10 Reasons To Learn How to Play Piano
Why You Should Learn How to Play Piano
Even if- or especially if- you’ve never played an instrument before.
I want you to learn more about music even if you have not had the opportunity to learn more about music before. I don't believe in a two-tier system in music. We don’t need to live in a world where we only have performers, who broadcast their ideas and are in the public gaze, and audience members, who are stuck listening and experiencing other people's opinions and emotional experiences.
We all get to experience both roles: performer and audience. I think that our world is better when everyone gets a chance to be the performer up on stage and the audience member listening and taking in the performance.
A lot of musicians won't agree with this opinion. The music industry thrives on the capitalist division of specialties. The fact that some people are experts at making music while others know none at all keeps this division of creative labor in place and positions some people as experts, even though we are all experts about the music that we love. We all carry knowledge and can make informed decisions about the music we listen to, whether we are playing the instrument or not. I know that the more we all understand about music the better we are able to communicate with each other and the better we all are at being able to appreciate music as listeners and as players.
This message is not a "this is your brain on music" message, this is more like this is your community on music. What would our world look like if we all have the emotional skills to communicate our feelings, and the understanding that music and art are deeply valuable in our society?
1.Learning more about music lets you learn more about yourself.
The first reason I'm gonna talk about is that when you learn how to play a musical instrument or how to play piano, you are also learning more about yourself. You're learning more about why you like the music that you like, or what is pulls you towards certain instruments.
You're also learning about how you learn best- are you visual, and learn best by reading music and following it, or does it make more sense to you if you hear it first? Maybe you’re a kinesthetic learner and really need to feel it and be thinking about the motions going into it.
As you’re playing music you're learning more about your own personal learning styles and about what draws you to the music that you already like. You also develop the ability to express emotions in nuanced ways, and often times uncovering emotions that we haven't had before or haven’t expressed in this way. When we play music, we even have the opportunity to try on other people’s emotions, things they wrote on the page that we're not experiencing but we're emulating, and through that emotional role play, we get to experience and express feelings so that we are familiar with them when they appear in our own lives. Other times we are expressing our own personal experience, first hand. By learning more about how to make music, you're learning more about yourself.
2. Learning more about music lets you form new connections with the world around you
An example of how that learning music lets you connect with the world around you is that when you meet someone new, you have this instant connection of commonality between you if you can have a conversation about musical interests or favorite (or least favorite!) bands. If you're talking to someone you just met and your favorite artist comes up and they know who your favorite artist is and I heard some of the same songs you already have something in common to talk about and get to know each other better through that.
This experience is only amplified when you know how to play music, even if the person you're talking to doesn't know how to play music. You have the opportunity to share new insights that you’ve learned about this music and how you have made personal connections with that music or that artist. Having insightful conversations lets you draw new conclusions about the music and the new person you’re talking to, not to mention that your interest in music and the fact that you are learning how to play music makes you more interesting and engaging to talk to!
It is even more connecting when you get a chance to play music with other people who are playing music. There's something about sitting with other people and learning how to line up with them melodically, rhythmically, harmonically- that requires a certain nonverbal communication that we don't normally experience with casual friends or strangers. By learning more about music, you learn how to connect with the world around you.
3. Know the stories and histories behind the music that you love
The personal connections that you have to the music that you love, combined with the histories and connections with you make to the music make the lessons that you carry from those artists even more valuable.
As you carry those stories with you in the world by learning about the loss or the grief or the heartbreak that an artist went through when they wrote their song, you get to learn those lessons and feel those emotions without actually going through it. We will probably all go through those kinds of emotions in our life so in a way it helps prepare you for an experience you're going to have later. The same goes for feeling joy elation love celebration you might not be currently experiencing that but when you get to go through it and learn the story behind it.
You get to experience not only the emotions that the artist was going through when they wrote that song, but you also get to dive into the memory that they've captured in the story and a song and carry it forward with you experiences a music you get to learn through the stories of musicians before you.
4. You get to learn more about what you like and why you like it
I think it's always really easy to tell what we like- yes I like that, or no I don't; but it's harder to find the language describe why we like it. I think of food as an analogy, like, I am trying to acquire the taste of liking olives, but they're so bitter and I know that the bitterness is one of the reasons that I don't like them even though I like other bitter foods. Something about the bitterness and… I don't know… that olive taste? But I know that I love cake and ice cream together because there's something about the texture and the temperatures at room temperature cake with that freezing cold ice cream. I love it!
I have the language to describe that because I've been eating food my whole life, but sometimes when I take a bite of something and I do or don't like it I have an opinion but I don't have the words to explain why.
Forming opinions about music is the same way. You might hear something you like and think, “I love that song,” but why do you love it? Is it the memory you associate with it, is it the era or style of music, is it the band? What is it about that music that draws you in? By learning more about music we learn not only what we like about it but we can pinpoint why we actually like it.
