Musical intelligence, also called musical-rhythmic intelligence, is the capacity to discern pitch, rhythm, timbre, and tone. It involves sensitivity to sounds and vibrations.
People with high musical intelligence understand and express themselves through music. They can produce and appreciate music, identify distinct musical notes, and may think in rhythms or melodies.
As stated by Howard Gardner, musical intelligence is one of eight multiple intelligences, first set out in his influential work Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983).
Gardner argued that intelligence is not one single intellectual capacity but a combination of eight distinct, relatively independent types of intelligence.
People with musical intelligence tend to think in terms of patterns.
For example, they look for new knowledge patterns to increase their learning. They also seek patterns in speech and language. They can recall things, like grocery lists or vocabulary words, by turning them into lyrics or rhymes.
Generally, people with musical intelligence have a tremendous appreciation of music.
In other words, these individuals think differently, more inclined to think about music and rhythms. Individuals with musical intelligence can hear and identify patterns quickly.
They are susceptible to beat and sound. For instance, they can readily distinguish the sound of a clarinet from the sound of a flute.
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Ludwig van Beethoven: of course, perhaps one of history’s greatest composers. Beethoven wrote many of his best pieces after going deaf. He expressed that he imagined the notes – of every single instrument you would find in an orchestra – all in his head.
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Michael Jackson: the late pop singer, mesmerized millions with his sense of rhythm, musical ability, and seeming capacity to defy the laws of physics in his dance moves.
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Miles Davis: a great trumpeter who, as a bandleader and composer, was one of the significant influences on music and jazz from the late 1940s. Davis was praised as a musical genius and glorified for the beauty and sensitivity of his playing.
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Jimi Hendrix: a history-making guitarist. Hendrix was one of the very first guitarists to use tone-altering effects units in mainstream rock extensively. Hendrix was the first musician to use stereophonic phasing effects in recordings.
People with musical intelligence usually:
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Seek patterns in their environment.
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Are drawn to sound.
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Quickly memorize phrases and words in foreign languages
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Enjoy dancing and singing.
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Have a heightened level of understanding of the musical structure, notes, tone, and rhythm.
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Use patterning to recall things.
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Have a good rhythm.
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They are skilled at playing several instruments.
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Are zealous about music.
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Have the ability to remember songs easily.
Musical intelligence is skill in performing, writing, and appreciating music and musical patterns. People who excel in this intellect can usually use rhythms and patterns to aid learning.
Gardner counts musicians, composers, band directors, and music critics among those with high musical intelligence. Music broadens how young children learn, too. Bringing it into art, theatre, and dance across the curriculum widens the routes students have into a subject.
Not everyone agrees it deserves the label “intelligence,” though. Psychologist Robert Sternberg has argued that musical ability is better described as a talent than an intelligence. It does not involve the kind of adaptive problem-solving many definitions treat as central to intelligence.
Characteristics of Musical Intelligence
Here, we highlight the varied characteristics that are associated with musical intelligence:
Thinking Musically
People with high musical intelligence tend to think in the abstract, in the form of music itself. They think in melodies, beats, tones, and rhythms.
This fits one of Howard Gardner’s own tests for a genuine intelligence: a core, identifiable operation at its heart. For musical intelligence, Gardner points to sensitivity to pitch relationships as that core operation, the same way spatial intelligence rests on perceiving visual relationships.
Appreciating Music
Obviously, these people have a high appreciation for music in all aspects. They love to listen to music, perform intricate musical pieces, and can just sit down and appreciate every aspect of the music they listen to.
Composing & Writing Music
People with high musical intelligence love to think of new ways to create new sounds, melodies, and music. Therefore, they love to compose musical pieces.
Picking Apart Musical Elements
In this same vein, they love to pick apart almost any work of music and identify the sounds of all of the instruments or samples involved. They love to think about the creativity that is put into musical compositions.
Playing Musical Instruments
Typically, people with high musical intelligence can read sheet music and the musical staff. However, sometimes these people do not need sheet music or guidance to play beautiful pieces.
