551088

research-article2014
POM0010.1177/0305735614551088Psychology of MusicSovansky et al.

Article

Psychology of Music

Not all musicians are creative:

2016, Vol. 44(1) 25­–36
© The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0305735614551088
simply playing music pom.sagepub.com

Erin E. Sovansky, Mareike B. Wieth, Andrea P.

Francis and Samuel D. McIlhagga

Abstract
Musical training has been found to be associated with increased creativity. However, it is not clear
whether increased creativity, particularly divergent thinking, is associated with music expertise due
to knowledge and skill, or if increased creativity arises from participation in the creation of music
through practices such as improvisation and composition. This study investigated how level of music
expertise and engagement in the creation of music relate to divergent thinking in musically trained
adults (musicians). Sixty participants of varying music expertise were tested for divergent thinking
using a modified version of Guilford’s (1967) alternative uses task, in which participants listed
creative uses for two music items and two non-music items. Results indicate that musicians who
create music listed more creative uses for music items than non-musicians and musicians who do
not create music. For non-music items, participants did not display differences in divergent thinking.

Keywords
alternative uses, creativity, divergent thinking, musical expertise, musical practices

American jazz drummer Billy Higgins once said, ‘Music. It’s all creativity right here, right
now.’ Like Higgins, many consider innovative musical works to be the result of creativity.
Expert musicians have often been seen as possessing greater creativity than non-experts (e.g.,
Limb & Braun, 2008). However, whether the relationship between creativity and expertise is
due to general experience and practice, or to the specific type of activities, such as improvisa-
tion and composition, someone engages in when becoming an expert musician, is unclear.
This study investigated how musical expertise and the creative practices of musicians influ-
ence levels of creativity.

Albion College, USA

Corresponding author:
Mareike B. Wieth, Department of Psychological Science, Albion College, 611 E. Porter St., Albion, MI 49224 USA.
Email: mwieth@albion.edu

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26 Psychology of Music 44(1)

Creativity and divergent thinking

Creativity, as a concept, eludes definition (Torrance, 1988). Many researchers have tried to explain
creativity and have posited a wide range of definitions. Hennessey and Amabile (1988), for exam-
ple, describe creativity as the process of being original to suit some sort of purpose. Alternatively,
Dartnall (2002) argues that creativity consists of the recombination of knowledge and informa-
tion already present in the creator. Others see creativity as the process by which normal cognitive
processes lead to a moment of insight in order to discover or produce something new (Perkins,
1981). While creativity lacks an agreed upon scientific definition, Torrance (1988) finds that a key
component present in nearly every description of creativity is the ability of the creator to generate
something novel or unique. Guilford (1967) proposes that at the heart of creativity is a process that
he named divergent production, now called divergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the ability to
generate new information or solutions from given information. The goal of divergent thinking is to
generate as many associations or solutions as possible. Divergent thinking is an important compo-
nent of creativity because it requires the ability to generate ideas without relying on guidelines or
constraints (Gibson, Folley, & Park, 2009). For example, a musician composing a piece of music
would need to use divergent thinking to create many possible combinations of sounds.
There have been many approaches to measuring divergent creativity. For example,
Csíkszentmihályi (1996) studied the characteristics of individuals judged to have made signifi-
cant creative contributions to society. Thus, his measure of creativity was whether the person con-
tributed something new to society. For Simonton (1997), many of the people in Csíkszentmihályi’s
study would be considered people with ‘big-C’ creativity. Big-C creativity is said to occur when a
person solves a problem or creates an object that has a major impact on society. On the other, hand,
‘little-C’ creativity is the kind of creativity one might see on a daily basis when someone adapts to
change or comes up with new ways of understanding a problem. A classic psychological measure
of ‘little-C’ divergent thinking is Guilford’s (1967) alternative uses task, in which participants list
several possible creative uses for a common household item, such as a newspaper, a brick, or a
paperclip. In this task, there is no single correct answer, and participants must branch out and
produce as many unique and creative uses as they can (e.g., origami, fly swatter, hat, picnic blan-
ket, napkin etc.). While Guilford’s measure of creativity does not assess the societal level contribu-
tions of ‘big-C’ creative people, the task does measure an individual’s daily divergent thinking
potential because participants must generate many different uses for a single object.
Research using divergent thinking tasks to measure creativity generally supports the idea
that musicians are more creative than non-musicians. For example, Hamann, Bourassa, and
Aderman (1990) found that creativity scores were higher for music majors than non-music
majors. Additionally, Hamann and colleagues (1990) noted that students who had more than
10 years of music education had higher creativity scores than those with fewer than 10 years
of experience. Similarly, Gibson et al. (2009) found that musicians scored higher on creativity
tasks, including a version of Guilford’s (1967) alternative uses task, than non-musicians. These
results suggest that music expertise may be an important contributor to creativity scores.

