In a rapidly changing world, progress is the most permanent ingredient to building a dynamic work and learning culture. Amidst the endless plethora of work deadlines and hectic schedules, you must find the time for yourself to do what you want to do.
Cultivating a skill can give your mind a break from stress. Acquiring new talents can be therapeutic to your mind and body. One such skill is playing the piano.
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Anyone who has let their fingers roll on the piano keys understands how it enriches the mind. It doesn't matter if you are a beginner or a pro. A piano is for everyone who wishes to learn. Instead of wasting your hours mindlessly scrolling through mind-numbing matter, you can use the time to learn how to play the piano. Believe when we say that even 15 minutes of piano learning a day can shape your life in a whole new way.
Still wondering how a piano can add happiness and productivity to your life? Let's look into it.
Benefits of Playing the Piano
Apart from the sense of achievement that comes with playing the piano, many other benefits can shape your life for the better. Infact, music is a great way to enhance your mental health. Let's understand one by one to know how playing the piano can benefit you.
1. It's fun
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." We have all heard of this saying, and it is more accurate in today's world than ever.
Playing the piano is absolutely fun. Even as a beginner, learning to play the tune of a song can fill you with happiness. Once you get the hang of it after a few weeks of practice, you will have a great time banging those piano keys.
2. It decreases stress
Practising piano lessons continuously can positively impact your mental health. It can significantly reduce stress and anxiety. For example, when you have had a tough day and feel frustrated. You can take those troubling emotions and pour them on the piano keys.
Playing the piano can take your mind off stressful things and help you live in the moment. It's a form of meditation but with music intact.
3. It improves your IQ
Studies have shown that playing the piano is not just entertaining but also an excellent brain exercise. When you play the piano, you must remember certain notes and think fast as you play one note after another. This way, you broaden your memory storage.
Additionally, your ability to concentrate improves along with your ability to think fast. Children and adults can improve their thinking abilities by playing the piano. Your brain gets accustomed to grasping things quickly. Even your perception of music improves as you play the piano. You will understand something about music that a layman can't.
4. It improves hand-eye coordination
Hand-eye coordination is an essential skill, especially when it comes to focusing while multitasking. The piano can help you improve your hand-eye coordination. This can have a more significant impact on your daily life, both personally and professionally. According to a study conducted by the American Music Conference, playing the piano or any musical instrument can strengthen your motor skills.
When you learn to play the piano, you are reading the music and playing the instrument's notes. This is tricky since it needs your hand and eyes to coordinate. Faster music needs more practice. By learning continuously, your motor skills can develop impressively so that you can read and play simultaneously.
5. It boosts confidence
Playing the piano is not an easy task. It needs discipline, passion, and dedication. You can't learn this skill in a day. But, as you grow with time, you will reap the rewards. Your capacity to play the piano will also positively affect your life. You won't feel like you have been wasting your time. Instead, you will be proud of the productive days.
Even in your daily life, you will see a change in your attitude. You will learn to tackle criticism better because you will know that making mistakes is human and won't hamper your self-esteem. And, as you interact with more learners, your communication skills and confidence will improve.
So these are the ways attaining a skill like playing the piano can help you rebuild yourself in a better way. But, the benefits aren't just limited to your personal life. Let's see how profound the impact of playing the piano is in other aspects of life.
How Playing the Piano Enhances Your Professional Life?
Did you know that the skills you acquire while playing the piano can significantly benefit your professional life, such as at university or work? There have been many proven studies that have linked the success of a professional person to additionally acquired skills like playing a musical instrument, sports, dance activities, and more.
So, what makes piano playing such a crucial skill to enhance your performance in other areas of life? Don't worry. We have an entire list laid out to help you understand how mastering the piano can build a positive professional attitude.
1. Sharpens Your Level of Concentration
We have mentioned before that piano playing can magnanimously impact your concentration skills. But how does it do that? You need to take care of many things at once when you play the piano. The rhythm, tempo, pitch, note, timing, duration, and many other aspects should all align to give you sweet music.
In a nutshell, you are playing the piano. But, if you look closer, you will see that you are actually multitasking. And with each key you bang, you perform a multilevel concentration exercise. So, when you play the piano, various parts of the brain are simultaneously active.
Now, imagine performing the same exercise continuously. It means practising these multilevel concentration exercises consecutively. Your mind will get accustomed to it, which will help you perform other activities better.
2. Improves Your Level of Perseverance
Learning how to play the piano requires you to commit to it. Even experts can sometimes take weeks to get a tune right. Practice is the right way to achieve expertise in playing the piano.
The good thing is, with each passing practice, you will feel motivated. You will learn to be more patient and push your perseverance further. The same skills can work favourably when you are handed tasks in college, university, or work.
3. Learn the Lessons of Discipline but With Fun
Challenges are a part of learning how to play the piano. And without these challenges, the art might have been dull. You may sometimes feel frustrated, but your hard work will pay off as you keep practising. Playing the piano teaches you the art of discipline. As you practice the same notes repeatedly, it can also cultivate in you the habit of not giving up until you succeed.
The more you practice, the more you learn. And regular practice requires a disciplined mind. In the beginning, you will struggle to build the habit of practising. But, keep holding on. Slowly and steadily, you will get used to it. Take micro-learning as an approach to develop your mind at your own pace. You will surely learn, even if it's one step at a time.
4. Improves Your Time Management Skills
In a busy world, time means everything. There are multiple activities that you need to finish. Hectic schedules take over the space to think for yourself with a clear conscience.
Amidst all this, incorporating piano playing into your timetable can help you practice using time effectively. Take out 15 mins from your schedule to learn this skill. It will teach you how to manage your time productively. With time, you can identify the loopholes in your schedule. You will see where you are wasting too much time and how you can use it in a helpful way.
