Piano Education: The Best in Brain Development

In our highly technological age, the piano lesson is a rich, centuries-old, oral tradition. This sort of longevity is a testament to the unparalleled value of this system of learning and of this particular instrument. Here's an excerpt from the book Piano Facts by Bill Finnegan, ©1954.

"A fine education is one thing that never can be taken from the owner. Piano study develops poise, rhythm, culture, is always a social asset, and well may be of greater comfort and value in later life than many of the compulsory subjects in high school and college."

There are many scientific studies that show music lessons, more than any other activity, have the greatest impact on brain development . Because of the complexity found in piano music, we believe a strong case can be made that piano study has a larger impact all of the different instruments.

Read some of the supporting scientific studies

Music requires at least four parts of your brain to function seamlessly together. These are the visual, aural, kinesthetic and analytical centers. Spatial and temporal brain functions also play a significant part.

In young children, because the brain is growing so rapidly, playing piano makes the brain grow in unique ways that it wouldn't have otherwise. Adult brains of any age, also benefit from the piano's unique form of mind exercise. Many parents give their child music lessons because they believe in these brain development benefits.

Piano Study Increases Memory Capacity

Studying piano provides a greater memory workout than other instruments That's because piano music contains multiple parts where the right hand usually plays a melody while the left hand plays a harmony or rhythmic background. There's just more for a pianist to keep track of compared to the single melody lines normally played by other instruments like the violin or flute.

It's not that these other instruments can't play multiple notes at the same time, rather that they usually don't and certainly not in beginner's music. Here's a dramatic example.

We were treated to a musical iinterlude featuring a solo violinist. The violinist was playing double and triple stops, meaning, two and three notes at the same time. Many of the double stops were two separate melodies. The lower one moved stepwise and held longer notes than the higher and faster moving melody. In that high ceilinged church with the sun coming through the stained glass, it was a positively ethereal sound and quite wonderful.

A beginning pianist can play two notes at the same time easily and although harder, even two moving melodies. The violinist at the wedding was a salaried member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. I describe all this to point out that an accomplished violinist can play more than one note at a time beautifully, but a beginning pianist can also do it and quite easily. This is one reason why the piano is such a popular instrument.

Piano Study Greatly Enhances Learning other Academic Subjects

There are many ways that piano study prepares a young person to study other academic subjects. The discipline required to practice and to make perfect a sequence of notes. The focused concentration on getting a musical phrase correct. These are general skills that are sharpened by piano study.

The intuitive learning of math through music lessons is a more specific example. In playing music, when you have to physically count 1, 2, 3 and 4 to keep time, the student is having a kinesthetic experience of what they are counting. They feel their fingers move with the count. When a child begins to study fractions in a math class, students with piano backgrounds will have an intuitive feel for the fractional components of whole numbers. Learning the concept of one half in an analytical way is standard practice in a math class. A music student will have an intuitive feeling for the quanity of one half in addition which puts them way ahead in understanding the concept analytically.

Benefits of Piano Study

There are so many benefits that I will only describe some of them.

Piano requires learning to .......

Process large amounts of information for quick decision making.Maintain a steady pulse for keeping time.Hear and follow pitch to make specific intervals and chords..Maintain posture-body, hand and footOperate left and right hands independently. Integrate all of these skills and more to be able to sightread music.

These skills.....

Improve planning ability.

Improve decision making.

Increase memory capacity.Develop discipline.Increase self esteem. Improve the ability to multitaskIncrease a child's academic mindset.Improve creative problem solving for open-ended problems. Create large amounts of nerve growth that act as a defense against cognitive decline and memory loss later in life.

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All of This improves.........

Social behavior,

Spontaneity

and

Independence

It also decreases

depression,

fatigue

and

anxiety.

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Learn to play like Magic.

Call Mr. David

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