Predictors of continued playing or singing – from childhood and adolescence to adult years

Abstract

AimMany individuals play an instrument or sing during childhood, but they often stop later in life. This study surveyed adults representative of the Swedish population about musical activities during childhood.MethodsWe asked 3820 adults (65% women) aged from 27 to 54 from the Swedish Twin Registry, who took extra music lessons to those provided at school, to fill in a web‐based questionnaire. Factors analysed were the age they started studying music, the instrument they played, kind of teaching, institution and educational content, number of lessons and perceived characteristics of the lessons, the music environment during their childhood years and their preferred music genre. All variables were dichotomised.ResultsFactors strongly associated with continued playing or singing were male sex, young starting age, cultural family background, self‐selected instrument, attending music classes and more than once a week, church‐related or private education, pop, rock or classical music, playing by ear and improvisation.ConclusionSeveral significant predictors determined whether a child continued to sing or play an instrument as an adult and many could be externally influenced, such as starting at a young age, taking music classes more than once a week, improvisation and the type of music they played.

Secular Slowing of Auditory Simple Reaction Time in Sweden (1959–1985)

“…The survey contained a wide range of instruments and questions that took between 55 and 90 min to complete, the procedures of which are further described in Appendix 1.3. Many of these instruments are described in previous publications (e.g., Mosing et al, 2014a , b , 2015 ; Ullén et al, 2014 , 2015 ; Theorell et al, 2015 ). Of these, only auditory SRT, sex, and birth year were utilized in the present study.…”

Predicting who takes music lessons: parent and child characteristics

“…Adults who achieve high levels of musical expertise differ from less accomplished musicians in terms of greater levels of passion for music, enhanced music aptitude, and more practice (e.g., Ericsson et al, 1993 ; Ruthsatz et al, 2008 ; Bonneville-Roussy et al, 2011 ; Macnamara et al, 2014 ). In fact, practice is the best predictor that children and adolescents will continue playing music into adulthood (Theorell et al, 2015 ). Practice is also associated with the propensity to experience musical flow, which is defined as being completely absorbed and focused on an activity that one enjoys (Butkovic et al, 2015 ).…”

Research-to-Resource: The Importance of Aural Learning in the Strings Classroom

“…He found that poor student performance in both sight-reading and in playing by ear were correlated with music lesson dropout rates. Similarly, Theorell et al (2015) found that learning by ear may be significantly and positively associated with continued playing into adulthood.…”