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For many adults, learning to play the piano is a great way to help alleviate stress, stimulate the mind, improve coordination, and promote an overall sense of well-being. After a long hard day, it’s great to relax and express your emotions with the soothing sounds of a genuine acoustic or keyboard piano. Playing the piano is not only fun and entertaining, it also provides great exercise for your brain. The same way your muscles can benefit from resistance or cardiovascular exercises, practicing the piano for just 20 minutes a day can help keep you mentally fit.
A music education clearly offers children, adults and people of all ages a variety of benefits regardless of nationality, language, religion or social class. The piano is the world’s best-known, widely used, and most loved musical instrument of all. Why is that? Because an acoustic 88-key piano contains the broadest range of musical tones out of any musical instrument in the world! This allows composers to write music compositions for any other musical instrument and also tune any instrument, regardless of its’ pitch range, against the piano.
No other musical instrument holds that distinction.
At its very simplest, music is a language just like you’d read aloud from a book. The symbols you’ll see on pages of sheet music have been used for hundreds of years. And they represent the pitch, speed and rhythm of the song they convey, as well as expression and techniques used by a musician to play the piece. Think of the notes as the letters, the measures as the words, the phrases as the sentences and so forth. Learning to read music really does open up a whole new world to explore!
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There has always been a recognized connection between the mind, the body, and the therapeutic qualities of music. And the piano, specifically, has been a long-recognized source of remedy for those seeking escape and creative expression. But recent years have also offered a wealth of scientific studies that demonstrate our instincts have always been correct: playing the piano offers proven benefits—from physical and intellectual to social and emotional—to people of all ages.
The physical health of adults
Dr. Arthur Harvey, retired professor at University of Hawaii at Manoa, published a study through the American Music Conference that details the vast physiologic benefits generated by regular musical practice. One obvious boon of regular piano playing, Harvey found, is the sharpening of fine motor skills in children. But playing music, according to Harvey’s research, also “activates the cerebellum and therefore may aid stroke victims in regaining language capabilities.” Additional research revealed that group keyboard lessons given to older Americans had a significant effect on increasing levels of human growth hormone (HGH), which is implicated in slowing such aging phenomena as osteoporosis, energy levels, wrinkling, muscle mass, and aches and pains.
The physical benefits of piano playing are even more far reaching. Mitchell Gaynor M.D., in his book Sounds of Healing, demonstrates that music has therapeutic physical effects including reduced anxiety, heart and respiratory rates; reduced cardiac complications; lowered blood pressure; and increased immune responses.
In addition to the proven body benefits of regular play, piano practice can also boost cognitive and intellectual abilities. Playing piano, in other words, makes us smarter. Research through the years has demonstrated that musical training taps into similar areas of brain function as those used in spatial intelligence and even math.
As if the physical and cognitive benefits of regular piano playing were not enough, studies also show that time at the keyboard offers emotional advantages, as well. In fact, research reveals that those who are involved in creating music on a regular basis experience less anxiety, loneliness and depression. Barry Bittman, MD, of the Body-Mind Wellness Center in Meadville, Pennsylvania, created a study to gauge stress levels
Bittman, B. Medical Science Monitor, February 2005; vol 11.
Calter, M. “Playing the Piano Can Strengthen Fine Motor Skills.” http://www.toptenreviews.com
Gaynor, M. Sounds of Healing, Broadway Books.
Schellenberg, E. Psychological Science, August 2004; vol 15.