Expertise
Based on the findings of Hamann et al. (1990) and Gibson et al. (2009), expert musicians show
greater creativity than non-experts. But what exactly is an expert? Experts are individuals who
possess extensive knowledge or skill in a specific domain as the result of lengthy training. It
takes years of practice to reach an expert level. Studies have found that the average amount of
time needed to become an expert is approximately 10,000 hours of practice, which roughly
equates to 2.5–3 hours of practice every day for 10 years (Ericsson & Charness, 1994; Levitin,
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Sovansky et al. 27

2006). Compared to novices, experts have more knowledge, better organization of knowledge,
and better performance in their domain (Bédard & Chi, 1992). Another benefit for experts is the
increased ability to remember information within their domain of expertise. For example, chess
experts, when shown a mid-game chessboard, are better able to extract and remember informa-
tion from that chessboard than novices (Chase and Simon, 1973; de Groot, 1965). Beilock
(2010) suggests that experts experience increased memory function as a result of storing mem-
ories in a domain differently than do novices. For example, a chess expert might remember the
entire chessboard as one item (i.e., a certain formation such as the Dragon Variation) whereas
a novice would have to remember each individual chess piece as an item.
There are also certain situations in which being an expert can be disadvantageous. As peo-
ple become experts in a domain, they may become able to perform domain tasks more auto-
matically. However, as the task becomes more automatic and less attention is required, it can
become more difficult for experts to describe the exact details of how to perform the domain
task. For example, in a study that compared expert and novice golfers, Beilock and Carr (2001)
found that while expert golfers were able to give more detail than novices in describing the theo-
retical mechanics of a putt, they were actually worse at recalling exactly what they did in the
particular putt. Like the expert golfers, an expert pianist no longer needs to devote as much
attention to the basic mechanics of playing. The expert pianist can begin to focus more on
phrasing and mood. However, because they are not attending to the basic task, an expert pia-
nist may not be able to express exactly how they moved their fingers to play that piece of music.
Another consequence of such automaticity is that an expert may become fixated or stuck on
a specific way of thinking. For example, Wiley (1998) found that baseball experts had more dif-
ficulty than novices in coming up with creative solutions to problems that included baseball-
related terms because the baseball experts were fixated by their baseball knowledge and could
not move past it in order to think of a non-baseball answer. Likewise, an expert musician might
become fixated on a music item, like sheet music, as being only for a specific purpose, to be used
to play music. It may be harder for an expert musician than a novice or non-musician to fold the
sheet of music into a hat because the expert musician has so much more experience with using
sheet music in a specific way.
Regardless of the domain (chess, golf, baseball, or piano), all of the tasks require memory, atten-
tion, and motor skills to perform the task. Yet, the pianist is the only one of the experts listed above
that might be considered ‘creative.’ Thus it becomes important to understand whether expert musi-
cians exhibit more divergent thinking, and therefore more creativity, than novice musicians or
whether they become fixated on music and cannot be as creative, as seen with the baseball experts.

Music expertise and creativity

In addition to understanding how overall musical expertise influences divergent thinking, differ-
ent types of experiences in music could also influence divergent thinking. In particular, Limb
and Braun (2008) found differential brain activation in jazz pianists when simply playing basic
scales compared to improvising a melody. More specifically, they found that when the pianists
were improvising there was increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex in comparison to
an increase in lateral prefrontal cortex activity when the pianists played scales. The medial pre-
frontal cortex, which was active when the pianists improvised, is a brain area associated with
reduction of inhibition and increased creativity while the lateral prefrontal cortex, which was
active while playing scales, is more associated with rule based or structured activity. This study
therefore suggests that there is actually a difference between musicians who create music and
musicians who play pre-written music in how they produce music.