5. We all Live in Our Own Bubbles
We all live in our own little social bubbles, political bubbles, cultural bubbles… even musical bubbles where we listen to the same things! We will talk about the same ideas with other people in our little bubbles and we're all on the same page with people in our life. Every once in a while you step outside of the bubble and you're like- shit, I did not realize that that there were so many other opinions different from what me and all my friends believe.
By learning more about music you force yourself outside of that bubble in a few different ways. First off, you start to hear other peoples ideas and opinions that are outside of your comfort zone. You’re also finally doing something different from what you normally do. By learning this new skill you are throwing yourself into a new environment, and suddenly you’re around new people, you're talking to new people and you are being vulnerable around new people- not necessarily attacking each other for having different ideas because you’re strangers, but maybe just listening and meeting each other halfway rather than forming a judgment or an instant opinion about them. Learning music and getting yourself outside of your bubble also makes you a more interesting person to be around- we're all really boring when we're just in our bubble all the time. By learning more about music you're forcing yourself outside of your comfort zone and developing yourself as a person in new ways.
6. It's an opportunity for you to spend time with yourself
How do you feel after you spend a couple of hours on social media doom scrolling through the latest news, or playing video games for like just a little longer than you meant to… or binging something on a streaming service for a little longer than you should. How much time do you think we’re spending doing that? What else could we be doing with that time? What are we avoiding engaging with by just tuning out.
It feels like there's so many ways to just distract ourselves rather than spending meaningful time with ourselves. One thing I love about music is that when I sit down to play piano I get to spend time with myself. I get the same value or feeling that I get out of writing in a journal, pulling tarot cards, having a long phone call with a really good friend, or going on a walk. It feels like a really meaningful and personal way to spend time with myself.
I also think this is a great tool to use if you're trying to keep yourself from other habits or behaviors. Making music is such a wonderful way to really pay attention to how you're feeling and more about yourself and to keep yourself engaged in a way that we just don't when we're scrolling online. By learning more about music you are learning how to spend meaningful time and intentional time with Yourself.
7. Music is time travel
By playing a song from the past and connecting it to an emotion that you're feeling in the present, you are traveling through time. You get to take messages that were captured in history, in a time before now, and connect those lessons to what you're feeling and thinking about in this moment.
Beyond that, we get to take the influences from things that happened in our own past experiences or from things that we know have happened in the past and create a future with them by writing music by expressing ourselves through music by communicating with others through music so by learning more about music literally travel through time.
8. It can be a window into new conversations
Music can be a window into new perspectives and a language to describe emotions and experiences. Sometimes we don't have words for how we're feeling, or we don't know how to bring up something that's complicated or difficult. By playing songs for each other we get to share how we're feeling and communicate an emotional experience you can literally sing and play how you're feeling and someone else will hear and feel that same experience. They will likely internalize it differently than you, but it's a way to bring up different emotions to share stories about your own experiences and often times even talking about music that you're gravitating towards right now can be an opener and dialog starter for why you are pulling towards that music what's happening in your personal life that maybe is difficult to talk about.
Without that little icebreaker this music is speaking to me and here's why I'm feeling this is my experience so I love that by learning music we get to that only learned this new expressive language but also open these windows continue conversations.
9. Every day we are always using melody rhythm and performative components throughout her life
when I raise my voice higher drop it lowered emphasize a point I'm using Melody I'm using expressive element by raising my voice to a louder volume being quieter to have that kind of quiet power right the rhythm in which I speak and move and communicate and walk dance and drive and everything else those rhythms are essential to help me move and the way that we carry ourselves is how we are performing in Society. I'm learning all of those elements on an instrument or in your voice or in a dance class you are learning how to carry those things with you you're not accidentally emphasizing it were giving away how you're feeling by slipping into an old pattern but you're aware your cognizant of how you are representing yourself and you have the power to represent yourself in the way that you want to be seen.
10. Things about learning music is that you have the opportunity to a new story
I don't just mean tell me a story to other people you get to tell yourself you stories to tell yourself and who you are and what you're capable of but you also gotta tell yourself new stories about your own experiences about the things that happened to you or about how you carry yourself in this world are self and you've processed things that you need to work through and you've listened to yourself you have the opportunity to tell those new stories about yourself for yourself to other people to people who love and trust the people that you wanna share with the people who you want to show that you're in control of your own life and you're in control of your own narrative. I think it's really cool that by learning more about music we get to learn how to tell the stories to capture who we are in history but to also communicate right now who we are and what we're going through.
Music is Inherently Valuable
We hear a lot of messaging that says otherwise- but the point of learning more about music- of learning piano- is to find joy and deepen your own understanding. Learning how to play piano is something that doesn’t have to be for anyone else, it can be just for you. And you don’t have to justify your own joy and education- learning music, or learning how to play piano, is inherently valuable all by itself.
