melodies." The BBC interviewer asked about the implications of these findings for parents whose children were learning to play musical instruments. The research scientist suggested that many parents were wasting their money.

Such a misunderstanding of the nature of musical behaviour is part of the folklore of music, namely that people are either "musical" or "unmusical". The neuropsychobiological research evidence indicates that everyone is musical (assuming normal anatomy and physiology).

The term "tone deaf" should be confined to that rare number of people who have some form of neurological disorder in the processing of sound. It is inappropriate, even as a conventional shorthand, for use with developing singers, because it ignores the reality, namely that "out-of-tune" singing behaviour should be understood commonly as a mismatch between the designated musical task and current singing competency. Adults (and children) who have self-labelled themselves as "tone-deaf" have been shown to improve and develop enhanced singing skills in an appropriate educational setting.

In an educational context, every effort should be made to counter the deficit model that has been explicitly nurtured through the use of negative labelling (such as "growlers" and "monotone") for developing singers. The following strategy outlined by W Carrol in The Training of Children's Voices (1922) is not recommended: "If there are 'growlers' in the class they should be at the side – about two yards away from the other scholars. These children should be allowed to join in occasionally, very quietly. They will often gain more from listening than from 'singing'."

Another misunderstanding is to assume that perceived singing competency is a reflection of a general level of musical competence. Singing is one form of musical behaviour. Others, such as composing, are subject to their own multi-faceted developmental processes related to particular experiences and contexts.

A final misconception concerns the word music itself. This suggests a single, perhaps unitary phenomenon. However, although such a generic conceptualisation can be useful, the reality is that there are many and diverse musics in our world. Within each society and its constituent communities, many musics flourish, not least as adjuncts to group and personal identities. Music education has to find a way to celebrate, understand and promote access to this diversity if it is to realise the musical potential of the individuals it is meant to serve.

In 1837, a social and moral experiment began of introducing vocal music into the curriculum of the schools of Boston. In May of the following year, the Mayor of Boston requested a report on progress. The school's response was subsequently published by the Boston Music Gazette on Wednesday, 25 July 1838:

"One thing has been made evident, that the musical ear is more common than has been generally supposed. Many who at the outset of the experiment believed that they had neither ear nor voice, now sing with confidence and with considerable accuracy; and others who could hardly tell one sound from another, now sing the scale with ease."

We are all musical; we just need the opportunity.