Music and Logic: Did Playing the Violin Help Sherlock Holmes?

Many people love listening to music while working and I’m no exception, but until recently I haven't thought about how music affects my performance.

However, this influence can’t be ignored and music does help me come to the correct decision and find words to express my ideas.

Wondering how widespread it is, I suddenly thought of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes, who plays the violin to calm down and think.

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What is it - just an extra touch to his portrait, revealing a character as a sophisticated well-educated person or is there anything else?

So, I started searching for more information. Research shows that playing some musical instrument is beneficial in many ways.

It helps us understand and analyze visual information better, improves our verbal and non-verbal skills and develops higher IQ.

In Japan and the Netherlands, which are among the top academic countries in the world, a great emphasis is placed on music education. In the USA, all the top engineers from Silicon Valley play some musical instruments.

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The ability of music to affect our brain is rather significant.

Some works of classical music, for example, compositions by Mozart, activate our left and right brain. Their simultaneous action maximizes our mental abilities.

There are a lot of examples from history, where the role of music cannot be overestimated.

And one of the traditional musical instruments here is the violin, mentioned above as the favorite musical instrument of the famous detective.

It helped numerous real well-known celebrities.

For instance, while writing of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson would play the violin when he was having difficulty finding the right words for some part and it did help him a lot.

This musical instrument also had a major impact on Albert Einstein.

When he was a child, his parents were told that he was “too stupid to learn” and suggested that he should be taken out of school.

They didn’t listen to his teachers and bought him a violin instead.

It changed his life. Einstein became good at the violin and it helped him become one of the most intelligent people of all time.

Later, improvising on the violin enabled him to figure out his equations and problems.

So, today I’m sure that music is not only a pleasant background soundtrack to our life; it can be the key to the additional resources of our brains, which will help us cope with the most difficult tasks.

Now I always keep CD disks with the works of Mozart and Bach handy and I'm ready for a challenge.

And what about Sherlock Holmes? Who knows, maybe if he hadn't played the violin while thinking over the cases, Professor Moriarty would have planned many other terrible crimes...

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