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28 Psychology of Music 44(1)

Similar to the idea that creation of music and simply playing pre-written music lead to different
types of experiences, Koutsoupidou and Hargreaves (2009) examined whether music education
that includes open improvisation and creation of music promotes children’s development of crea-
tive thinking beyond a structured music education program that is based on non-improvisatory
teacher-led activities. In their study, two groups of 6-year-olds were given music lessons over a
6-month period. The experimental group performed a variety of activities, such as free exploration
of instruments and expressing emotion with music, whereas the control group did not engage in
any of these activities. Children in the experimental group had higher musical flexibility (dynam-
ics, tempo, and pitch) and were shown to provide more original responses on the Webster’s Measure
of Creative Thinking in Music – MCTM II (Webster, 1987, 1994) than the control group. Results
from Limb and Braun (2008)’s study with jazz pianists and Koutsoupidou and Hargreaves’ study
with children (2009) suggest that creativity in music may be fostered by the participation in more
creative aspects of music and not just from simply being an expert in music.

The current study

This study investigated how music expertise and the engagement in certain musical practices relate
to creativity, specifically divergent thinking. In particular, this study examined divergent thinking in
musically trained adults (musicians) using a modified version of Guilford’s (1967) alternative uses.
In this modified task, participants were presented with pictures of music objects, such as a metro-
nome and non-music objects, such as a brick, and were asked to generate as many possible uses that
they could think of for each item. The music items were included in order to assess musical creativity
while the non-musical items were included to measure general creativity. Participants’ responses on
the Guilford’s alternative uses task were scored on number of uses listed (fluency), different catego-
ries of uses (flexibility), and the uniqueness of the uses compared to all participants (originality).
Being a musician has generally been associated with an increase in creativity, however,
based on the findings of Limb and Braun (2008) that jazz musicians’ brain activation differs
depending on the type of musical activity they are engaged in, it is possible that the increase
in divergent thinking in musicians may not be due to skill and knowledge alone. Based on
Wiley’s study, expert skill and knowledge alone could lead to fixation rather than creativity
(Wiley, 1998). Further, Koutsoupidou and Hargreaves’ intervention with 6-year-olds (2009)
suggests that creation of music is linked to increased musical creativity. We therefore pre-
dicted that increased divergent thinking in university-aged expert musicians will also be
influenced by the participants’ engagement in the creation of music. If increased divergent
thinking in musicians is also due to creation of music, we hypothesize that expert musicians
who create music through improvisation, composition, or arrangement will have higher
musical divergent thinking than non-experts and experts who simply play music without
creating original music.

Method
Participants
In total, 60 (34 female) college undergraduate students participated in this study. Participants’
ages ranged from 15–22 yars (M = 19.08, SD = 1.29). Based on their years of musical experience,
18 participants were non-musicians who reported having no music experience, 20 participants
reported having 1–9 years of experience (M = 3.04, SD = 3.60), and 22 participants reported
having 10–16 years of music experience (M = 12.50, SD = 2.15). Types of music experience

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Sovansky et al. 29

ranged from 1–2 years of music lessons to nearly lifelong music training and active involvement
in music ensembles; and from no creation of music experience to frequent practice of improvis-
ing, arranging and composing. We opted to focus on this range in expertise so that we could com-
pare creativity scores across levels of expertise regardless of type of music produced. Participation
was completely voluntary, and participants were recruited either through the music department
ensembles, or through a pool of students enrolled in an introductory psychology course.

