Classically-trained students are more sensitive to sound variations

Wilson’s Hospital School students Aran Cahalan from Clonard and Aileen Fox from Delvin were interested in seeing if secondary school students who are classically trained in music are more sensitive to variations in sounds than those who have an untrained ear.

“It came about because I showed a video of my orchestra playing and I was disappointed because we were a bit out of tune but Aileen could not hear the difference,” explains Aran, who plays with the Royal Irish Academy of Music Orchestra.

That got the two wondering why that was the case, and so, mentored by teacher Mark Condell, they enlisted volunteers from their school prepared to take a hearing test. And the results corroborated research by others investigating the same question, the students revealed.

“From our findings, we found that in every category, musically trained people had better results. They were more accurate and had better range,” says Aran. He went on to add that interestingly, girls and boys were equally accurate, although the girls had a larger range. “The teachers were the worst in every category except definition of lower hertz. “Our results are in line with information we have been given online, but we can confirm that based on our tests, trained ears are better across the board.”