Will Learning Piano Help You Write Music

benefits of playing piano

Before I give you lot the benefits of playing the pianoforte, can you tell me the benefits of not playing the piano? In other words, why don't you play?

Adults all over the world are turning to the keys. They're realizing that lessons are not for children just. They're discovering that it'southward never too late to learn. But what nearly you?

It'southward true that piano lessons benefit young children, but they do good grown-ups every bit well. In fact, they may reward grown-ups even more.

After all, children learn to play considering their parents brand them. But grown-ups learn considering they want to, and this desire makes all the difference.

Do you want to play, even a little scrap? If so, then let me requite yous twenty benefits of playing pianoforte. As a bonus, I'll give yous twenty-five reasons to showtime learning NOW. Let'south go!

By learning keyboard skills, yous will improve yourself in 5 major ways…

You lot will enjoy intellectual, emotional, concrete, social, and personal benefits. Each of these benefits volition affect you lot in a positive and multifaceted fashion. Permit's take a look.

Intellectual Benefits

If yous recall only the smartest people should play pianoforte and that you're not smart enough to do it, and then you're wrong. In fact, playing the piano volition actually make you lot smarter!

Playing Piano Brain Benefits

Improve your retentiveness

Would you lot similar to remember things amend? Enquiry shows that piano lessons enhance the working memory of older adults.

This is especially true after as piffling as 6 months of learning.

This do good shows upwardly specifically when you read. In 1993, the Educational Psychology Journal linked playing the piano with improved reading comprehension. If yous want to remember what you read (including this article!), then playing the piano is for y'all.

Improve your brain speed

During childhood and adolescence, your fretfulness go through a procedure called myelination. This means your fretfulness add layers of insulation. These layers assist signals travel faster through your nervous system. (Your nervous organisation includes your brain.)

Did y'all know that myelinated nerves send signals at the speed of a Formula One racecar? It's truthful!

Medical professionals have associated this procedure with normal childhood and boyish development. Only inquiry at present shows that adult activity tin increase this process.

One notable study links this process to pianoforte playing. Then, by playing the pianoforte, y'all may increase your brain'southward power to think ameliorate .

Expand your audible skills

Aural awareness ways that you have a bully understanding of the sounds you brand and hear. It also means that you can alloy audio with others and that you can keep a steady rhythm and pulse. Some people call this a "musical ear."

Though having a musical ear helps you lot play the piano, the opposite is also true.

Playing piano helps you develop a musical ear. And then don't let your lack of aural skills keep you away from the keys. Build those skills today by taking lessons.

If y'all learn to play pianoforte, you will learn how to listen to music and sing amend, likewise.

Sharpen your concentration and focus

Did you know that yous are multitasking when yous play the piano?

You are focusing on rhythm and tempo, pitch and volume, melody and harmony all at once. At the aforementioned time, you are also focusing on finger positions, torso posture, and more.

Practise y'all lose focus at school? Do yous lose concentration at work? Then learning to play the piano will aid you lot overcome these issues.

After all, playing an instrument is one of few activities that engages all areas of your brain at once.

Quick Fact: Did you know that playing the pianoforte is a mutual grade of therapy for treating ADHD?

Piano and Your Encephalon (Infographic)

Playing Piano Brain Benefits Infographic

Emotional Benefits

Playing Piano Emotional Benefits

Music therapy helps improve physical and mental health through the expression of emotions. When you play piano, you lot provide yourself with this valuable form of therapy every single time.

Decrease your stress and feet

Playing Piano Decreases Stress

In 2013, the National Library of Medicine published a fascinating article. It showed that playing piano eases stress. Information technology also reduces low in elderly adults.

How does this piece of work? It overcomes negative emotions through repetitive sounds that engage your neocortex. This effect calms you and reduces your urge to be impulsive. It as well teaches you to mind to new, effective music.

Depressed people tend to "match their music to their mood." But playing the pianoforte expands your musical horizons.

It encourages you to mind to uplifting and constructive music instead, moving y'all across what you "feel" like playing. This pulls you out of your "loop" of dark and depressive feelings.

