Friday, November 27, 2015
Music Lessons Were the Best Thing Your Parents Ever Did for You
www.childrensmusicworkshop.com: If your parents ever submitted you to regular music lessons as a kid, you probably got in a fight with them once or twice about it. Maybe you didn’t want to go; maybe you didn’t like practicing. But we have some bad news: They were right. It turns out that all those endless major scale exercises and repetitions of “Chopsticks” had some incredible effects on our minds.Psychological studies continue to uncover more and more benefits that music lessons provide to developing minds.
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I took cello lessons until I graduated high school and I am not sure how many of these are true for me. I can tell you it did not help with learning languages because I am very bad at languages. But I do think there is a lot of merit to this list (not just because the information came from very reliable sources). I know that music helps your brain and creativity in numerous ways and I think it is really cool to see how lessons and playing music is even more helpful than just listening.
There are some obscure points that they have in their list, like slow the effects of aging. I hope that is true. And they say it helped your self confidence, I guess these could be true but I do not know. I do see how it helped with motor skills especially at a young age.
I think music lessons are really important for young kids. It not only helps out their brains in the long run but it helps them as students as well. I took guitar and drum lessons as a child. I think they did help me become a better person because music teaches you a lot of things that you cannot learn anywhere else. Music is a different language that you need to be able to understand. Music also helps with focus because you need to be able to sit down and practice for a while and also play long songs and concerts. Children who are musicians are sometimes more disciplined than children who do not play any instruments. I am very glad I took music lessons as a kid, but I wish I remembered those skills as well now as I did then. I also wish I learned to play more instruments such as the piano because the piano is very useful in most musical situations.
I took piano for a lot of years as a kid, and I stopped when I got to high school because I realized that I hated it. I find that articles like this tend to annoy me because they generalize people, and as a culture we sort of live our lives based on the idea that no person is like the other. So maybe taking piano for all those years did make me more creative, or a better listener, but it certainly didn't help my anxiety. I hated practicing because my heart wasn't it what I was doing. I think when it comes to children having hobbies, or doing activities consistently, kids know what they want to do at a pretty young age. By the time I was in 4th grade, I knew I liked theater, and soccer, and that nothing else was really worth my time. Parent saw that I liked those things and so I did that and nothing else, and they never had to force me to go. No one ever made me go to practice, or rehearsal, I went because I liked it. I'm sure for a lot of people learning to play an instrument was great for them, and helped them become better people or students, but it didn't for me, and I'm sure it didn't for many other people. As for the slow effects of aging, while I hope that's true, the greys in my hair don't support the hypothesis.
Learning has become the core of who I am as an artists, I continually push humility and enthusiasm in the hopes of learning more and more. I simultaneously want everyone in the world to teach me everything they know and I want to go out and learn everything in the world myself. I strongly believe that learning provokes more learning, and the information in this article completely backs me up. I hear about this kind of thing all the time, how kids who went to certain all encompassing schools, like multi lingual and multi cultural programs, have been able to learn quicker and better than students from a more traditional educational background. I try to apply this idea to my life still, that if I force myself to learn about this thing, it will make it easier and more enjoyable to learn about this harder thing. I absolutely wish my parents had put me into more extracurricular activities, they always seemed to value soccer over guitar. Of course they always supported me and they did give me the opportunities to try almost anything within reason and for that, I thank them.
Like the other commenters, I grew up with music. Regardless of any effects it may have had on me, I'm thankful that my parents took me to lessons because being a violinist was a huge part of who I was growing up. I started taking lessons at the age of five and I continued until midway through high school.
The article mentions that some schools do not offer developed music lessons. I lived the longest in an area where everyone was employed by the automotive industry. Math and science were the concentration of every grade. If I hadn't taken outside classes, I would have never developed a creative outlet. And I don't know who if be if I hadn't found one. So many of my friends never found an outlet. Sure they are still perfectly fine people. But they could have benefitted by finding a means of expressing emotion instead of internalizing everything. What I'm trying to express is, teaching kids art and music is important because it provides an outlet they wouldn't otherwise have. And hey, if they get smarter in the process, what's the harm?
My mom is a band director/music teacher so this is very close to my heart. I started playing piano when I was in kindergarten. I wasn’t very good, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t gain at least some of the benefits. I also played trombone and sang, so music has always been a large part of my life. With all these studies out there it always baffles me that music and art programs are the first things that schools cut back. With our public school system how it is, depending on test scores and all, you would think that schools would be scrambling to teach everyone music. Playing in a band or any ensemble also teaches you the importance of team work. Unlike a sports team in which the weakest link can keep the bench warm perpetually, the weakest link in the band is still a contributing member. Everyone, EVERYONE, in the band needs to be working towards their best work.
