How Dyscalculia Impacts Music
Last year, U2’s drummer, Larry Mullen Jr., shared publicly about his recent dyscalculia diagnosis. This news created quite the buzz in the dyscalculic community. It’s rare a celebrity shares openly about their personal experience with a learning disability, much less dyscalculia.
In The Times article Mullen shared how dyscalculia impacted his counting and was the reason for his pained facial expression while playing with the band.
The main challenge with dyscalculia is with understanding and having a sense for quantity and amount. Mathematical calculation is the most recognized skill impacted, but it impacts so much more.
Dyscalculia impacts the innate sense of quantity most individuals have from infancy. Brian Butterworth, neuroscientist and professor emeritus of the University College London describes dyscalculia as a lack of understanding numbers as sets or groups. This impacts a dyscalculic’s sense of: more and less, visuals for numbers, the relationships between quantities, and representation of numeric symbols.
When we understand dyscalculia in this way, it becomes a deeper issue than just being “bad at math” or struggling to memorize the multiplication tables. Or in Mullen’s case, it’s more than just having trouble counting bars on sheet music. Dyscalculia impacts many of our everyday tasks, including music.
Many dyscalculic musicians create and play music with ease. The struggle is most often with reading music and timing in music.
Several years ago, my preteen daughter became interested in the piano. I listened as she found the correct keys and played the hauntingly beautiful song, Salt and the Sea by the Lumineers. She even mastered the complicated timing simply by listening and replaying what she heard. I then attempted to teach her how to read piano music, but was confused when it was extremely difficult for her. I wondered why she seemed disinterested in learning to read the music she was playing. It wasn’t until much later that I realized how dyscalculia impacted her ability to read and play music.
With this deeper understanding of dyscalculia as an issue with quantity, and with what we know about dyscalculic learners, I’d like to delve into some of the specific aspects of music, and how dyscalculia can make some aspects of music difficult.
Counting
The article mentioned that Mullen struggled with counting bars. It requires enormous effort and concentration for dyscalculics to count correctly and not leave out numbers in a sequence. Most dyscalculics learn the order of a counting sequence by sound, without a deeper understanding or visual of the amounts. That is why it is difficult for them to count backwards, and to begin counting mid-sequence without starting at one.
Reading music requires counting and observing quantities in several directions, simultaneously left to right along the measures, and up and down on the bars. One musically talented and dyscalculic friend of mine told me she just couldn’t read and follow both the upper treble clef and lower base clef lines at the same time.
Subitizing
Most people are born with an innate ability to subitize, to see a small quantity of five or less and instantly know how many there are without counting. This is something dyscalculics are unable to do, especially with randomly displayed items. Some do learn to see quantities and recognize amounts when they are arranged in specific patterns.
In music, this inability to subitize means it takes longer to recognize notes and chords. In reading music, one must quickly subitize the lines and spaces on a measure to determine the correct note. For example, one must instantly see that a particular note is on the third space up from the bottom and know what note that represents. Knowing instantly, without counting, also impacts the ability to read a particular chord with a specific number of notes within it. If one must quickly count each line, space, or circle, you can imagine how much more difficult and time-consuming it will be to read music.
Without the ability to subitize, the sets of three and two black keys on the piano could take a moment longer for a dyscalculic musician to recognize as they navigate the keyboard.
This one difficulty with subitizing makes reading and playing music much more difficult for dyscalculics, especially when trying to keep pace with the other musicians. Mullen’s pained expression is understandable.
Symbolic Representations of Quantity
Written music is full of symbols that require instantaneous decoding. The auditory and physical sensory experience of music is written in a variety of symbols of solid or hollow circles modified by tails, dots, and other markings. Much like our number system, this symbolism is not easily decoded by dyscalculics. The symbolic quantities require extra energy to make quick mathematical calculations of note amounts. Mullen compared some of these aspects of music to “climbing Mount Everest.”
Mathematical Language in Music
Music is riddled with mathematical language. Fractions on the music sheets tell us the timing or the quantity of beats per measure in a song. Notes are given names in fractional terms connected to their amount, quarter note, half note, whole note. Terms such as “2/4 time” and “double-time,” require an understanding of mathematical concepts which are baffling for dyscalculics.
The First Step is Awareness
This leads to the obvious question, “How can we better understand and support the dyscalculic’s experience in reading, composing, and playing music?”
The first step is simply to be aware of the impact dyscalculia has on an individual’s experience with music. Be curious if someone you know is struggling to learn how to play a musical instrument or sing vocals. Don’t immediately assume the struggles are because they are not trying hard enough or practicing regularly. Consider whether the difficulty may be because of a deeper reason like dyscalculia or other learning disabilities. Dyspraxic students struggle with fine motor skills required to play instruments. Dyslexics struggle with directional components, verbal and written instructions, interpretation and decoding of symbols, and the language of music.
Music teachers should be aware of dyscalculia and on the lookout for students struggling in these ways. With at least 1 out of every 20 students being dyscalculic, music teachers can expect to work with dyscalculic musicians in higher frequency than they realize. Teachers should explore teaching methods that work around these roadblocks so students can engage with music in a meaningful and successful way.
We need innovative people with a deep understanding for dyscalculia to develop creative ways to provide music instruction for dyscalculia learners, and options for alternative ways to write music. A few years ago, my daughter became interested in the Irish tin whistle. She found a teacher online who taught using a visual display of the note locations that matched the instrument, instead of reading traditional music. This was transformational for my daughter, enabling her to learn and enjoy this new instrument.
Finally, we need more public figures and celebrities to share their life experiences with dyscalculia. I want to thank Larry Mullen Jr. for sharing his dyscalculia diagnosis and personal experience. His willingness to be vulnerable and share this brings hope to individuals all over the world who feel alone in their struggles.
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