They often play multiple musical instruments. Therefore, they have become very attuned to “perfect pitch,” which allows them to identify whether something is out of tune, melody, or rhythm.
Music is Everywhere, All the Time
People with high musical intelligence constantly need the presence of music in their lives. Simply, music is part of their day-to-day life. They frequently listen to music, or they will hum or sing songs if there is a rare silence.
Why is Musical Intelligence Important?
Young students with this kind of intelligence can bring a wide range of skill sets into the classroom, including rhythm and a fondness for patterns. Gardner claimed that musical intelligence was akin to having higher linguistic intelligence.
Researchers have found reasons why music instruction can influence intelligence. They conclude that there are many reasons why musical intelligence is crucial, especially for children.
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Musical interaction and lessons require focus. Therefore it teaches children to practice their patience and be more able to focus on other topics.
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Learning musical notation is an excellent skill to practice. It requires children to decode, similar to them learning how to read. These codes are translated into precise motor patterns, thus developing a motor memory.
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The student learns to use the rules of pattern formation.
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Music penetrates through the ear and is accordingly memorized.
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The child understands to feel and comprehend ratios and fractions in the shape of quarter notes which are half as long as a half note, and so forth.
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Children learn to improvise within a set of musical laws and play within a knowledge base.
When playing an instrument, including the voice, the brain works at a high-functioning level, supporting abstract thinking, analyzing, and synthesizing. According to research done, it influences other cognitive tasks such as:
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Visual-spatial skills
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Reading skills
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Abstract math abilities
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Perceptual organization
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Vocabulary retention
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Verbal abilities (translating thought into sounds)
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Memory in general
Thus, music enters the brain’s abstract functioning and has a long-term positive effect.
What do people with musical intelligence do?
Having musical intelligence includes having the capacity to discern pitch, rhythm, beats, and tone. This intelligence enables us to identify, create, reproduce, and reflect on music, as shown by composers, conductors, musicians, vocalists, and sensitive listeners.
Music Teacher
Music teachers can be one of the most influential people in a student’s life. One can remember playing Three Blind Mice on one’s recorder; maybe one was inspired to learn more songs.
Any student could not skillfully craft a complex melody and excellent practice with a solid music teacher. Gifting one’s robust musical intelligence will be fantastic for any school system mentoring young minds with a love of music.
Songwriter
There are many songwriters out there that write about anything and everything! One could easily sit down with a pen and paper and think about any life experiences one would musically want to share with the world.
The key is to write as many songs as you can. Starting out will be difficult, but writing a lot will give you the time to practice your skills and eventually end up with an awesome song!
Singer
Are you always finding yourself excited to be stuck in traffic or taking long showers to sing your heart out? Do you love singing along to songs that are played aloud?
Tap into this passion of yours, team up with a music teacher, perfect your vocal skills and pursue that record deal. In the meantime, practice singing lots, upload some of your best work on the internet, and start gaining fans and traction with your singing career.
Music Producer
Music production is something anyone with high musical intelligence can get into. Learning how to be a music producer is easier than ever, and the resources are at your fingertips.
If you love playing with sounds and recorded samples, and want to make a song sound its very best, this could be a promising career move. You might end up making hit records for real artists.
DJ
DJs have become increasingly popular – they have been pushed into the limelight and have taken on celebrity status in recent years.
People with high musical intelligence that take up DJing allow them to assemble some awesome beats that make people want to jump up and dance.
So as someone with solid musical smarts, taking up a career as a DJ could make you world-famous. Nevertheless, we suggest you maybe start small by landing some gigs at restaurants, weddings, and parties.
More possible jobs include:
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Audiologist
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Music promoter
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Music retailer
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Music therapist
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Piano tuner
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Recording engineer
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Sound editor
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Choir director
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Music conductor
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Music critic
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Music publisher
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Speech pathologist
How do People with Musical Intelligence Learn?
Musical learning style refers to a preference for taking in information through sound, rhythm, and rhyme rather than through text or images alone.
Gardner himself is cautious here. A preferred learning style is not the same thing as musical intelligence, and treating the two as interchangeable is one of the theory’s most common misapplications.