When I was younger I was required to be in the school band. I could choose to be in the school chorus or in the band and in that case I had to take up an instrument of my choice. My mother made both of these decisions for me and then for a few years I was attempting at playing the flute. The most difficult part for me was being able to move my fingers fast enough. I later discovered this would be due to a few issues that would present themselves later in my life. At the same time the most enjoyable part for me, but none of my other friends agreed, was music reading. Quite a few of the points made in the article have a lot to do with learning how to read music. It is really like learning another language, but a bit easier. It teaches the mind to get used to another way of expressing ideas and communicating which is cool for a kid to learn.
I can’t help but wonder how they did these studies. Other than the reading/verbal skills study and the self esteem study, were there any controlled experiments where they had one group of the sample assigned to participate it music lessons and one group not have music lessons? A lot of these seem like they could stem from a combination of money and parenting. If students have to buy their own instruments, music lessons can be expensive, especially if they don’t go to a school that provides music lessons, and then they’d need to be able to pay for the lessons as well. So do children who take music lessons have an advantage when it comes to cognitive skills, IQ, and grades because of the music lessons themselves, or because music lessons are an indicator of being having parents invested in their child’s education who are wealthy enough to afford music lessons, likely along with quality day-care, potentially tutoring, as well as likely living in a neighborhood with nicer schools (which would be more likely to have music lessons)?
To me, the studies in this that were the most interesting were the ones that found a correlation between a specific section of the brain being strengthened and an individual having at one point played a musical instrument. I wonder if there were any studies where they compared this region of the brain before and after music lessons to see if the brain difference was caused by the music lessons themselves. Afterall, those traits could be genetic, with people who enjoy music tending to be born with and passing on those brain structures, and being more likely to send their kids to music lessons. I just wish I knew what they controlled for, though my guess is, given how plastic the human brain is, it is highly likely the music lessons really do cause structural changes.
I’m not saying that the results claimed in this article are impossible. For all I know all the studies mentioned did confirm causation, not just correlation, but the methods weren’t mentioned in this article. Afterall, the first study in the list really did confirm that music lessons do have a direct effect on verbal skills, and the twelfth did the same for self esteem, so it wouldn’t surprise me if music lessons do have a lot of other really positive effects on brain development, and if so we should try to put more effort into making learning an instrument more accessible. Even that first study alone is enough to argue for increased funding for music in public schools. I think learning an instrument is a really good thing, but I also think it is important to make sure that the correlations we observe are actually caused by what we say they are caused by. It would be lovely if music lessons had all of these benefits, and I really hope there are future studies, if not studies that have already happened, that check to see if all of these benefits are the direct result of music lessons. If/ when it has been confirmed, I think publicizing these results is very important, as people often cut funding to the arts because it is often cast aside as unimportant, which is think is fundamentally wrong. This is a really interesting and important topic, and given how ubiquitous music is in human cultures, it seems very likely that it plays a key role in brain development.
Studies like these always seem a little bit silly to me. This article almost seems more like a Buzzfeed list than an actual article. The points they present are about as generic and obvious as possible. If you spent a lot of time listening to music to learn to recognize different notes and keys, then that means you're probably a good listener. If you spent a lot of time focusing on tempo and beats, then you probably have a strong sense of timing of rhythm. The article just points out so many stupidly obvious and basic things that probably anyone with any musical experience could pick at least one point on their list and relate to it. Despite all this, I do strongly believe that learning an instrument is something that is incredibly useful for children growing up. Not only is music a great skill to have, but it teaches a lot of practical lessons that can be applied to anything, as this article points out.
This whole article reads to me like speeches that my high school orchestra director used to give us during classes. While some of these points seem fairly obvious-such as the improvement of fine motor skills and increased long-term memory, others seemed a little bit too general for just music. Keeping your mind active in any way will help to offset dementia, and while musical instruments can be good for this, they are not the only surefire way to prevent dementia from setting in. I would like to know what sources and studies were done that demonstrated the connection between musical training and learning languages, because that seems like something that requires more concrete evidence. At my high school, there were definitely people who were involved in music because they were seriously interested in it, but many people were involved because it allowed them to make friends in the program on common grounds. I was in the latter category, and I think the social and community aspects of the music program were just as important as any physical or mental advantages I gained from one 45-minute class per day.