Increase your happiness

Playing the piano does more than remove negative emotions. It replaces them with positive emotions – in several ways.For instance, what'southward improve than listening to happy, uplifting music? Playing that music yourself!

Who hasn't watched an inspiring pic or Boob tube testify and wished that they could become plunk out the theme song on a keyboard? I know I take.

Ii melodies especially stand out. They are Forrest Gump (1994) andHome Alone (1990). Right at present, your keyboard is absolutely begging yous to play them!

With some lessons under your belt, y'all can play happy, beautiful melodies similar these and more.

Boost your conviction and self-esteem

Feeling timid and humble? Want to conquer that feeling? Playing the piano volition build your conviction.

In item, doing this enables you to overcome shyness. It'south like public speaking this way, only you don't have to look at your audience or use your voice.

Hither'south how it works.

When you plunk out your first melody, your confidence grows.
When you progress from playing with ane hand to 2 hands, your confidence grows more than.
When you move from ane level of difficulty to some other, your confidence grows even more. (The start steps are piece of cake!)
So, when yous perform in front of an audience, your conviction grows even more.

The heaven'due south the limit. Every skill level you achieve unlocks the door to some other level. Your confidence increases each step of the manner.

Physical Benefits

My college instructor compared piano to football game and for expert reason. Like football game, playing pianoforte yields physical benefits – but without the concussions.

Playing Piano Physical Benefits

Increase your manus strength and dexterity

Playing the piano is like taking your fingers to the gym. As yous practice on a regular basis, your fingers will inevitably strengthen.

Finger speed will also increase. Yet strength and speed lone will not be their greatest advantage.

Your fingers will do good from increased dexterity. The repetitive motions of playing will sharpen your fine motor skills.

Your fingers volition as well become nimbler on the keys over fourth dimension. As a result, you will discover ameliorate what it ways to "get a grip," non just at the keyboard but in life at large.

You might even go better at opening the pickle jar!

Improve your eye-mitt coordination

You lot don't have to exist ambidextrous to play the piano; but playing will help you develop ambidexterity. (Ambidextrous means that you can utilise both hands equally well.)

When yous play, your brain must tell each hand to perform split deportment. Your right and left hands will play dissimilar notes at the same time, following different rhythms and moving in contrary directions.

Honing this power benefits you beyond the keyboard. These benefits include improved reaction times, athleticism, and agility.

Keyboard skills may fifty-fifty expand your typing skills, making you more productive at piece of work (if typing is role of your chore).

Enhance your health (by boosting HGH levels)

Playing the pianoforte is not the fountain of youth, simply it'southward close! Did yous know that taking lessons later in life tin slow down your aging procedure?

Hither's how it works. Your pituitary gland produces a man growth hormone (HgH). This function helps regulate trunk fluids, muscle and bone growth, metabolism, and perhaps even heart function.

A written report past the Academy of Miami indicated that adults (even seniors) who take lessons feel increased levels of HgH. Therefore, this benefit is not express to children alone.

For adults, this hormone sustains higher energy levels, boosts muscle mass and sexual functions, and diminishes the aches and pains of old age, including osteoporosis.

Playing the piano not only improves you in mental and emotional ways, simply it connects you to the people and world around you.

Expand your [real] social network

Are you staring at screens too much? Playing the piano provides a satisfying escape from the virtual world. Existent keys. Real sound. Real music. It's a sensory and kinetic experience in every way. At that place'southward zip pretend nigh it.

Playing pianoforte also puts y'all in contact with other existent people, in real space and time. Most chiefly, you interact with a teacher, ordinarily on a weekly basis.

You may likewise interact with other students, additional teachers, and – of class – your audition, whenever you play your music for others.

Encourage other people

When I mention playing music for others, I am actually mentioning a benefit of playing which extends beyond yourself. Here'due south what I mean.

When yous play your music for others to hear, you lot are giving them a gift, the gift of sound. By doing so, you may calm their anxiety, increase their joy, and inspire them in the right management.

Since "it is more blessed to give than to receive," then giving away your music like this ends upwardly being a approving for y'all again in a roundabout way.

Like a boomerang, the gift will come back to you lot more than you would guess.

