If you’re reading this article, chances are you’re debating if you should listen to that inner voice that’s been nudging you to learn an instrument or not. Yes, you most definitely should. Irrespective of whether you dream of being a professional musician or not, picking up an instrument, even at the amateur level, presents itself with a wide variety of benefits. Let’s take a look at six surprising benefits of learning to play an instrument.
Health Benefits
Playing an instrument improves your immune system’s strength. It can increase the antibody immunoglobulin-A, which kills certain viruses. Furthermore, the National Center for Biotechnology Information research indicates music can reduce stress levels.
Swift Reactions
The reaction time of musicians with at least seven years of training was compared to non-musicians in a research study at Universite de Montreal in Canada. Guess what? The musicians had a substantially faster reaction time than non-musicians!
Music Appreciation
If you’re a music lover, picking up an instrument will educate you about terminology, genres, playing styles and more. This will help you appreciate music at a deeper level and enrich your music-related conversations with others. Unless you’ve experienced music education, you cannot assess a piece of music thoroughly well-informed - we didn’t say this; Aristotle did!
Reduced Hearing Loss
A study performed by Dr Claude Alain and Benjamin Zendel gives us grounds to believe those who play an instrument might enjoy a decrease in age-related hearing loss. The auditory cortices of older people who play an instrument respond better than older non-musicians.
Memory Boost
In 2003, ABC Science conducted a study that examined memory. The results indicated those who learned an instrument had better verbal memory than those who had not. In fact, this study further revealed the more musical training one has, the more words one can remember.
Emotional Quotient
Research conducted by the European Journal of Science in 2009 suggests that those musically trained can detect vocal emotions much more accurately. This is probably because music itself conveys so many feelings. One can pick up on the emotions behind what others are saying by detecting tonal variance in their vocal sounds. Pretty neat!
We hope this insight motivates you to pick up an instrument. Learning music can be a rewarding experience. Furthermore, acquiring a new skill can also improve your confidence and teach you a thing or two about time management and discipline. If you’re keen on learning music from the pros, don’t forget to click here to explore our music courses.