Materials and procedure

Participants first completed a musicianship questionnaire to determine both participants’
music expertise level and whether they participated in the creation of music. To determine
music expertise, participants’ responses to the expertise portion of the musicianship question-
naire were given point values and then totaled for an overall music expertise score. For example,
on the question ‘Are you an instrumental musician?’ participants could answer either ‘yes’ or
‘no.’ In this question, a ‘yes’ answer received one point while a ‘no’ answer received zero points.
Because this study involved music items that are more often used by instrumental musicians,
the questions were weighted so that vocal music experience received half as many points as
instrumental music experience, so a ‘yes’ answer to the question ‘Are you a vocal musician?’
only received a half point. Other questions included ‘How many years have you played an
instrument?’ and participants received a score equal to the number of years. In the current
study, the minimum expertise score was 1.0 and the maximum score was 29.5 (Mean: 10.2).
The musicianship questionnaire also assessed the extent to which participants took part in the
creation of music. Creation of music questions included ‘Have you ever composed an original
musical work?’, ‘Have you ever arranged or transcribed music?’ and ‘Do you often improvise
when performing music?’ Participants received one point for a ‘yes’ answer and zero points for
a ‘no’ answer. A total score for creation of music was formed by adding the scores of all three
creation of music questions. Our sample had a minimum creation of music score of 0 and a
maximum score of 3 (Mean: 1.2).
In order to measure divergent thinking, participants completed a version of Guilford’s
(1967) alternative uses task. In this task, they were shown images of two music items and two
non-music items, and were asked to come up with as many creative, but viable uses as possible
for each item (see the Appendix). Music items were a trumpet mute and a metronome, and non-
music items were a brick and a newspaper. This task was chosen because it can easily be adjusted
to measure both musical and general creativity and is well known and widely used as a measure
of divergent thinking. In addition, it was one of the tasks that Gibson et al. (2009) used when
evaluating the relationship between musicians and creativity, which allows us to potentially
replicate and extend their findings. Participants’ answers on Guilford’s alternative uses task
were scored for fluency, flexibility, and originality. Fluency was scored as the total number of
creative uses listed. Flexibility was scored as the number of different categories of creative uses
listed. Therefore, if a participant listed ‘folding into a hat’ and ‘folding into a boat’ as uses for
newspaper, they would receive a fluency score of 2, but a flexibility score of 1 because both
responses would fall under the category of origami or artwork. Originality for each item was
scored by totaling all responses for that item across the data set. Types of responses that
accounted for 5% or less of the total responses in the data set were given 1 point and responses
that accounted for 1% or less of the total responses were given 2 points. Because this task is
designed to measure creativity or alternative uses of items, standard uses of items did not count
toward either the fluency, flexibility, or originality scores. For example, listing ‘building houses’
as a use for a brick did not factor into any of the scores.

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30 Psychology of Music 44(1)

Results
To determine the impact of music expertise, creation of music and the combined effect of these
two factors on creativity for music and non-music items, six multiple regression analyses were
conducted. Regression analyses were used because both music expertise and creation music
scores were treated as continuous data where a participant’s actual score on these measures was
used instead of creating somewhat arbitrary categories. Correlations for all measures are pro-
vided in Table 1. The two sets of factor scores (expertise and creation of music) were centered in
SPSS, and the interaction term was formed by multiplying the two centered predictors (Aiken &
West, 1991). The data was centered so that both scores could be placed on a standardized scale
and an interaction term could be created and analysed. Then, the two centered predictors and
the interaction between these two factors were entered as predictors of fluency (see Table 2),
flexibility (see Table 3), and originality (see Table 4) for both music and non-music items. The
regression analysis for fluency of music items revealed a significant main effect for creation of
music (β = .370, p = .024, sr2 = .056) and a significant interaction of music expertise and crea-
tion of music (β = .246, p = .036, sr2 = .048), but there was no significant main effect of music
expertise on music item fluency (β = .151, p = .332, sr2 = .010). See Figure 1 for a graphic rep-
resentation of music item fluency scores. Regression analysis for flexibility of music items also
revealed a significant main effect for creation of music (β = .339, p =.038, sr2 = .047) and a
significant interaction of music expertise and creation of music (β = .276, p =.019, sr2 = .061)
and no significant main effect of music expertise on both music item flexibility (β = .159,
p = .306, sr2 = .011). See Figure 2 for a graphic representation of music item flexibility scores.
Regression analysis of originality for music items revealed a significant interaction effect of
music expertise and creation of music (β = .342, p =.005, sr2 = .094), and no significant main
effects for music expertise (β = .255, p = .110, sr2 = .029) or creation of music (β = .167,
p = .309, sr2 = .011). See Figure 3 for a graphic representation of music item originality scores.
Regression analysis of non-music item fluency revealed no significant main effects for
music expertise (β = .150, p = .421, sr2 = .010) or creation of music (β = .220, p =.258, sr2
= .019), and no significant interaction of music expertise and creation of music (β = .084 p
=.545, sr2 = 006). Regression analysis of non-music item flexibility also revealed no signifi-
cant main effects for music expertise (β = .226 p = .223, sr2 = .023) or creation of music (β
= .169 p = .377, sr2 = .011), and no significant interaction of music expertise and creation
of music (β = .035 p = .522, sr2 = .006). Like fluency and flexibility, regression analysis of
non-music item originality revealed no significant main effects for music expertise (β = .138,
p = .451, sr2 = .008) or creation of music (β = .271, p = .154, sr2 = .030), and no significant
interaction of music expertise and creation of music (β = .094, p = .486, sr2 = .007).

