Do you have friends who say, “I love music, but I can’t play anything.”? I have always been a firm believer that almost everyone has musical talent – they just haven’t had the opportunity to discover what they’re good at yet. And this study confirms my belief. (I love it when that happens.)
It turns out that most everyone has the ability to inspire emotion in others, simply by playing a single piano note. Yes, a single note; I think you can do that.
In this study musicians and non-musicians were asked to express one of eight emotions by playing a single note on the piano: impetutousness, tenderness, resoluteness, etc. Not only did the musicians and non-musicians play the notes statistically the same on every measure except tempo, the musicians and non-musicians recruited to listen to the players were able to equally match the emotions, regardless of the player’s or listener’s status. (Thanks to Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily for the understandable version of this study.)
Which just goes to show that we all have many gifts, musical and otherwise. Probably the biggest obstacle is discovering just which gift is yours. I hope you resolve today to go out, discover and share another of your talents. You could even send some musical chills up our spines.