Why You Should Learn To Play A Musical Instrument

The human brain benefits from learning a musical instrument. The brain is a muscle and needs to be trained and strengthened. You can do this by reading, playing brain games, or learning a new language. Leaning a musical instrument sustains and feeds the brain, and is a hobby with a lot of benefits. 

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Playing A Musical Instrument Improves Memory

Whether you play the piano or buy yourself starter mandolins, it has been proven that learning a musical instrument improves the memory. It will improve your cognitive memory, and your muscle memory too. Learning to play an instrument requires you to use both the right and left parts of your brain, working it harder and improving your memory. Research has shown that taking part in music at a young age will help to improve a child’s learning ability and memory by stimulating different patterns of brain development. Scientists have even used music training as a tool for neuro-rehabilitation to help to improve the function of the brain. 

Music Relieves Stress

Music has a unique effect on our emotions. Music can make you feel happy or sad, or amplify the emotion you’re feeling. Studies show that music can keep you calm. It can even lower your heart rate and blood pressure, which will lower the stress hormone cortisol, making you feel more relaxed. Listening to music helps, but learning to play an instrument can be comforting, and the daily repetition can fend off stress. Music can also help to reduce stress by helping people to connect with others. Music can help you to unwind but unlike many of the other hobbies that people turn to for relaxation, such as excessive eating, drinking, TV, or aimless web browsing, music makes you feel more alive and connected with other people. Music can have a wonderful effect on the mind and body, especially music that is slow and quiet. This kind of music can have a beneficial effect on our physiological functions, slowing the pulse and heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and decreasing the levels of stress hormones that are in your body. 

It Makes You Smarter

A lot of research has been done that shows that those who had musical training were usually smarter than their counterparts. Children who learned to play a musical instrument tended to do better in their academic studies than children who had not played an instrument. This links back closely with the improvements that learning a musical instrument has on the memory. Because both sides of the brain are engaged when you play an instrument, it develops not only the memory but other skills as well. According to research, music training is much better for children than computer instruction for dramatically enhancing children’s abstract reasoning skills. These skills are very important as they are needed for learning both science and math. There are several studies that have been done in both children and adults that show a correlation between musical training and academic success. In fact, some of the smartest people to have ever lived have been heavily involved with musical training, even Albert Einstein. 

It Can Build Your Confidence And Give You A Sense Of Achievement

As with any new task, once you start to become comfortable and familiar with what you are doing, you build confidence in completing that task. This fact applies to musical instruments as well. The further that you progress in your musical training, the more knowledge and understanding you will be able to gain in your musical instrument, and the more you will naturally become confident in your skills. One of the beauties of playing an instrument is that once you have found that you can develop your skills by yourself, you will just get better and better. Playing an instrument in a public setting, such as at converts, can also help people to feel a lot more confident in presenting their work in a non-academic context too. This can also help to improve their nerves when taking exams or completing assessments too. As well as improving your confidence, learning a musical instrument will give you a real sense of achievement. There is no feeling like being able to play a challenging song and being able to do it perfectly. It’s a real ego boost. There is no better feeling than finally conquering a difficult task and being able to perfect it. This feeling of achievement can filter into other parts of your life and help you to accomplish more.