Discussion
Summary of findings
The results of the divergent thinking task for music items revealed an interaction between music
expertise and participation in creative aspects of music for fluency, flexibility, and originality.
When listing creative uses for the music items, it was found that expert musicians who create
music (improvisation, composition, and arrangement) showed increased divergent thinking
compared to both non-experts and musicians that do not create music. Importantly, the signifi-
cant main effects for creation of music on fluency, flexibility, and originality, showing that any
participants (regardless of how long they have been practicing music) who create music show
more divergent thinking than those who do not create music, further emphasizes this difference
between those who create music and those who simply play the music written on the page.
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Sovansky et al. 31

Table 1.  Correlations among music expertise, creation of music, and scores on Guilford’s alternative
uses task.

Variable Expertise Creation of music

Music item fluency .520** .592**
Music item flexibility .517** .591**
Music item originality .509** .510**
Non-music item fluency .346** .369**
Non-music item flexibility .385** .377**
Non-music item originality .376** .416**

**p < .01.

Table 2.  Regressions of music expertise, creation of music, and interaction of music expertise and
creation of music as predictors of fluency on Guilford’s (1967) alternative uses task.

Predictor variable Music item fluency Non-music item fluency

  B(β) SE B(β) SE
Music expertise .038(.151) .039 .044(.150) .054
Creation of music .717(.370)* .310 .493(.220) .431
Interaction .062(.246)* .029 .024(.084) .040
Total R2 .413 .153  
F 13.125** 3.373*  
N 60 60  

Note. All predictors were entered simultaneously for both models.

*p < .05; **p < .01.

Table 3.  Regressions of music expertise, creation of music, and interaction of music expertise and
creation of music as predictors of flexibility on Guilford’s (1967) alternative uses task.

Predictor variable Music item flexibility Non-music item flexibility

  B(β) SE B(β) SE
Music expertise .038(.159) .037 .059(.226) .048
Creation of music .624(.339)* .294 .339(.169) .380
Interaction .066(.276)* .027 .023(.088) .035
Total R2 .414 .172  
F 13.190** 3.888*  
N 60 60  

Note. All predictors were entered simultaneously for both models.

*p < .05; **p < .01.

There were no significant main effects or interaction effects present with the non-music
items, suggesting the effects are domain specific. This is consistent with the findings of other
research investigating expertise effects. For example, Simon and Chase (1973) found that chess
experts were much better than novices at memorizing the locations of pieces on a chess board,
but they were only better as long as the pieces were placed in a viable in-game configuration
rather than placed randomly. Similarly, this present study found that music expertise only
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32 Psychology of Music 44(1)

Table 4.  Regressions of music expertise, creation of music, and interaction of music expertise and
creation of music as predictors of originality on Guilford’s (1967) alternative uses task.

Predictor variable Music item originality Non-music item originality

B(β) SE B(β) SE
Music expertise .083(.225) .051 .061(.138) .080
Creation of Music .419(.167) .408 .925(.271) .639
Interaction .111(.342)** .038 .042(.094) .060
Total R2 .390 .190  
F 11.953** 4.379**  
N 60 60  

Note. All predictors were entered simultaneously for both models.

*p < .05; **p < .01.

6
Mean number of uses

4
Low creation
3 of music
High creation
of music
2

0
Low High
Musical experience score

Figure 1.  Interaction of music expertise and creation of music for music item fluency. The two lines
represent mean number of uses generated by participants who had low and high participation in the
creation of music, and increasing music expertise from no musical experience on the left to expert level of
musical experience on the right.

affected the ability to come up with creative uses of music items, items that music experts use
regularly. However, these findings are inconsistent with Hamann et  al. (1990) who found
greater overall creativity scores using Guilford’s Unusual Consequences Test for music majors
than non-music majors. The Unusual Consequences Test asks participants to list as many
results that would be associated with people no longer needing or wanting to sleep. These differ-
ences in results across these studies may indicate a need to look more closely at the various
cognitive processes involved in the different creativity tasks.
The finding that expert musicians who create music have increased divergent thinking
compared to novices and non-musicians, while expert musicians who simply play music dis-
play a slight decrease in divergent thinking in comparison to novice and non-musicians, is
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Sovansky et al. 33

Mean number of categories 5

4
Low creation
3 of music
High creation
of music
2

0
Low High
Musical experience score

Figure 2.  Interaction of music expertise and creation of music for music item flexibility. The two lines
represent mean number of categories of uses generated by participants who had low and high participation
in the creation of music, and increasing music expertise from no musical experience on the left to expert
level of musical experience on the right.

