Author Archive: Staff

BAF to use Music Therapy to Fight PTSD in Veterans

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In 2010, researchers at the Virginia Medical Center partnered with the foundation Guitars 4 Vets to test the effect of music education on veterans suffering with Post traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). After 10 weeks of guitar lessons, the subjects experienced a 21% reduction in PTSD symptoms, a 28% reduction in depression symptoms, and a 37% improvement in “health-related quality of life.” Overall, the study highlights the therapeutic effects of music and the positive impacts it has on suffering veterans.

In the near future, the Bruce Arnold Foundation and KLOS Guitars will combine efforts in their own experiment. KLOS, an up-and-coming guitar design and manufacturing company, has developed the first guitar that controls for environmental factors. Its lightweight, carbon-fiber design makes it durable, while its smaller size makes learning simpler. KLOS will be providing 30 guitars for the project, which will take place over 10 weeks. Each participant will receive a guitar and four educational resources from Muse-eek.com, including three downloadable files and one hard-copy book. Additionally, participants will have access to the BAF’s free online resource, musiceducation.org, which would provide out-of-class instruction. In class, Bruce Arnold, Jane Getter, and Jerry DeVore will be lending their educational talents once per week.

Also on staff is Clinical Psychologist Sean Evers, who has worked with veterans for 30 years. He serves as director at both Evers Psychological Associates, P.C., and the Center for Post traumatic Studies, LLC, in New Jersey. Dr. Evers will use three tests prior to and following the program: the Beck Depression Scale, the Beck Anxiety Questionnaire, and the Post traumatic Stress Checklist. They will be used to measure participant progress.

The goal of the program is to see first-hand whether music education does have a positive impact on veterans with PTSD. Ultimately, Bruce Arnold, an advocate of veterans’ rights, hopes to hire graduates of the program to teach the next wave of participants.

Written by Alexis Cunningham

Bruce Arnold Foundation Announces STEAM Website

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The Bruce Arnold Foundation is proud to announce the creation of steam-education.org a website for musicians who are interested in exploring the relationship between hard science and music. The website is dedicated to enhancing the music learning process by teaching the important role science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) have in understanding and creating music. The connection between these different components inspired us to create STEAM: science, technology, engineering, art, and math.
Technology has become a huge factor in the life of society as a whole; its impact on music follows suit. In recent years, the creation of music has been done increasingly through computer work and other digital audio workstations. Working digitally is now a basic necessity for most musicians. This high demand for digital knowledge in the music industry has led to an increase in music technology majors for college students. Many of a Music Technology major’s courses overlap with those courses taken by students studying hard sciences.  Computer coding, digital signal processing, acoustics, and many other mathematical and sound related principles are just some of the skills students must acquire in order to create music via code.
Of course mathematics and the sciences have been the basic foundation for music from the start, from the rhythms of the earth to the humming of bees to the earliest drum patterns. The STEAM website will show students the interdependent relationship between these hard science elements and music that has always existed. It will prove that understanding the correspondence between music and STEAM is vital to a musician’s development.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to scroll down to the bottom of the steam-education.org website and let us know what you think. We hope that all artists will pursue this opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the various aspects of music in relation to STEAM. Bruce Arnold Foundation Blog Logo

Written by Sara Adeli

Bruce Arnold Foundation Announces Music Education Website

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The Bruce Arnold Foundation is proud to announce the successful establishment of music-education.org to all aspiring musicians. Music-education.org is a website for emerging artists who cannot easily access quality face-to-face instruction. It currently provides seven free online courses, all of which use the Bruce Arnold System of Music Education. This system has been refined over a span of 30 years, and has been developed specifically to integrate an intellectual and physical understanding of music within students.

Each of these courses covers specific topics and are organized around lessons that are pivotal to a music student’s proper development. A quiz is also provided at the end of each course to gauge how well students have fully absorbed the information.

Music-education.org provides three courses on note recognition, three courses on interval recognition, and one course on music theory. Music theory level 1 consists of the basic information a student needs to get started, and serves as a solid springboard for more advanced theory study. The note recognition courses are designed not only to teach the notes found on various music clefs, but also to accelerate the speed at which a student is able to identify these notes. The interval recognition courses are designed to enable the student to visually and aurally identify the relationships between one note and another.

Have any questions? Just scroll to the bottom of music-education.org and let us know what you think. We hope that all emerging artists will take full advantage of this music learning experience. The courses on these websites are available at no cost, but donations are still welcome. These donations will be put towards traveling workshops, so that these online courses, and further, more advanced courses, can be brought to students in a classroom setting.

 

Bruce Arnold Foundation Blog Logo

Written by Sara Adeli

 

 

BAF Partners with Muse Eek U

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Muse Eek University

Muse Eek University

BAF has partnered with Muse Eek U to offer free access to their online learning forum for students attending our summer workshops.  This will enable students to prepare for the workshops and give them a chance to improve their skills before they attend.  It is our experience that the extremely different methods that we introduce at our workshops tend to overwhelm students initially, because of the many readjustments they may have to make in their practicing and playing to fully reach their potential.  Muse Eek U thus allows students many months of prep work to avoid confusion, and to adjust before the workshops.

Muse Eek U contains an ever growing resource of online music education applications to help a student improve their ear training, music theory, sight reading and rhythm skills.  These applications are ground breaking in their formation and places the student in a work environment that speeds improvement and presents exercises in multiple contexts to increase comprehension, as well as application to real music situations.

The Bruce Arnold foundation feels that there is a profound lack of serious platforms on the Internet to study music. This may seem to be an odd statement considering how many different websites are dedicated to music learning and the fact that YouTube has thousands of videos teaching music. Although there are exceptions many of these music educational outlets lack depth and in some cases accuracy. This lack of depth and accuracy can seriously impact a student’s progress especially if incorrect exercises our practice for a long period of time. It is our hope that our educational initiatives will raise the bar on music education and help students get a better music education at no cost.

The Bruce Arnold Foundation wants to thank Muse Eek U for this generous offer to help students reach their full potential.