Playing music improves our mood, benefits our long-term emotional health, connects us to those around us, and is the best part? Playing music is fun and personally rewarding. If happiness and enjoyment alone aren’t enough to justify making space for music lessons in your busy schedule, learning music is also one of the best things you can possibly do for your mind.
As if you needed more reasons to learn an instrument, this article will explore some of science’s discoveries on the subject of the benefits of music lessons. This topic is also significant as more and more arts programs are cut in schools around the United States due to economic restrictions. The benefits of music education underscore the importance of keeping these programs in school curricula.
Advice from teachers on making your practice routine sustainable and fruitful.
1. Start with goals
Ambitious, sometimes stretch, aspirations push us to be great. Piano instructor Elina Christova uses this to her advantage by, "pursuing challenging projects to keep me motivated. If things get too comfortable then I know I need to turn it up a notch."
In order to answer the question of “How much practice is enough?” we've broken it down into three categories of musicians: professionals, aspiring pros, and casual musicians/beginners.
There’s probably not much of an intro needed for this, so let’s get straight to it. Here are our top five Christmas songs of all time (totally subjective, random, and hopefully enjoyable):
In honor of “DRIVING school for DOGS,” we’ve put together our “Top Five Animals Playing Music Videos List,” because if there’s one thing people love more than music, it’s animals playing music. Seriously.
Music: as in a gift certificate for music lessons. That’s the answer to the question posed in the title. Music calms, motivates, and engages. Students who play music score better on standardized tests, do better in math, and have a better chance at earning more money as adults. Troubled students taking music lessons of some sort also have been shown to improve attendance and increase their cooperation with teachers and other students. That’s not to say those things will guarantee a happy life, but they usually help get you there.
It's not often you mix a decade of teaching experience and a Berklee education with youth and a budding recording career. But Ian Thomas McCulloch, 28 and from Austin, Texas, is not your average rocker. He's the frontman for Stonefeather, an LA-based funk-rock trio that just released its first full-length album, "California Air,” and one of the latest additions to Lessonface's stable of great teachers.