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Why your child should play piano

On the Piano is a thing of the past thread, there was a great suggestion to "spread the gospel" of all the good things that playing piano does. I thought I would start a brief list of my feelings on the subject. Feel free to use these in conversation with parents or others who might like to try piano, but are not familiar with this information:

First of all, more than 2300 years ago, Plato said, “Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education, and children should be taught music before anything else.” Today, many studies show that listening to and playing music affects a child’s ability to learn. Music also helps children express emotions, gives them a sense of identity and self-confidence, and exposes them to other cultures.

Piano has a more profound effect than just about any other instrument because it can be the entire orchestra. There is so much linear thought (thought process needed to perform higher mathematics, to come to a scientific conclusion, etc.) going on when playing piano because many more musical desicions are made by a pianist than say, a rock guitarist or even a violinist.


♪ Lasting effects: Studies of children who play piano show higher levels of interest in academics (and exhibit higher GPAs), higher scores on cognitive competence tests (including math and reading), greater emotional growth, learn languages easier, and display better attitudes and behaviors.

♪ Skills gained: Children who study piano are working skills such as: fine and gross motor skills, attention span, self-esteem, math and reading skills, self-expression and communication, concentration levels, discipline, listening skills, logic skills, abstract thinking, memory, willingness to learn and creativity.

♪ The Mozart effect: In 1993, college students who listened to 10 minutes of Mozart scored 8 or 9 points higher on a spatial-temporal test than students with no music. In work with preschool children and keyboard lessons, researchers found that the children that received keyboard training performed 46% better on spatial- temporal tests than the other children. Spatial-temporal reasoning is a key to the higher brain functions required for mathematics, physics and engineering.

♪ The “Window of Opportunity”: As a child’s brain develops, connections are being made between trillions of neurons. If the brain does not use some of these neurons, it begins to eliminate them. The richer the environment of the child, the more developed the pathways of the neurons. The most powerful period of this development for both verbal and musical abilities occurs from birth to about age nine. Although this does not mean that a child cannot learn music after that age, the child will probably not develop as great an ability as they would have been able to had they been exposed to music earlier.

Please feel free to contribute. (Do you like my little music notes?)

Thank-you for sharing the wisdom of Plato. Put simply playing the piano is not only extremely fun but it certainly keeps you busy. I like to say there isn't enought time in a lifetime to learn all the pieces you would like to play....what a wonderful way to help keep your brain alive.

I am playing a concert today and will use this quote.

thanks,
rada

Way to go, rada!!

Rich,

I know you said this already, but I want to emphasize it. DISCIPLINE!

How many kids waste are wasting away their childhoods parked in front of a tv or video game? Piano is the anti-video game. It can teach discipline, respect, and appreciation for finer things in life. Piano playing builds nueron pathways like you said. What is tv and gaming doing to those neurons?

Sports is another area where kids can learn discipline. And we certainly see many students drop piano lessons in favor of sports. Sports are definately a big improvement over tv and video games. I just wish that we could impress on parents and their kids that sports, for the most part, are a flash in the pan. It's great when a person is young, but what happens as the kid becomes an adult and ages? The body usually starts falling apart and most of those adults end up parking their butts in front of the tv to watch other people playing their pastime. Piano, and music in general, can provide personal growth and enrichment for a lifetime.

Dan

The other day someone was waiting at our door even before we opened the store.

The lady entered, looked around and said:

"I would like to buy a very good piano for our kids. We are o.k but not rich believing that music is very important - especially in today's crazy world."

At first I thought I didn't hear right then showed the lady around.

Realizing that she obviously meant business I took her to the row of our 49" uprights at which time she seemed to really like one particular model.

After giving her a smoking deal [$ 2000 below sale price] and delivering piano next day, she called me yesterday thanking us for such 'wonderful piano' - kids are fighting to get on it.

"What a wonderful world".

Norbert

As a pianist who started at age 8 and have played for 36 years (put down that calculator!!) I would just like to add something.

Learning as a child is much easier than learning as an adult. Unfortunately, many people don't develop an interest in studying the piano until they are adults and find out that it is difficult and that they may never be able to play at the level of those who started young. Kids don't realize how much they are going to long to play a musical instrument later in life.

To be able to play advanced piano as an adult is a enviable skill in the social world. You will be admired and praised by all. Other adults are always telling me, "I wish I had continued my piano lessons when I was younger. It must be wonderful to play whatever you want, whenever you want".

Don
Kansas City

I couldn't agree with all of you any more.
Two days ago my oldest brother heard me playing Liszt's concert paraphrase on Riggoleto. He hadn't heard me play in a while, and he came up to me and said "I can see that the piano is going to be your life-long mistress"
Although I wouldn't quite have put it like that myself, it's certainly going to be a life-long companion!
Start young if you can. It's the most rewarding hobby you can devote time to.

While I agree with you about music/piano and sports being positive, i must disagree with you about TV and video games.

Being a life long video game lover, playing more than 7 instruments and father of a 6 year old boy, I believe in a balance of things.
My son got his time slotted out for different activities including TV, video games and piano. For now, each day, he has 30 min of TV, 30 min of video (DS, Wii, PS3 - his choice), 30 - 45 min of piano practice. I myself don't watch TV but i always play video game and spend the entire time practicing piano with him.
"Finer" things in life are often difficult to define. For me, it's the things that you would enjoy and do it with the people you love.
I've seen enough parents pushing their own belief in life on their kids and not expose them to different things in life. I personally don't think it's positive to do so.
Piano for me is just another instrument and music is an enjoyable science but I am not sure I'll consider them finer than other things I would enjoy doing.

Just another perspective to share.

Just as muscles need exercise so does the brain. Playing piano is an excellent brain exercise for anyone.