5. Builds Your Emotional Intelligence
Music is all about listening intently. Playing the piano will improve your listening skills. More listening will help you learn and observe more.
You can use the same listening skills while interacting with people. The ability to read people and their emotions can be a massive asset to being successful in life.
The tone of a person's voice, speed, and manner of speaking can indicate a person's feelings. The perceptive talent of interpreting a person's emotions can come in handy in various situations.
Playing the piano helps you grow the habit of listening cautiously. You will improve your skills to the extent of listening to what a common person might miss.
6. Superior Speech and Language Skills
It can be pretty astonishing to what extent playing an instrument can help you. The language of music can have more benefits than one can assume. Experts have observed that playing the piano can have excellent results on a person's language learning abilities.
Moreover, playing the piano can improve dyslexia in children and enhance their abilities to process speech and language better.
7. Builds creativity levels
Sometimes, working at a job represses your creativity which is why it is crucial to involve yourself in creative skills. Playing the piano means evoking your imagination now and then. You can use this habit to provoke your creative side in your professional life.
With the rise of the digital world, creative skills are becoming more necessary than ever. The future is built on advanced creative skills, and piano playing can help you build these skills.
How?
Piano playing is a lot less about rules and restrictions and more about exploring what's beyond the boundaries. You learn to challenge your creative side when you create your own piano tune. This will help you build your mind creatively.
Practising creativity through piano will help you think outside the box and explore new ideas. You can use these creative skills to create outstanding solutions even in your professional life. Learn more about how music can boost your creativity.
These are the ways piano playing can help. But did you know that playing the piano can also improve you physically? Let's check out the various ways in which playing the piano can have physical benefits.
The physical benefits of playing the piano
Playing the piano is amazing even for physical benefits. Let's check out these reasons one by one to understand how:
1. Improves hand strength and dexterity
Playing the piano requires you to work physically. You cannot learn how to play the piano without physically participating in the act.
Playing the piano indeed includes a lot of mental exercises, but the mind alone isn't the only active body part during the act. You are constantly playing the piano's keys with your fingers, and your feet hit the pedals simultaneously.
Hence, the entire act needs a lot of physical strength, especially on the arms, fingers, and feet. Longer piano performances can tire your body if you are out of practice. With constant practice, your fingers will be stronger and more agile, and your motor skills will improve.
2. Better motor skills
Playing the piano is a lot like juggling. Your mind is constantly concentrating on the movements of your body and your fingers and feet and continuously hitting one note after another in symphony. You need to take care of the bass and treble clefs when you play the piano. Art requires practice. You will need to use both sides of your brain. With each movement, your body follows the rhythm. Sometimes your left hand will move in the direction opposite to your right. Above all, you will need to maintain hand-eye coordination.
Hence, motor skills play a vital role in piano playing skills. The more you practice, the better you learn to control the movements of your body.
3. Better Human Growth Hormones (HGH) Levels
Old age is inevitable. And, as you grow older, your ability to grow diminishes. By the time you reach 40, you realise you are way slower physically and mentally.
Our body contains the pituitary gland, an essential bean-shaped gland located at the base of the brain. The gland has several vital functions like maintaining blood pressure, growth, and reproduction. It also generates a chemical called the HgH, a.k.a the Human Growth Hormone, which is very important for human development. The hormone is responsible for energy levels, muscle mass, and even lessening body pain and aches as we grow old. In other words, it is an elixir that can make old age bearable if not easy.
A study held by the University of Miami conducted a survey on adults who play the piano. They noticed that people who played the piano had higher levels of HgH and were more active regardless of their age.
So, if you are hitting the late 30s or early 40s, now would be an excellent time to learn the piano.
4. Enhanced Hearing Skills
Yes, piano enhances your hearing skills. By this, I don't mean that it turns you into some kind of superhero with impossible hearing abilities. Playing the piano can improve your auditory cortex. The auditory cortex is that part of your brain which is responsible for processing sound. What a layman hears is different from what a piano expert hears. In the case of a layman, most notes, tunes, and sounds would go unnoticed. But, it would be easier for a piano expert to recognise the same sounds. This is because the piano player's auditory cortex is trained to recognise sounds with various tones, pitches, chords, or levels. An expert in piano playing can easily catch these sounds and mimic them without much trouble. You can also learn how to improve your singing skills along with musical instruments at home.
Can playing the piano improve your academic scores?
Yes, research shows that piano playing can positively impact a person's regular intelligence or IQ.
A study conducted by the Georgia and Texas Universities showed that there's a solid link between musical practice and high academic performance. This is especially seen true in the case of subjects like mathematics, science, and language arts.
Most people would argue that music uses the left side of the brain and academics use the right side. But, the reality is that music and academics have a lot in common. Both follow specific patterns and require high levels of concentration.
Fun fact: Did you know that genius musicians are known to use calculus and geometry to create music?
This is also why students who play musical instruments perform better academically than others. Practising music constantly helps train their brain, putting them one step ahead of everyone else.
Learning music develops a person's memory storage and creativity. This is why they are less forgetful and more capable of adapting to new lessons. Hence, playing the piano is the perfect way to exercise your brain and gain multiple benefits.
Isn't it amazing how playing the piano can benefit you in many ways? Apart from the obvious reason that it is an impressive and entertaining skill, many other pointers can motivate you to learn to play the piano.
So, why not begin your journey today? You have no more than one excuse to start your learning. And, we promise, when you finally learn to play the piano, you will be super proud of yourself for following your heart. At our micro learning app, you can learn how to play the piano in easy and engaging ways. Explore the app for free and begin your piano learning journey today.
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