Receive criticism better

The older we get, the more than we know (or think nosotros know). The more than nosotros know, the less we appreciate criticism. That's why we become "stuck in our means." Thankfully, piano lessons aid you overcome this problem.

Piano Helps Better Receive Criticism

Every bit a student, you gear up for your lessons each calendar week. So you play what you've practiced for your teacher. A good teacher will congratulate you for a job well washed, but he or she will also offer effective criticism.

If you're not careful, this may "pop your balloon" and go out yous feeling deflated. But if you lot respond well, you'll take the feedback and make the necessary improvements.

Learning to receive regular, weekly criticism from your instructor will carry over into other arenas of life, like close relationships, classes at school, and work scenarios.

Drag your multitasking skills

What to become more than efficient? Who doesn't? Playing the piano will train yous to focus on multiple things – kind of like juggling, only in a far more artistic mode. Some phone call this ability "split concentration."

Playing Piano Helps Multitasking

When yous play the piano, your eyes read the music, your hands motion in split up directions, your fingers press multiple keys at once, and your feet press the pedals. If that's not multitasking, and so I don't know what is!

Multitasking skills like these extend to real-life situations. These skills enable you to pay improve attending at school and piece of work without requiring you to drop everything else you're doing.

Diversify your cultural awareness

Many people draw music as a "universal language."

As the Oxford Cultural Value Projection demonstrates, this is true considering music expresses the feelings, perspectives, and values of one culture to another.

When you study, practice, and perform music, you lot acquire more than keyboard repertoire. You lot learn to empathise and empathise with another cultural mindset without the rigors of learning a brand-new language or studying tedious history.

Imagine learning more most South African culture past learning to play a distinctive South African praise harmony. Or feel the warmth of Irish culture by learning to play the distinctive folk melody, "Danny Male child."

And then how about feeling some Austrian nationalist nostalgia by playing "Edelweiss."

Playing piano also bridges eras and subcultures within a nation, similar the Us.

Reverberate dorsum over the struggles and triumphs of the Civil Rights Motility, for case, by playing a protest canticle like "We Shall Overcome."

Or plough back the folio of American history even further to the Revolutionary War melody of the 1700s, Yankee Doodle.

Become a better listener

Piano Makes You Better Listener

A Jewish rabbi once said, "You accept two ears but ane natural language for a reason, and the natural language is covered by 2 lips."

This sage advice reminds the states to exercise twice equally much listening as talking. It likewise reminds us that when we practise speak, we should recall carefully about what yous say beforehand.

If you struggle to live this way, talking way as well much and listening way likewise petty, then you should learn to play piano.

Indicators suggest that this experience will make you a better listener. You volition also improve your power to interpret the emotions of others.

Personal Benefits

Playing pianoforte improves your overall quality of life every bit a person. While it's difficult to explicate all the ways that this happens, I'll smoothen the spotlight on several personal advantages you don't want to miss.

Playing Piano Personal Benefits

Compose your own music

Play and Compose Music with Piano

Before you learn to play the piano, y'all are limited in your music listening options. You lot are confined to the songs that other people take composed.

Afterward you acquire, you remove those limitations. You proceeds the ability to sit down at the keyboard and play new tunes. If you think it yous can play it, without copyright restrictions.

Then, if you lot learn some music theory, you lot can write your music downwards using some notation software similar Finale, Sibelius, or Notion.

Even better, if you play on an electronic keyboard, you can record your melodies and harmonies into this software directly, as you play the keys.

So what are you waiting for? It's fourth dimension to make some music – literally.

Manage your time better

Ever feel like you're wasting fourth dimension, spinning your wheels, going nowhere fast? Learning to play the piano is a great style to solve this problem.

Perhaps you've heard the erstwhile aphorism, "Do makes perfect." Well, information technology's true, but more you may realize.

Whatsoever song you're working on, practice makes it perfect. Whatever keyboard skills you're learning, practice makes them perfect, too.

Playing Piano Makes You a Better Person

Simply pianoforte practice also helps you perfect your fourth dimension management habits in life at large beyond the keyboard.

