It is an almost undeniable fact that learning an instrument is a great skill. We’ve been suggested by our parents, teachers, elders and other musicians to learn an instrument. There must be some reasons behind it. One good reason is that it is a good and recreational hobby. You don’t have to be passionate about mastering the piano but spending some time practicing the piano can be your “me” time. Besides developing a hobby there are a variety of different reasons why learning the piano can make a significant difference in your life and always for the better. There are even neurological and psychological reasons why learning a piano is beneficial for your mental health. Detailed information about these benefits will increase your motivation to start learning the piano and you will soon find yourself hooked to practicing the piano.
One of humanity’s timeless arts is the piano. People have been playing the piano for countless years, while the music, technology, and styles change, what remains constant is the soul of expression—regardless of if you are playing on a grand piano or a digital keyboard. During the 1700s, an Italian named Bartolomeo Cristofori invented the piano. However, the instrument he would have used is very distinctive from what know today. The first visible change is that contemporary pianos possess 88 keys, as opposed to 54 on earlier models.
Despite criticism from musicians and composers such as Bach, the piano had emerged as one of the most effective instruments in Western music by the 1800s. Since then, it has been widely performed by both musical experts, such as artists, and beginners who enjoy it as a hobby. Learning a new instrument can be intimidating initially, but even Mozart had to start with novice piano lessons. If you want to learn piano quickly, you must set aside time and discipline for daily practise. Your schedule may be tight, but if you can make time for that too, beginner piano lessons are a wonderful way to spend time alone with oneself.
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Table of Contents
Benefits of Learning Piano
1) APPRECIATING EMOTIONS
You might have heard of the phrase “music is therapy”. Well, what makes people say that? Learning and practicing the piano will make you respond to different emotions. You’ll be more and more attentive to your feelings. Everyone who listens to music attaches their feelings to one or the other song and experiences a sudden surge of that particular feeling when listening to that piece of music. Learning and playing music on piano multiplies that beautiful experience. Music lets you experience a whole bunch of different feelings but the piano is best known for its soothing capacity. Guitar and drums are good at increasing energy level in the atmosphere but the piano is calm and composed. It makes you feel peaceful and refreshed. Sparing some time from your work and playing the piano would nullify your burnout state and would make you feel recreated. It will regulate your overall stress level.
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2) NEUROLOGICAL AND COGNITIVE BENEFITS
Neurological studies prove that while learning piano your brain forms new neural connections. So whenever you learn a new piece on the piano you improve your memory, attention, speech, language, and the ability to convey your emotions verbally at the same time. Since you use both of your hands playing the piano, you learn how to manage to pay attention to a different area at the same time, i.e. you learn to multitask. Many professionals say it improves hand-eye co-ordination but it is not just hands and eyes it also involves ears because you are continuously listening and correcting what you are playing. You only play what sounds good to your ears.
3) CREATIVITY
If you are someone constantly struggling through your 9-5 job or even somebody who barely do anything outside their professional work, the piano can change your life. Nobody likes 100% rigidity in their daily routine so to break out of that, learning piano will help you very profoundly. It will allow you to try and experiment with the things that you learn. The mind-blowing thing about the music and instruments is that the room for creativity in this domain is infinite. You can be creative as much as possible and it’s never enough. There are no limitations to the creative aspect of music. And being creative will help you touch different aspects of life; something which is never possible to attain with the basic 9-5. Being creative will make you feel worthy of yourself and you will find your self-esteem increased much more than before. You will find meaning in playing the piano because it won’t be something that you will have to do, instead, it would be something you choose to and want to do.
4) CULTURE
There are different approaches to learn piano. One can learn through the most common method that is the western model. Although, there are plenty of options to learn from the beginning or one can also learn different forms of playing techniques after becoming an intermediate player. When you learn about a certain technique, it brings itself the history and the culture belonging to that particular genre. For example, you learn an old Indian classical musical piece; you would have an idea about a small part of the Indian culture. In this way, you can learn about different genres such as Korean pop, Japanese classical music, Spanish music, etc. Interest in the particular genre may further lead your interest in different cultures across the globe. You never know what your hidden likings are. Learning piano will make you explore the existing masterpieces of all time and will let you appreciate them for their greatness.