6
Mean originality of uses

4
Low creation
3 of music
High creation
of music
2

0
Low High
Musical experience score

Figure 3.  Interaction of music expertise and creation of music for music item originality. The two lines
represent mean originality score of participants who had low and high participation in the creation of
music, and increasing music expertise from no musical experience on the left to expert level of musical
experience on the right.

particularly intriguing. One possible explanation for these findings is that music experts who
create music did not become fixated, whereas expert musicians who simply play music did,
much like the baseball experts seen in Wiley’s (1998) study. In Wiley’s (1998) study, baseball
experts were much more likely to be fixated or stuck on baseball than novices. In our study,
music experts that do not create music appear to be limited by their expertise, similar to Wiley’s
(1998) research showing that experts are more fixated than novices. However, in our study the

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34 Psychology of Music 44(1)

experts who created music showed increased divergent thinking similar to research by Gibson
et al. (2009) and Hamann et al. (1990) showing that trained musicians are more creative com-
pared to non-musicians. This means that even within the same domain some experts appear to
be hindered by their expertise, experiencing more fixation, while other experts appear to be
helped by their expertise, experiencing less fixation and showing more creativity. Based on this
interaction of music expertise and the creation of music, it appears that the activities that a
person practices within their domain of expertise are the key factors that influence creativity.
This finding further supports Koutsoupidou and Hargreaves’ (2009) finding that musical
exploration enhances creativity in music.

Future directions
This study found that within one domain (i.e., music) some experts have increased divergent
thinking, while others do not. This raises the question of how the experiences of an expert in
other domains (such as golf or chess) would affect creativity. There may be some domains, espe-
cially more procedural domains, where expertise leads to decreased creativity, while domains
that are considered more creative, such as painting, may lead to the same sort of increase in
creativity that was found in musicians who arrange, compose and improvise. It is also worth
exploring the possibility that there may be other domains where, like musicians, some experts
will experience decreased creativity while other experts show increases. If these other domains
exist, it would be valuable to discover which practices in those domains lead to some experts
having increased creativity and some having decreased.
This study focused on the relationship between music expertise, creation, and a purely diver-
gent thinking task. Future studies may want to consider the relationship between music exper-
tise and other measures of creativity such as the Remote Associates Task (RAT) (Mednick,
1962), which measures convergent thinking. Additionally, as outlined in the introduction,
future studies should also be designed to focus on assessing the relationship between individu-
als high on Big-C and their levels of expertise and creation.

Implications
The finding that expert musicians who actively create music have higher divergent thinking than
expert musicians who simply play music may have implications for music education. For example,
classically trained musicians are often trained to have high proficiency in playing an instrument,
but may rarely create original music. These findings suggest that this type of musician would not
experience increases in divergent thinking with expertise, and may even have slightly decreased
divergent thinking compared to non-experts. In contrast, the types of musicians who will experi-
ence the beneficial outcome of increased divergent thinking with expertise are composers, jazz
musicians who often improvise, and musicians who arrange another artist’s music into something
new. Based on these findings, if a musician wants to have higher divergent thinking, they should
incorporate the creation of music into their regular musical practice routine. Similarly, if music edu-
cators want all musicians in their program to be more creative, higher importance should be placed
on teaching all students to arrange, compose, and improvise music, not just jazz and composition
students. Expanding more creative practices to all musicians would also be in accordance with the
National Standards for Music Education, set forth by the National Association for Music Education
(NAfME). One of the nine standards proposed by NAfME is focused directly on the creation of music
through improvisation and composition (http://musiced.nafme.org/resources/national-standards-
for-music-education/). The results of this study therefore lend empirical support to the already held

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Sovansky et al. 35

belief by many that it is an important component to a complete and comprehensive education in

music. As suggested by Koutsoupidou and Hargreaves (2009), ‘Teachers should create a rich
musical environment with many opportunities and stimuli for making music’ (p. 268). Music stu-
dents should be taught creation of music on a practical rather than theoretical level, so that stu-
dents are taught how to make creation of music become an integral part of daily practice.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Megan Wickens for help with this project. Part of this research was pre-
sented at the 25th Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington, DC
(May, 2013).

Ethical approval
Ethical approval for this project was given by the Institutional Review Board at Albion College [ref num-
ber S12-09].

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-
profit sectors.

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Appendix
Alternative uses task items
Please note each item was shown on a separate page
Music items:

Non-music items:

What is the name of this item? ________________________________________________

On the 1 through 7 scale below please rate how familiar you are with this item?
Not Familiar At All 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Very Familiar
Have you ever used an item like this? YES NO
In the space below list as many creative uses as you can think of for this item:

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