Playing the piano

When I was a young girl, around eight years old, my mom had me take piano lessons. We always had musical instruments in our home because my dad loved to play the piano, organ and guitar. He always practiced. I remember that we also had an accordion. Not too many even know what an accordion is anymore because hardly anyone plays it. 

 

My only regret is that I never practiced the piano and when the teacher would come, I would tell the maids to tell him that I wasn’t home. Ricardo Andrade, my teacher and a famous composer, charged anyway so that was not a problem for him. Finally, my mother realized that it was a waste of money and time so I stopped taking piano.  

 

Fifty years later, I wished I had taken advantage of those lessons and learned how to play so today, I am teaching myself how to play piano. I am improving a little at a time and love it. I hope my grandchildren would also learn to play and here is why? 

 

What music does for your brain. 

 

“Hugh Haweis once stated, "Music is not a mere pastime. Its effects are both powerful and beneficial, not only upon the cultured few, but upon the uncultured many."

 

Music is the most powerful of all the arts because it stimulates, manipulates, and dissipates our moods through the emotions it transmits. Possessing a dimension of its own, music often exceeds the spoken word in expressing moods and feelings of the heart and soul.

 

Here are some profound specifics with regards to young people involved in music study:

Experiments at the University of Munster in Germany have found that exposure to music actually rewires neural circuits. Researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine the brains of subjects and discovered that brain areas that encode the sounds made by a piano are larger in musicians than in people who have never played a musical instrument. In other words, music expands the mind and augments brain power, some reasons why prudent parents everywhere will make certain to involve their children in serious music study!”

 

There is proof of why it’s good for the brain to learn a musical instrument.

 

Con amor,

Vero