People with strong musical intelligence tend to learn best through sound. In practice, this usually looks like:
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Listening and recall: they recognise and respond to voices, environmental sounds, and music, and can recall a long list of songs with ease.
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Rhythm and rhyme as memory aids: jingles, raps, mnemonics, and acrostics help them memorise material they would otherwise struggle to recall.
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Recorded and spoken material: recording lessons and working with spoken content gives them a stronger basis for understanding than text alone.
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Music alongside other tasks: background music while studying, and melody or instruments woven into a history or geography lesson, help this material stick.
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Active musical participation: they enjoy performing in musicals, singing, playing an instrument, or composing, and often learn a tune after a single hearing.
None of this means every musically inclined student learns the same way. It simply means sound is one route into the material that a lesson plan can use well.
David Cope and Experiments in Musical Intelligence
One of the greatest names in the history of computers as composers is David Cope, an Emeritus Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Cope began as a standard musician and composer, creating hundreds of works performed around the world. His music captured what the most ambitious composers of the 1970s and ’80s were reaching for.
He started his Experiments in Musical Intelligence project in 1981. It was prompted by his own writer’s block. The idea was simple: a program with a sense of his musical style, able to follow a piece’s logic and continue it.
He could ask it for the next note. Or the next ten measures.
Cope’s first version coded the rules of traditional part-writing, one of the core structures of tonal music. After much trial and error, it produced “vanilla” music that followed those rules correctly.
The results were technically sound. The harmonies moved correctly from one to the next. But to the educated ear, the music still sounded lifeless, without much musical energy.
Cope judged this approach only partly successful. Most of what it produced was unsatisfying. Coding fresh rules for every new style he tried was also daunting, and acting as the mediator for his own composition rules felt artificial.
So Cope changed course. He revised the program to generate fresh output directly from music already stored in a database.
The idea was that any piece of music contains the instructions for assembling new, related versions of itself. Correctly decoded, Cope hoped, those instructions could reveal something new about musical structure itself.
He called the method recombinancy. It means recombining existing music into something new.
Cope explains this in a 1996 book. He calls it Experiments in Musical Intelligence. It argues that recombinancy is a natural evolutionary and imaginative process found everywhere. All great literature works the same way. It just recombines the same twenty-six letters of the alphabet, over and over.
The mystery, as Cope puts it, is not in the letters or the notes themselves. It lies in the subtlety and grace of how they are recombined.
Cope’s Experiments in Musical Intelligence worked using three basic principles:
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Deconstruction: analyze and separate into pieces
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Signatures: commonality – retain that which represents style
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Compatibility: recombinancy – recombine into unique works
Since the beginning of Experiments in Musical Intelligence, the works produced have delighted, angered, stimulated, and terrified those who have heard them.
Ultimately, Cope believes that the computer is just a tool to extend our minds.
How to Improve Musical Intelligence
Some people are born with a natural musical ability. Anthony Thomas DeBlois is a remarkable example. He is blind and has autism spectrum disorder, yet he can play over 20 musical instruments and knows more than 8,000 compositions from memory.
Being born without an early interest in music doesn’t mean someone can’t develop strong musical intelligence later. Musical ability can be built like a language, one that combines emotion, curiosity, rhythm, and song. That takes practice, not luck.
Many musicians, psychologists, and educators say that music is an element of good health and a way to improve anyone’s self-esteem. It fosters creativity and improves attention span.
Music also reduces anxiety and encourages social interaction. Koelsch (2009) reviews evidence that music engages the brain’s reward and emotion systems. Pearson et al. (2015) found that counsellors using musical-intelligence activities strengthened therapeutic alliances and helped clients recognise their own strengths.
Musical intelligence involves more than music alone. It also includes rhythm and rhyme, the same patterns found in poetry. This rhythmic quality is one reason nursery rhymes and children’s songs are so widespread, and why some have been passed down for centuries.
This matters even more in cultures without written language. The meter of a story makes it easier to recall and repeat across generations, often word for word.
Here are some in which one could develop one’s musical intelligence:
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Sing in the shower while driving your car – anywhere!
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Learn to write poetry.