Every bit yous look forward to daily practice (and y'all volition), you acquire to set bated regular time for things that matter.
Equally yous work out your scales and songs, you learn to budget small increments of fourth dimension towards a larger goal.
You learn to break downwards a larger project (like a song) into smaller goals, one measure and phrase at a time.

As you exercise, y'all perfect the art of fourth dimension direction. Mastering this skill at the keyboard will equip you for more responsible time management in other arenas of your life.

Become a more than consummate person

Your life is like a puzzle with missing pieces. Music is one of those pieces waiting to be popped into place.

When you learn to play pianoforte, you put that slice where it belongs and brand your picture more complete. When you don't, you leave an obvious pigsty in the moving-picture show.

Playing the piano improves you lot equally a person in mental, emotional, physical, and social ways.

If you never learn to play, then y'all will fall short of the person you could have become. You volition neglect to experience the joys and accomplishments which could have been yours.

Discover new opportunities

Playing Piano Opportunities

Playing the piano is similar a door leads to other unexpected doors of opportunity. To illustrate my point, I'll share my own piano-playing adventure.

Learning the piano opened the door for me to teach the piano to other students, something I had never envisioned doing.

This opportunity not only helped me pay my tuition, but it also opened the door for me to teach other non-music subjects in a private school too.

What's more, I accompanied a traveling vocal ensemble (equally the pianist), visiting xl-four U.S. States over 4 summers as a issue, from Maine to Arizona and Texas to Minnesota!

If I had never learned the piano, these doors never would have opened. Just what horizons await y'all in your piano-playing journey? What doors of opportunity are waiting to open before y'all?

Start learning NOW, because…

Perhaps y'all've read these benefits and you're thinking you'd like to play the piano, anytime – but not quite yet.

Maybe you lot're aiming to begin a yr from now, or maybe you're waiting for a time that's more user-friendly. Before you jump to that decision, let me offer you lot 20-five reasons not to wait and to first learning NOW.

Yous should showtime learning Now because:

1) You want to.
ii) Time is slipping away.
three) You don't know what tomorrow will bring.
4) You might like it.
5) Yous might observe a new melody.
half-dozen) You may prevent or delay Alzheimer's or dementia.
seven) It'southward easier to learn pianoforte than other instruments.
eight) In that location are many ways to learn (link to my previous article).
nine) There is a keyboard or pianoforte that suits your manner (link to your website info).
10) Yous can find a keyboard at an affordable price (link to your website info).
11) It's fun!
12) You'll inspire others.
13) You'll impress others.
14) You'll learn a new linguistic communication (sort of).
15) You'll also learn some Italian words (like forte, staccato, accelerando, and so much more).
sixteen) You'll prove that you can practise it (to yourself and to the world).
17) You do accept the money to do it.
xviii) Everyone else is doing information technology!
19) You lot're distressing, and it volition cheer you up.
20) You're spending likewise much time in front of a screen.
21) You're happy and you lot'll be able to show it.
22) You lot're bored and you need something to do.
23) You're curious and at that place'southward no other way to find out what it's similar.
24) Yous might go on to larn another instrument.
25) New opportunities will open up for you.

Final Words

Whether you lot're vi, xvi, or sixty years one-time, in that location's a whole lot of reasons to larn piano (and few reasons, if any, why you should refrain). So many intellectual, emotional, physical, social, and personal benefits will come your way!

Practise you lot agree? If so, then what's stopping you? Choose your keyboard. Choose your learning arroyo. And then dive right in.

Yet take questions? Have something to say? And so share your thoughts in the comments below.

If you like this article and want others to read it, and so share it with your friends online. Afterwards all, you have xx reasons to exercise so, plus 20-five more reasons why yous should practice so Now.

Most the Writer – Thomas Overmiller

Thomas is a NYC-based author (and married man, and father of 6 young children) who has devoted his life to pastoring Organized religion Baptist Church in Queens.

He interest in music began at 8 years old and he continued lessons through his senior yr of college.

During middle schoolhouse, he earned annual honors in the summer music festival of Indiana University, and he has taught private lessons using various curriculums and methods. As opportunity allows, he plays the piano for church worship, and he leads a weekly children's choir.