Great thread, Rich. You are soooo right that the piano is the 'anti-game'!! We've become a "done-to" society, seemingly, rather than a "doing" society. Perhaps that will change when fossil-derived electricity is more dear than various appendages--piano players will then RULE THE WORLD!!!

God bless you koiloco...your son will...but I would posit that you ARE 'pushing your beliefs' onto him--the belief that it's "okay" for boys (even grown ones) to play the piano, that it's fun, and that it's at least on par in importance with TV and VGs. IMHO, those are fine beliefs to "push"...

Nice thread, Rich.

I’ll add that you don’t even have to play the piano very well to get some admiration and recognition from others; heck, as poorly as I play the piano some of my friends and coworkers think I’m good at it. I don’t know if they are just being polite or have never really heard a good pianist and don’t know the difference .

Moral of the story… any level of piano playing is a good, positive attribute to possess .

Best regards,

Rickster

wrong thread

JDelmore,
In my case, i did not do any pushing when it comes to all 3, TV, VGs and Piano. TV and VGs, i did not even need to ask but with piano, we did ask him if he wanted to learn and his answer was "yes". He was exposed to a lot of music and all my instruments since little so he could have developed some affection for it.
What I did push was the discipline to keep these 3 things in a healthy balance. So I guess in a way, as a whole, I try to teach/pass on to him my belief in balance of things but by no mean, I'd negatively push it on him.

Koiloco,

I think your approach to tv and vgs is great. If all kids had that kind of structure then everything would be great. But I look at my nieces and nephews who spend their entire summer vacation holed up in the basement playing vgs or watching tv, with no other responsibility than mowing the lawn once a week. I realize they are the other extreme, but I think their parents are more typical than responsible parents like you.

And I have to add that I just recently quit playing World of Warcraft, after two years of it. My wife is so much happier now. There are millions and millions of people who are addicted to gaming and can't control themselves.

I wish that my parents had made me sit down and take piano lessons. But I am now starting to take lessons from Laura.

Dan

lol Dan, half of my friends are on WoW. I always have been afraid to start a mmorpg even though my friends keep inviting me to join. I think people are addicted to the social interaction more than the game itself. I did and still play occasionally a mmorpg called "9 Dragons". But when I log on, I enjoy chatting with friends more than grinding the game itself. I met a lot of local people through this game and became friends. It's kind of funny cuz I came from a single player platform.
It's great that you're taking lessons from Laura but don't give up gaming either if you still enjoy it. Just keep it in balance

Good to see another gamer on this forum !

Koiloco,

I have a couple of games on my PC that I play maybe 2 hours a week lately, but no more mmorpg games for me.

Dan

Ain't that the truth! I rarely play for anybody (mostly because I'm decidedly mediocre, have very little repertoire that I can actually play even halfway well, and what repertoire I do have is very basic), yet any time friends hear me play I get told how good I am.

Maybe they're just stroking my ego, but I really think that most people can't tell the difference. I have a year of lessons as a child, two years of self-teaching as an adult, and I get almost as much respect from most people as a concert pianist!

I agree with koiloco, balance is the key. When my kids start lessons they won't have to give up video games or computer time, just fit one more thing into their schedules. (FWIW, I never watch TV, so I'm not sure they realize that that black box in the corner does anything more than play educational videos!)

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is this: Being able to play the piano also makes you desirable to the opposite sex. If your kids don't care about that yet, they will soon enough (or maybe too soon!)

Rich - Thanks so much for the great post. My three month old is being fed a steady diet of Keith Jarrett (ballads) and Bill Evans solo piano. It always mellows him out when he's fussy and it's amazing how long it keeps him focused.

They say the first colors a baby can see are black and white - for example, a keyboard! Coincidence? I think not.

I heard that the "Mozart Effect" had been discredited. Either way, I salute Rich's and others' enthusiasm, and, if push comes to shove, I agree that it's worth using whatever argument works to stoke people's interest in the piano. However, I must confess that I tend to bristle at the "Mozart Effect" and similar ideas. Whenever I admit to people that I like classical music, they either look at me like I have six heads, or they say, "Good for you!" as if I've just claimed to eat oatmeal and engage in vigorous exercise daily. This makes me a bit crazy, because I don't listen to (or play) classical music because it's "good for me," and I doubt anyone else does either. You have to love it, I think, to pursue it beyond the first "Classical Music for People Who Hate Classical Music" CD or "Keyboard for Dummies" book. And I fear that, just as millions of people abandon exercise routines b/c they've never found a way to make them enjoyable, many try to take classical music TOO seriously and turn themselves off to it.

The only better solution I can offer is the "playing with the windows open" strategy from the other thread. The saucer eyes of a child watching someone actually coaxing sound out of that funny-shaped piece of furniture are better than all the brain studies in the world.

While it is true that in the mid - '90s the Mozart Effect was looked at as a panacea to all things brain related, there have been many other studies that make unmistakable connections between music and many higher brain functions.

Look up the work of Dr. Francis Rauscher and Dr. Shaw on the subject. Look up what James Catterell has found.

In 1998, there was an interesting presentation made at the Society of Neuroscience meeting in Los Angeles by Dr. Lawrence Parsons. This is his summary:

"An understanding of the brain locations that represent the separate aspects of music will help us identify the neural mechanisms that are specific to music, specific to language and are shared between the two," says Parsons. "The finding that there is a right brain region for notes and musical passages that corresponds in location to a left brain region for letters and words illustrates how a neural mechanism may be present in each of the two brain hemispheres becomes special adapted for analogous purposes but with different information contexts."

The connection between language and music is well documented. So is the connection between music and spatial relations, music and science, and music and math.

My concern is that making the statement you did Dark Green without backing it up with specifics can leave someone with the impression that all of this research is "smoke and mirrors", which it clearly is not.

My 2 cents,