I'm not a music guru by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't think musical ability is completely measurable. Well, yes the technical ability to read and play the notes and apply the other notation is measurable. And teachers can do that well. But I think the elite players go beyond that with their technique and, where appropriate, emotion.
I guess what I was referring to was more that, if you wanted to measure someone's musical ability, you can look at the hours they practiced as something that correlates. Which is what the researchers did. For skills like creativity or critical thinking, what hard number would you look at? I don't know, and I have a feeling that if you looked at time spent, you wouldn't get these same results.
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I'm not a music guru by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't think musical ability is completely measurable. Well, yes the technical ability to read and play the notes and apply the other notation is measurable. And teachers can do that well. But I think the elite players go beyond that with their technique and, where appropriate, emotion.
I guess what I was referring to was more that, if you wanted to measure someone's musical ability, you can look at the hours they practiced as something that correlates. Which is what the researchers did. For skills like creativity or critical thinking, what hard number would you look at? I don't know, and I have a feeling that if you looked at time spent, you wouldn't get these same results.