Eva and I shared our various knowledge across music composition and psychology by giving a 5-minute talk each to each other – and since our knowledge overlaps a little, we chose each other. We have chosen these two skills because we have both read up on different areas of music psychology and we are very interested in music composition in general.

We played some pieces on a piano to demonstrate our skills. For example, Eva taught me a ‘point system’ when picking chords for a melody, and how having a larger portion of major chords will lead to an overall uplifting feel, and mixing both major and minor will create a bittersweet feel. The aim of our skill-share session was to fill in the gaps of each other’s knowledge in music, such as how I taught her about 1900s America and the music-education cultural issue, and how she taught me about how different areas of the brain respond to music (the basal ganglia and the cerebellum which controls motor movement). 

We made sure that we chose an empty practice room so everything went to plan, and that we had a free piano and a table if needed. We recorded a small section of our talk, but we re-recorded if something went wrong such as if one of us forgot our knowledge. Our success in the skill-share can be seen in our video which includes a little about what we taught each other. 

Overall, I think it went well because I learnt how to communicate my musical knowledge to someone. For example, I learnt how to use the keyboard to encapsulate what I was articulating (such as using the keyboard to explain how music imitates human speech by playing a well-known Chopin waltz). After the session, Eva and I further discussed our shared knowledge to make sure that we both understood what the other person said. Everything went well, but next time, both of us would have taken an extra day to collect up more information to share!