Photo of Mrs. Amanda Ford.

Mrs. Amanda Ford

Music Teacher
aford@sdale.org

John Tyson's Music Dept.

WHY MUSIC?

1. Music is a science. It is exact and specific.

2. Music is mathematical. It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions which must be counted and done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.

3. Music is a foreign language. Most of the terms are in Italian, German or French. And the notation is certainly not English-but a highly developed kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas. The semantics of music is a universal language.

4. Music is history. Music usually reflects the environment and times of its creation, often even the country and racial feeling.

5. Music is physical education. It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lip, cheek and facial muscles in addition to extraordinary control of the diaphragm, back, stomach and chest muscles, which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.

6. Music develops insight and demands research.

7. Music also develops your brain. No discipline demands such complete use of both sides of your brain; creative and analytical.

8. Music is all these things, but most of all, music is art!!

That is why I teach music:

Not because I expect you to major in music

Not because I expect you to play or sing all your life

But so you will be human

So you will recognize beauty

So you will be closer to an infinite beyond this world

So you will have something to cling to

So you will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good

In short…….more LIFE.