Do musicians have a high IQ?

Participants were asked to complete several tests, one of which was the WAIS-II intelligence test. Musicians had a higher IQ than amateur musicians, who, in turn, had a higher IQ than non-musicians. However, only the higher IQ of musicians was substantially larger than that of non-musicians.

futurelearn.com - Adult musicians versus non-musicians - FutureLearn

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Explanation of the results; studies that compare the intelligence of adult musicians and non-musicians We saw that young musicians tend to be more intelligent than young non-musicians. Although we can’t conclude that music training boosts intelligence, the results are indeed interesting. And there is a particular result we didn’t stress so much: the fact that the relationship seems weaker when the age of the participant is older. Let’s stop here for a second and assume that music training does improve your intelligence and that, as the literature suggests, it does it in a linear way: the longer you undergo music training, the smarter you become. If this were true, what should we expect when the training takes several years? Then we should expect more and more intelligence. In practice, since it takes years to become a musician and because the music training seems to boost intelligence the more you train, we should expect that in adulthood, musicians should be much more intelligent than non-musicians.

So, are you an adult musician? Do you think you are much more intelligent than your peers? Do you know any adult musicians? Do you think they are more intelligent than their peers?

Susanne Brandler and Thomas Rammsayer asked exactly these questions and investigated whether adult musicians would perform better in an intelligence test than adult non-musicians. Musicians and non-musicians were adults with an age ranging from 25 to 30 years of age. Interestingly, musicians had all received musical training as instrumentalists for at least 14 years. Both groups were asked to complete the Cattell’s Culture Free Intelligence Test. The results revealed no difference in intelligence between musicians and non-musicians, but a few differences between musicians and non-musicians could be observed only in a limited number of subscales of the test: verbal memory was significantly better in musicians than in non-musicians; in contrast, non-musicians were superior with regard to performance on reasoning tasks. In a more recent study, Criscuolo and colleagues (Criscuolo et al. 2019) conducted a similar investigation. The authors recruited a group of participants that was divided among non-musicians, amateur musicians, and musicians as a function of the number of years of music training received by the participant. Participants had an average age of 28-29 years and musicians had an average of 21 years of music practice. Participants were asked to complete several tests, one of which was the WAIS-II intelligence test. Musicians had a higher IQ than amateur musicians, who, in turn, had a higher IQ than non-musicians. However, only the higher IQ of musicians was substantially larger than that of non-musicians. In brief, it may be possible that music training boosts intelligence but the results gathered on the effects of music training across various age groups seem mixed at best. At a young age, music training seems to have a clear relationship with intelligence. At an older age, the results seem more confused. This last result is problematic because adult musicians have many and many years of music training on their shoulders so here, after many years we should clearly see an effect of the music training on intelligence. In contrast, the effect of music training seems larger at a much smaller age.

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Are bigger hands better for piano?

The piano is absolutely easier to play with large hands (if your fingers aren't too broad) depending on how complex the piece is. Some pieces may be impossible to play without other tools if your hands are not large enough (notably Rachmaninoff).

music.stackexchange.com - Do the hands' sizes affect piano learning/performance? - Music

I don't really know anything about pianos, but since I just got a digital one I guess I should give it a go. The first thing I noticed is that it is difficult for me to press multiple keys that are a bit separated from each other with one hand. Not gonna lie: my hands are kinda small (I think).

I guess that it is still possible to play it well anyway and I just need practice. However, given that my hands are small, will my learning curve be significantly more challenging, or is this kind of problem very common and happens to most people?

They're not miniature though :(

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