There is an overwhelming amount of benefits in this article, and I don't think all of them are true. I took piano lessons ever since I was in elementary school and played the flute in middle school and high school. In short, I've been taking music lessons almost my entire life. Contrary to benefit #2, I've always been horrible at math (and still am). My grades experienced ups and downs that are completely irrelevant to my constant music lessons. Although the author of this article backed up each claim with a study/example, I still think this article is trying too hard to convince the readers, which creates the opposite effect - the article is way too generalizing. It made me, if anything, more skeptical (especially with the website being Children's Music Workshop, it almost seems like an advertisement to me). This article would've done a lot better job convincing me if it just listed a few benefits and explained them in depth.
It is a good thing neither of my parents know what this blog is, or - moreover - like using the internet very much, because they were right in having me take (and forcing me to continue) music lessons as a child, and ballet through my adolescence. And god knows I'd never be allowed to forget that I said they were right. Surprisingly, I experienced most of the benefits listed in the article. And when I stopped (or rather, was allowed to elect to stop), I noticed an appreciable though not substantial diminishing of my abilities in many of these areas.
Though not precisely the same, ballet lessons that started out as a forced activity promoted by my mother also offered a host of benefits to me that lessened when I stopped. The most specific example of this came when I had to stop ballet. Within three months after I left almost-daily lessons, I had sprained both my ankles at least once. So perhaps my parents knew what they were doing. As with the music lessons, the benefits are extreme and can be enduring.
This article really makes me want to thank my parents for making me take piano lessons for most of my childhood. I think that learning to play an instrument is great for all the reasons listed in the article, and also for connecting kids to the arts. I remember in elementary school when in 4th grade, the opportunity to play in the school band or orchestra opened up. Almost everyone in my grade jumped at this opportunity to join, as my elementary school’s music class was very lacking. We all wanted to have that connection to music. Unknowingly, this need positioned us all for the other benefits mentioned in this article. Though I stopped taking lessons in my senior year in high school, the time and effort I put into making music has stayed with me to this day.
As soon as I read the title of this article, I knew I had to read it. My mother went crazy on the after school activities for me and my sister both when we were younger. I went through lessons in piano, voice, guitar, digital composition, flute, theater, then dance, horseback riding, soccer, soft ball, and more that I blackout from my memory. As a kid I did everything until I eventually won the the battle and stopped some things. I hated most of it growing up but now I really do appreciate having many of those skills. It definitely helped me become who I am now, the theater gave me a second home, and being around so many adults and other children gave me confidence and good people skills. I think the author hit the nail head on with this article, everyone of his points I was agreeing with everyone one of the points.
When I was a kid, I begged my parents for a piano. And while a piano never came, a nice Yamaha keyboard did. I dreamt of being the next Beethoven. But, then I learned I would have to practice to do that. And to learn endless scales, and fill out endless theory practice notebooks. I was pretty sure Beethoven never performed a plunky instrumental of "My Heart Will Go On" at a recital. But, even though I hated practicing, and doing the hard part of piano, and though my mom would literally have to trap me in my room with my keyboard, it taught me that the payoff comes with hardwork and practice and a hell of a lot of patience. Not only that, but knowing how to paly piano made a lot of things a lot easier for me. I can easily read sheet music, and decifer rythym and I'm 100% sure it helped me with math. But, what it really helped most with, was learning to appreciate the hard work and often boring hours spent doing things like theory, before you can play beautiful things.
From the age of about six or seven I took piano lessons. I took lessons for ten years until I graduated high school. I hated almost every minute of it. Every week, I asked my mom if I could quit and she said no, and took me to class. Whenever I asked her why, she said that she quit violin when she was younger and regretted it and did not want me in the same situation. I despised classes until my teacher started teaching me show tunes. That was when I realized how much I loved and how much I was learning. Going to piano class was such a chore, and always will be in my mind. That's just how I'm programmed, but learning songs from my favorite musicals was so exciting and amazing. It calmed me down when school was stressing me out, and it gave me a much deeper understanding for the nature of music and different tropes associated with different styles of music. And now that I am three weeks away from declaring sound design, I realize just how helpful those music lessons are. I hope I never have to force my child to go to music lessons, but I really hope they get the interest that I never had.
I have mixed emotions about this whole article. When I was little my parents did have me take piano lessons. However, due to my insanely busy schedule I did not have enough time to practice (let alone go to lessons), so after few months I simply stopped. This year I finally learned how to read music because I was enrolled in a class at school for it. I do wish that I had a better understanding of music before embarking on this journey to get a BFA in drama. This is because I would pick up some sheet music and only be able to follow via the lyrics. However, now I feel I can do anything! The thing about music reading is that is like learning to read a new language. The more practice you get the better you are at it. That is my two cents on this idea.
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