THE MOZART EFFECT … AND BEYOND

A report claims that playing Mozart for your designer baby (either in the womb or during hir formative early years) will improve his/her IQ and help him/her get into that exclusive preschool. If playing Mozart for little Johnny could boost his intelligence, what would happen if other composers or contemporary genres were played during his developmental time? And what about early exposure to classic art or literature?

CLASSICAL MUSIC

BABBITT EFFECT: Child gibbers nonsense all the time. Eventually, people stop listening to him. Child doesn't care because all his playmates think he's cool.

BARTÓK EFFECT: Child becomes more and more dissonant. Has trouble maintaining harmony with his peers. Difficulty following rules. Presents an increasingly bad tone overall and is unable to resolve anything.

BEETHOVEN EFFECT: Child spends far too much time at the keyboard and goes deaf. (If the child doesn't suffer from deafness, it's the Wakeman effect).

BRAHMS EFFECT: Child is able to speak beautifully as long as his sentences contain a multiple of three words (3, 6, 9, 12, etc.). However, his sentences containing 4 or 8 words are strangely uninspired.

BRUCKNER EFFECT: Child speaks very slowly and repeats himself frequently. Gains reputation for profundity.

GLASS EFFECT: Child tends to repeat himself over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

IVES EFFECT: Child develops a remarkable ability to carry on several separate conversations at once.

LISZT EFFECT: Child speaks rapidly and extravagantly, but never really says anything important.

MAHLER EFFECT: Child continually screams, at great length and volume, that he's dying.

SCHOENBERG EFFECT: Child never repeats a word until he's used all the other words in his vocabulary. Sometimes talks backwards. Eventually, people stop listening to him. Child blames them for their inability to understand him.

STOCKHAUSEN EFFECT: All you get out of the child is an atonal cacophony, but those around him are conned into believing it has some sort of artistic merit.

STRAVINSKY EFFECT: Child is prone to savage, guttural and profane outbursts that often lead to fighting and pandemonium in the preschool.

TAVENER EFFECT: Child sings a lot.

WAGNER EFFECT: Child becomes a megalomaniac. May eventually marry his sister.

And finally ….

CAGE EFFECT: Child says absolutely nothing for 4 minutes, 33 seconds. Preferred by 9 out of 10 classroom teachers.

CONTEMPORARY MUSIC

AOR EFFECT: Child speaks melodically, fluently and emotionally and at great length about epic themes and battles between elemental good and evil.

BACHARACH EFFECT: Most of the time, child helps other children to become famous rather than becoming famous itself.

BJORK EFFECT: Child alternately whispers and screams.

BLACK METAL EFFECT: As for death metal, but also develops liking for cosmetics and has delusions of being a Viking .

BLUES EFFECT: Child talks lyrically and dolefully. Sentences follow chord progression over 5, 8 or 12 bars before repeating.

BOWIE EFFECT: Child goes through 5 different looks by the end of pre-school, dates a supermodel and branches out into commercial and Internet ventures before GCSEs and ends up the wealthiest kid in 6th form. Teachers and parents still assume he's on drugs.

CLAYDERMAN EFFECT: Child is technically very proficient, but his execution of tasks lacks feeling.

DEATH METAL EFFECT: Child speaks in incoherent guttural croaks and spends early school years on medication for a throat infection.

DOOM METAL EFFECT: Child speaks slowly and satanically with ponderous pauses between sentences. Teachers suspect drugs and ritual abuse.

DUB EFFECT: Child sounds laid back to the point of being sedated, but somehow hangs in there.

FARIAN EFFECT: Child speaks beautifully but selects more photogenic child to mime for him. Photogenic child becomes famous, is no longer content to mime, but is considered a fraud. Meanwhile, the real speaker has already hired another child to mime for him.

FOLK EFFECT: The listener must stick a finger in his own ear to best appreciate the child's off-key utterances.

FUNK EFFECT: Child chants or shouts in rhythmic syncopated fashion. Teachers feel like dancing.

GOTH EFFECT: Child speaks slowly and mournfully and is treated for suicidal depression. Drives others to suicide first.

GRINDCORE EFFECT: Child screams noisily and randomly for up to 2 minutes at a time while banging fists arrhythmically. Indistinguishable from tantrums.

INDUSTRIAL EFFECT: Child makes atonal cacophony interspersed with barking and high-pitched screaming. Is initially applauded for non-traditional use of vocal capacity, but is eventually diagnosed as both tone-deaf and insane. Child lives in padded cell to give the rest of the family respite.

JAMES BLUNT PARADOX: child is immensely popular, although no other child will publicly admit to being his friend.

JAZZ EFFECT: Child improvises speech in syncopated polyrhythms, often echoing what is said to him. May descend into freeform sentence structure that rambles on and on without ever coming to the point.

KRAFTWERK EFFECT: Child has fantasies of being a robot.

RAP EFFECT: Child has good sense of rhythm and rhyme, speaks rapidly, improvises easily, but shows preoccupation with negative aspects of urban culture. Child's first word is bitch. Parents blame ADHD and Tourette's syndrome.

TOASTING EFFECT: Child talks wittily, inaccurately and rhythmically about the foibles of his listeners, to their excruciating embarrassment and everyone else's enjoyment. Is considered a wise-ass.

WAKEMAN EFFECT: Like Beethoven Effect, but without deafness.

ZAPPA EFFECT: Torn between a need to experiment and a need to conform, child saddles classmates with bizarre nick-names like dweezel.

NON-MUSICAL INFLUENCES

DAMIEN HIRST EFFCT: Child is expelled after cutting classroom pet gerbils in half.

DAN BROWN EFFECT: Child speaks in really short paragraphs, but teacher can't stop listening because they want to see how he'll dig his way out of re-interpreting history and other children's essays.

JACKSON POLLACK EFFECT: Child randomly spatters paint around classroom. School sells child's artwork to Tate Modern and builds state-of-the-art new school with proceeds.

MONDRIAN EFFECT: Child draws squares in black crayons then fills some of them with primary colours.

SHAKESPEARE EFFECT: Everyone is impressed by the work, but some are convinced that it was actually done by someone else.

WARHOL EFFECT: Child shows an affinity for art but it becomes evident that they can only draw using tracing paper, only uses 2 colours at a time and repeats their same work again and again after someone shows slight interest. Eating habits become disturbingly monotonous and they refuse to eat anything except soup.