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Play games that involve naming a tune.
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Regularly read poetry
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Go to concerts or musicals.
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Make up a jingle of critical things you want to remember.
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Listen to your musical collection regularly.
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Join a choir.
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Put on background music while studying, cooking, or eating.
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Learn to play a musical instrument.
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Spend at least one hour every week listening to a foreign style of music for you (jazz, country-western, classical, folk, heavy metal, house music)
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Buy an electronic keyboard and learn simple pieces and chords.
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Listen for naturally occurring melodies or rhythms in such phenomena as footsteps, birdsong, and even washing machines!
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Learn to recognize birds by their song.
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Create a musical autobiography by collecting songs and records that were important to you at different points in one’s life.
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Hold a reunion where all communication must be sung!
There are many benefits to improving one’s musical intelligence. You can easily:
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Identify the rhythm, tone, and melody of a musical piece.
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Develop the ability to play a song or even modify it.
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Improve one’s ability to emotionally connect to a melody, a musical piece or a song.
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Know about different musical genres.
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Learn how to identify instruments.
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Enhance one’s ability to improvise rhythmic sounds using any object.
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Compose great music.
In conclusion, a musical expression is a natural form of human communication. It is a rhythmic flow that has captivated humanity since the beginning of time. Moreover, it can make us better, more intelligent people.
Critical Evaluation of Musical Intelligence
Musical intelligence, like the rest of Gardner’s theory, is not universally accepted. Psychologists who favour traditional IQ testing have raised several objections.
Psychometric Challenge: The Positive Manifold
Most resistance comes from psychologists who measure intelligence with standardised tests. Waterhouse (2006) argued there is no solid evidence that Gardner’s intelligences are truly separate abilities. The problem has a name: the positive manifold.
Scores on different cognitive tests are all positively correlated with one another. That pattern is usually read as evidence for a single general intelligence factor, or “g,” rather than eight independent abilities (Gottfredson, 2004).
That single number is the whole disagreement in miniature.
Charles Spearman (1904) first found this pattern and proposed a single general factor, g, behind it. Truly independent abilities should barely correlate. Instead, they hang together.
Visser, Ashton, and Vernon (2006) tested this directly, building a battery of tasks for each of Gardner’s proposed intelligences. Most of the tests loaded onto that same general factor rather than standing apart. Musical and bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence were the exceptions, correlating least of all eight with the g factor.
None of this settles the matter for g, either.
A statistical factor, once extracted and named, is easy to mistake for a real, physical thing, a mistake called reification. That warning cuts both ways: it applies as much to treating Gardner’s eight intelligences as separate faculties as it does to treating g as one real thing.
Neither side has a decisive answer yet.
Can Musical Intelligence Be Tested?
A second objection is about method, not evidence. Gardner never gave operational definitions, clear, measurable specifications, for the individual intelligences. He also resisted turning the theory into a testing framework.
That matters because, without agreed measures, a study can rarely disprove the theory outright. Almost any pattern of results can be explained away by adjusting which abilities count, or how strongly they are said to interact.
This is not just a technicality.
Waterhouse has pressed this point twice. In 2006, she argued MI had been widely adopted despite inadequate evidence. In 2023, she went further still, calling it a “neuromyth”: a popular but scientifically unsubstantiated idea about the brain.
Even Gardner has conceded the point. He has acknowledged that critics raise valid concerns about the missing operational definitions, while maintaining he never intended MI to become a psychometric instrument.
The criticism has stuck, even so.
Contemporary Research
The most substantial recent evidence comes from Shearer (2020), who reviewed over 500 functional neuroimaging studies. He identified distinct brain-network patterns that appear to correspond to each of Gardner’s proposed intelligences.
Auditory networks, for example, were linked specifically to musical intelligence. Visual networks corresponded to spatial intelligence, and somatomotor networks to kinaesthetic intelligence. Shearer concluded that this pattern supports treating human cognitive ability as multiple rather than singular.
Not every researcher is convinced, though.
Even with this neuroimaging evidence, standard IQ tests still show strong correlations between different cognitive abilities. That tension, distinct brain networks on one side, the well-replicated g factor on the other, remains an open question in cognitive science.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is musical intelligence rare?
