Is musicality something we are born with? Or a skill that anyone can develop at any time?

[Skip Zilla]

Gary Marcus' new book Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning investigates these questions.

[Skip Zilla]

http://garymarcus.com/guitarzero/resources.html

[Barry Kort]

Yesterday, I found a pretty good puzzle game (an online free Flash game) called Musaic Box that illustrates one way to learn a little about music without having any musical talent to speak of.  It exploits the idea of assembling musical phrases out of segments that roughly visualize the musicality of a measure.

[Barry Kort]

This morning, Gary Marcus was a guest on NPR's Weekend Edition, Sunday, with Rachel Martin interviewing him on the subject of his new book.

[Skip Zilla]

Good interview. "Don't expect overnight success," says Gary Marcus, importantly.

[Skip Zilla]

I downloaded the one-hour-free-sample of Musaic Box, Barry, but don't think Marcus would value learning music it's way as much as simply engaging with a real musical instrument and sticking with playing it until the dopamine kicks in as accomplishments become self-evident. BTW, maybe a day will come when such diligence in developing muscular habits/brain plasticity will be less necessary: see http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/01/study-of-the-day-...

[Connie Weber]

I'm ordering Marcus' new book--sounds very good. I heard the NPR review Barry wrote about while running today...that made me think about your post, Skip. Yep, it's a book that wants to be read!