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Are piano lessons worth it?

Learning piano is an excellent alternative because learning piano or any instrument gives us good practices, and routines that help us develop a sense of discipline and consistency in our lives.

Playing piano is a great skill to learn just because of the social and personal aspects of the practice. Learning to play an instrument can be quite fulfilling and playing with other people can really help with anxiety and isolation.

Are piano lessons good for you and your brain?

When monitoring the activity of a person listening to music, they realized that several areas of the brain were lighting up at once as the person processed the sounds, taking apart for example melody and rhythm or the different instruments and their role. And then, in a split second, putting all those elements together into a unifying musical experience.

When scientists turned their attention from music listeners to musicians playing piano, they realized that while listening to music engages the brain in some pretty interesting activities, playing music is the brain’s equivalent of a full body workout.

Multiple areas of the brain participate and interact with each other simultaneously, processing different information in intertwined, intricate and interrelated sequences.

They came to the conclusion that playing a musical instrument engages practically every area of the brain at once. It is a practice that engages particularly the visual, auditory and motor cortex of the brain and it re-enforces the qualities such as discipline and concentration. These abilities can then be used for other activities, such as other learning disciplines or intricate games such as chess.

The main difference between listening to music and playing music is fine motor skills. Say you are learning how to play the piano and therefore you are learning how to read music and play your instrument using both hands which are addressing two different parts at once, in order to complete these tasks your brain will use both hemispheres at an even rate as well as the bridge that connects them, what is called the Corpus Callosum.

The practice of playing and reading music creates different routes and connections between the two hemispheres. The result is the ability to solve problems more efficiently and creatively in academic and social settings. Your attention to detail is boosted, as well as planning and strategizing, and your capacity to retain and recall memories is enhanced by assigning your memories different tags, such as an emotional, conceptual or sonic tag.

Scientists have also found that the practice of learning music, taking a music course or weekly lessons, as well as your routinely practice are activities that affect your brain differently from any other art or discipline, and the results of these activities are the same regardless of the abilities of the person before engaging in this discipline and these activities.

Why should you learn piano first?

Piano is a user-friendly instrument.

Let’s start by talking about music notation and the piano. Learning music notation on the piano is delightful compared to other instruments. While the piano has all its notes organized from left to right, other instruments such as the guitar or trombone have their notes spread in a logical, but somewhat hard way to find.

The next element is sound: the mechanics of the piano is to press the keys using all ten fingers. Each one of these notes will sound good, regardless of the time you have spent playing the instrument. This is not the case with other instruments. Violin for example is an instrument that takes years to make it sound in tune, the same goes for brass instruments. The guitar, although fretted, might be challenging to make it sound good.

Finally, when learning the piano, both hands are mechanically doing the same thing and that is an advantage as well. Take any string instrument for example; string instruments required for the player to do something completely different with each hand, whether it is bowing, strumming or picking.