Musical intelligence can be a fairly rare profile. People with it can effortlessly listen to sound and music and pick out different patterns and notes.
This profile is sometimes linked to “absolute pitch.” A person with this ability can often create harmonies and songs, and can learn to play an instrument simply by studying music theory or listening closely to a piece.
However, with practice, anyone can strengthen their musical intelligence.
Is musical intelligence genetic?
Genetics and environment both shape musical ability. Aptitude varies from person to person, and even across different musical skills within the same person.
Talent is really about potential, not a fixed, innate skill. Some people are naturally quicker or more capable in one area, which is why certain people gravitate toward sport or academic study.
No one is born already able to play the piano. But people are born with different degrees of musical sensitivity, and musical talent is built through mastery, not instinct.
Some people simply progress faster, with a natural aptitude that lets them reach advanced levels of playing sooner than others.
Key Takeaways
- Definition: Musical intelligence is Gardner’s term for skill in performing, composing, and appreciating music, including sensitivity to rhythm, pitch, and tone.
- One of Eight: It is one of eight intelligences in Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, alongside skills such as logical-mathematical and interpersonal intelligence.
- Learning Styles: Musical intelligence differs from having an auditory learning style; Gardner himself warns against treating the two as the same thing.
- Contested: Psychometricians argue musical ability correlates with general intelligence and note it may be better described as a talent than a separate intelligence.
- Neuroimaging Support: Recent brain-imaging research links musical intelligence to distinct auditory neural networks, offering some support for Gardner’s theory.
- Can Be Trained: Musical intelligence can be strengthened through singing, playing an instrument, or using rhythm and rhyme to aid memory and learning.
References
Armstrong, T. (2009). Multiple intelligences in the classroom. Ascd.
Cope, D. (1989). Experiments in musical intelligence (EMI): Non‐linear linguistic‐based composition. Journal of New Music Research, 18 (1-2), 117-139.
Cope, D. (1992). Computer modeling of musical intelligence in EMI. Computer Music Journal, 16 (2), 69-83.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). Performance Counts: Assessment Systems That Support High-Quality Learning. Council of Chief State School Officers.
Edutopia. (2013, March 8). Multiple Intelligences: What Does the Research Say? https://www.edutopia.org/multiple-intelligences-research
Garcia, C. (2019, September 25). Algorithmic Music – David Cope and EMI. CHM.
Gardner, H. E. (2000). Intelligence reframed: Multiple intelligences for the 21st century. Hachette UK.
Gardner, H. (2011a). Frames of mind: The theory of multiple intelligences. Hachette Uk.
Gardner, H. (2011b). The theory of multiple intelligences: As psychology, as education, as social science. Address delivered at José Cela University on October, 29, 2011.
Gottfredson, L. S. (2004). Schools and the g factor. The Wilson Quarterly (1976-), 28 (3), 35-45.
Koelsch, S. (2009). A neuroscientific perspective on music therapy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1169(1), 374–384. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04592.x
Pearson, M., O’Brien, P., & Bulsara, C. (2015). A multiple intelligences approach to counseling: Enhancing alliances with a focus on strengths. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 25(2), 128–142. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038881
Shearer, C. B. (2020). A resting state functional connectivity analysis of human intelligence: Broad theoretical and practical implications for multiple intelligences theory. Psychology & Neuroscience, 13(2), 127–148. https://doi.org/10.1037/pne0000200
Spearman, C. (1904). “General intelligence,” objectively determined and measured. The American Journal of Psychology, 15(2), 201–292. https://doi.org/10.2307/1412107
Visser, B. A., Ashton, M. C., & Vernon, P. A. (2006). Beyond g: Putting multiple intelligences theory to the test. Intelligence, 34 (5), 487-502.
Waterhouse, L. (2006). Inadequate evidence for multiple intelligences, Mozart effect, and emotional intelligence theories. Educational psychologist, 41 (4), 247-255.
Waterhouse, L. (2023). Why multiple intelligences theory is a neuromyth. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1217288. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1217288
