Evidence found throughout the history of Western European art music reveals traditions that encompassed improvisation. This furthers the idea that without improvisation, music education based on canonized works of Western European art music is incomplete. When the goal of music education is to preserve works exactly as notated, improvisation…

People all over the world are engaging with popular music, particularly through social media platforms, where views are often in the billions and climbing. Sacks (2007), a world-renowned neurologist, coined the term "earworms" to refer to songs that play repetitively in one's head for no apparent reason, sometimes for days, even years,…

The purpose of this study was to characterize the behavior of 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children engaged in improvisational musical tasks. Ten subjects from each of the four age levels participated in the 4-year investigation, which lasted until the 2-year-olds reached 5 years of age. Children met individually with the investigator for 15 minutes…

This article reports on a school-based research project into teaching composing at GCSE, setting this alongside a review of the literature. It suggests that research into cognition in composing in school students and teaching composing within a school context may be synthesised by understanding composing as problem solving. Composing is described…