Educators From The United States

"When a musical piece is too simple we tend not to like it, finding it trivial. When it is too complex, we tend not to like it, finding it unpredictable—we don't perceive it to be grounded in anything familiar. Music, or any art form... has to strike the right balance between simplicity and complexity..."

"The brain's synapses are programmed to grow for a number of years, making new connections. After that time, there is a shift toward pruning, to get rid of unneeded connections. ...Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to reorganize itself. ...the amount of reorganization that can occur in most adults is vastly less than can occur in children and adolescents."

"Myelin is a fatty substance that coats the axons, speeding up synaptic transmission. Myelanation... is generally completed by age twenty. Multiple sclerosis is one of several degenerative diseases that can affect the myelin sheath..."

"Contour refers to the pattern of musical pitch in a melody—the sequence of ups or downs that the melody takes—regardless of the size of the interval."

"Consonant intervals and dissonant intervals are processed via separate mechanisms in the auditory cortex."

"Memory for playing a musical piece... involves a process very much like that for music listening... through establishing standard schemas and expectation. In addition, musicians use chunking... tying information together into groups, and remembering the group as a whole rather than individual pieces."

"Joni's genius is that she creates chords that are ambiguous, chords that have two or more different roots. ...Joni's music is as close to impressionist visual art as anything I've heard. ...harmonic complexity born out of her strict insistence that the music not be anchored in a single harmonic interpretation."

"Joni uses a lot of alternate tunings; that is, instead of tuning the guitar in the customary way, she tunes the strings to pitches of her own choosing. ...Joni will talk compellingly and passionately about alternate tunings for hours, comparing them to different colors that van Gogh used in his paintings."

"So much of the research on musical expertise has looked for accomplishment in the wrong place, in the facility of the fingers rather than the expressiveness of emotion."

"On average, successful people have had many more failures that unsuccessful people."

"We can say that speaking French "runs in families," but I don't know anyone who would claim that speaking French is genetic."

"Mozart had extensive training from his father, who was widely considered the greatest living music teacher in all of Europe at the time."

"Memory strength is also a function of how much we care about the experience. ...If I'm playing an instrument I like, and whose sound pleases me in and of itself... caring leads to attention, and together they lead to measurable neurochemical changes. Dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with emotional regulation, alertness, and mood, is released, and the dopaminergic system aids in encoding the memory trace."

"The emerging picture from... studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of master associated with being a world-class expert—in anything."

"Studies of violin players by Thomas Elbert have shown that the region of the brain responsible for moving the left hand... increases in size as a result of practice."

"The story of your brain on music is the story of an exquisite orchestration of brain regions, involving both the oldest and newest parts of the human brain, and regions as far apart as the cerebellum in the back of the head and the frontal lobes just behind your eyes. It involves a precision choreography... between logical prediction systems and emotional reward systems. ...it reminds us of other music we have heard, and it activates memory traces of emotional times of our lives. Your brain on music is all about... connections."

"Music moves us because it serves as a metaphor for emotional life. It has peaks and valleys of tension and release. It mimics the dynamics of our emotional life."

"Paul McCartney may be the closest thing our generation has produced to Franz Schubert -- a master of melody, writing tunes anyone can sing, songs that seem to have been there all along. Most people don't realize that "Ave Maria" and "Serenade" were written by Schubert (or that his "Moment Musical in F" so resembles "Martha My Dear"). McCartney writes with similar universality. His "Yesterday" has been recorded by more musicians than any other song in history. Its stepwise melody is deceptively complex, drawing from outside the diatonic scale so smoothly that anyone can sing it, yet few theorists can agree on exactly what it is that McCartney has done."

"Music changed more between 1963 and 1969 than it has in the 37 years since, with the Beatles among the architects of that change."

"One hundred years from now Beatles songs may be so well known that every child will learn them as nursery rhymes, and most people will have forgotten who wrote them. They will have become sufficiently entrenched in popular culture that it will seem as if they've always existed, like Oh Susannah, This Land Is Your Land, and Frère Jacques."

"There is no question that How to Work for an Idiot: Survive and Thrive ... Without Killing Your Boss... is a subversive book. People will pick it up expecting a tasty blend of commiseration and advice. They will put it down thinking, to rephrase the famous line from the cartoon character Pogo, "We have met the idiot, and he is us.""

"MR. PEABODY: "People who are content and confident in their work tend to be highly motivated and eminently more productive. They collaborate more freely with peers and colleagues, and cooperate better with those they report to..."

"Even the most mechanical organizations can design and deploy a people-centered culture, even if it happens one department at a time and takes a flying squirrel to champion the change."

"Business is first, last, and always about people."

"As the leader, you must pay close attention to results and effort."

"Many people who avoid talking to one another are the people that need to be engaged in conversation the most."

"Never l mind the stories of how one person, against all odds, proved the rest of the world wrong. Those things happen about as often as people are struck by lightning while cashing in their winning Lotto tickets."

"The more feedback you gather, the richer the data pool. The richer the data pool, the more willing you should be to toss your contradictory opinions out the window."

"You must be willing to reconcile any difference between who you really are, as evidenced by your words and deeds, and who you present yourself to be."

"It is much easier to address important issues if the conversation is continuous. Don’t take your team member by surprise. Catching someone off guard produces instant defensiveness."

"An absence of effective communication will ultimately lead to conflict."

"If you are truly adverse to regular, meaningful conversation with your team members, you can skip straight to conflict."

"Conversation sets the stage for the commitment and the covenant."

"One of the things [good] ringleaders encourage is the uncensored free-flow of information and ideas, both within their circles and within the biggest circle of all, the one drawn around the entire organization."

"If compensation is merely tied to the organizational money chart, the real contributions of many in the organization are not being recognized or rewarded. Such neglect kills enthusiasm and effort."

"The organizational money chart enables people to isolate because they can always point upward when someone asks, “Who's in charge?” Over time, the motivation to do well dwindles."

"Organizations with traditional, Napoleonic, military-style hierarchies tend to remain static. To paraphrase Isaac Newton, organizations at rest tend to stay at rest."

"Going through channels means seeking permission from those above you. Imagine how much distortion there will be if the information is screened each time based on each person's political agenda."

"People in intermediate organizational positions quickly learn how they can influence decisions at the top by filtering information as it makes its way up the ladder and back down again."

"When leaders are separate and definitely not equal, they tend to become ensconced in corner offices, or at least offices with windows."

"People participate fully, with the best they have, when they feel necessary to the outcome. People want to participate, but only if they'll feel good about what they're doing."

"Organizational performance, productivity, and profitability depend more on the emotional investment people have in meeting organizational objectives than any other factor."

"The cost of “downsizing,” “re-sizing,” or “right-sizing” eclipses what it would have cost to unleash the pent up leadership already inside the organization."

"We define substance abuse as throwing away substance in favor of a better-looking wrapper. Running off experienced people for cheaper labor makes as much sense as peeling a banana, throwing the fruit away, and eating the peel."

"Efficiency, productivity, and performance should always be priorities, through good times and bad."

"Most executives bring in a consultant or a new training program for course correction after they've steered the ship into an iceberg."

"People don't learn much about themselves or others while they're succeeding in spite of poor practices. When the real outcomes reflect the real work being done, the real learning begins."

"Clinging to unrealistic expectations, we can become our own worst enemies."

"Classical management theory would have us believe that the fastest way to get a square peg through a round hole is to use a bigger hammer."

"When people's hopes and expectations are built up only to be demolished, they become a lot harder to motivate."