5) MONETIZATION
Everyone talks about the emotional and habitual benefit of learning piano but there are also financial reasons how you can monetize your efforts into learning piano. Learning an instrument is a skill after all and a useful one. If you develop enough interest and mastery in learning piano, one considerable option for you to do is to sell the skill. There are plenty of people just like you who want to start learning the piano. You can teach them and earn a decent amount of cash. Sharing increases knowledge, so the more you share, the more you get to know about the discipline. You can set up an online lesson for teaching people piano in your free time. You will definitely enjoy meeting people with similar interests. You can start off by charging a lesser fee when you are intermediate and gradually increase it as you gather more experience.
If not teaching, performing. You can hold live gigs and show off your skills in local restaurants. People will recognize your talent and you will form new connections with people.
Must Read: How To Play Piano Chords For Beginners?
6) ENTERTAINMENT
You’ll leave a special impression on every big and small gathering at your place. It indeed feels good to be appreciated by other people. The best part about this social appreciation is that you don’t often get appreciated for your playing but the efforts you are trying to make to perform and entertain each one in the crowd. This keeps you motivated to practice more.
These are more than enough reasons for someone to start investing their time and effort in learning piano. If not immediate, there are concrete long-term benefits of learning piano that will change your life for good!
Additional Benefits
- As we get older, our capacity to process auditory signals slows down. Participants in a recent study, on the other hand, who continued to listen to music throughout their lives, helped to start reversing the downturn of brain processing, memory, and inner ear hearing loss.
- A study published in the journal Educational Psychology in 1993 found that the capacity to distinguish between pitches, which is a critical skill learned when playing the piano, was linked to great reading performance. Furthermore, learning to memorise music prior to performance strengthens your reading comprehension skills as well as the part of the brain responsible for recall.
- When you play music, multiple areas of your brain light up. Scientists studying musicians’ brains while they play music discovered that the practise of playing the music is equivalent to a full-body brain exercise. Playing music strengthens numerous parts of the brain, including our capacity to focus focus, and apply knowledge. It also means allowing us to exercise our brain in other ways. As a result, it should come as no surprise that learning to play the piano will result in increased patience, concentration, and discipline in other areas of one’s life.
- A 2016 study of Amazonian men and women discovered that musical preference is purely cultural and just not hardwired into the brains. Contrary to previous assumptions about our brains’ preferences for dissonant vis a vis consonant chords, the study’s findings support the practice of playing the piano to broaden our cultural knowledge of various sounds, styles, and types of music. This exposure is especially crucial for instilling early generosity of spirit and cultural diversity in children.
- Many people categorize individuals as good or bad musicians. We must have probably heard someone say, “I’m not musical at all!” A study conducted in the 1990s discovered the “Mozart effect” in children, which demonstrated that keyboard lessons for preschoolers could improve early language acquisition and spatial-temporal intelligence. Furthermore, Dr. Charles Limb’s research revealed that pianists who perform solo use their brains linguistically, as if they were replying conversationally and grammatically, has validated that some people’s brains are better suited for learning music through multiple studies. Learning to play the piano, on the other hand, can benefit all humans and even alter the way one ‘s brain processes data and learns new skills.
Mental Benefits
- Piano has offered an unrivalled outlet for people seeking solace, freedom of expression, as well as pure delight. The benefits of playing the piano have become increasingly clear in recent years, with studies linking music-making to good physical, mental, and emotional health.
- In other words, practicing the piano increases intelligence and engages brain regions similar to those used for math and spatial reasoning. Learning to play the piano has been shown to develop positive habits such as concentration, determination, diligence, and inventiveness. It has also been shown to significantly improve memory, particularly verbal memory. Children who had researched the piano for several years remembered 20% more vocabulary terms than their peers.
- Furthermore, performers in their early years are better able to recall understanding from seminars and lectures in their later years. Learning to play the piano has been shown to improve spatial-temporal skills, which are essential in math, physics, and engineering. Early, consistent exposure to music can even change the structure of the mind in forms that last a lifetime, improving the brain’s efficiency in both able to perform and non-musical tasks.
- Spending quality time at the keyboard is useful for one’s mental health, according to studies; any who compose music report less sense of isolation, worry, and depression. Furthermore, it has been proved that practicing the piano significantly reduces stress and provides numerous opportunities to boost self-esteem.
- It is also a popular method of treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Music as Medicine
Music has powerful impacts on the human brain that really are difficult to overstate. A single snippet of music, for example, can jog one’s memory. A song can elicit emotional responses ranging from unashamed joy to deep sorrow, and it can galvanize listeners into patriotic or religious fervor, not to mention its legendary ability to calm the savage beast. Many people are interested in the study of how music affects the brain and the relationship between music and human physical and mental health. Music has been shown to hasten the recovery of physical ailments and to have a soothing impact on the mind.
Furthermore, music has been shown to improve memory levels in Alzheimer’s and dementia patients. The silence with both two musical notes helps to stimulate brain cells responsible for the formation of sharp memory. Flute music and instruments such as the suggesting the presence and terms are commonly are recommended for improving concentration and memory. Furthermore, classical music can improve the capacity to remember what is stored in the brain as memory. Strong beats cause brain waves to interact in time with the beat, resulting in increased concentration and mental alertness.
Music has recently been studied for its therapeutic effect on people or groups for emotional, mental, psychological, and physical healing and well-being. Music counselors are trained and qualified professionals who use music purposefully, and ethically to discuss patients’ needs within cognitive, interactional, emotional, musical, physical, personal, and spiritual realms. This alternative mode of therapy is rapidly gaining international traction. Modern Music Therapy started in the 1940s after World War II, when institutionalized former soldiers who suffered from various mental, physical, and emotional traumas reacted positively to community music performances. Music Therapy is quickly becoming a recognized form of treatment, with prestigious colleges offering courses to become certified Music Therapists.
Piano Players are Multitaskers
When you play a piano, you compel the brain, eyes, hands, and feet to cooperate. This is not an easy task for any beginner pianist. One of the most important cognitive advantages of piano is improved multitasking ability. You will get better at stabilizing all the various tasks involved in piano playing as individuals learn more complex pieces. You will be starting to play your favorite tracks without even trying before you know it! Working to improve your multitasking skills has a range of benefits aside from the piano.
You might even find it simpler to study, work, or complete household tasks at home. Pianists have extremely refined fine motor skills. It necessitates complete autonomy of the hands, fingers, or even ears. As a result, high levels of precision, accuracy, and speed started to demand and developed. Playing such notes in 2 distinct clefs requires us to multitask. According to current research, the piano study can improve motor function in adults and children who find it difficult with overall motor coordination. The study of the piano will greatly improve the reaction time and inclination to multitask.
Conclusion
There are numerous reasons why people want to learn how to play the piano, and each one is valuable in its own way. You might desire to be able to perform for your family or friends, or you may simply want a creative outlet. In any case, there are numerous resources and methods for learning piano quickly. When you are first starting out, it’s critical to understand your constraints and available options, as these can impact how you approach the instrument. This could include anything from the type of piano you can afford to the technique you want to employ to learn the piano and how much time you have each day to sit down and practice.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. How Does a Piano Practise Session Help With Ear Training and Harmony?
While boring and repetitive scales and chord shifts can be tedious for some pianists, they are necessary for sharpening the technique and developing the ear. Paying much attention to what you play while practicing can help you improve your understanding of music theory.
2. How Does Playing the Piano Improve Your Memory?
When you play the piano, your brain is stimulated. As you learn as well as play songs, the activated areas of the brain expand and become more active. Musicians’ brain regions are more developed than non-musicians, particularly those that store audio information. As a direct consequence, learning how to play the piano enhances aural memory.
3. Is It Truly the Case That Playing the Piano Has Psychical Health Benefits?
Even if you are sitting, playing the piano is a workout in and of itself that benefits players of all ages both physically and physiologically. Piano practice, for example, helps young kids and their developing brains strengthen their perfect motor abilities and hand-eye coordination. As per research, older people who take piano lessons have higher levels of the chemical HGH, which reduces the negative effects of aging.
4. What exactly is muscle memory?
– When you first start playing the piano, the hand positions and actions may feel abnormal and foreign. In this situation, muscle memory comes in handy.
– When you repeat the same warm-up activities before each practice session, your hands become used to them and you feel more at ease, which is among the most important aspects of playing any instrument.
5. How Does Piano Help You Learn a Language?
A study conducted in the 1990s discovered the “Mozart effect” in children, which demonstrated that keyboard lessons for preschoolers could improve early language acquisition and spatial-temporal intelligence.
