Music creates a type of pleasure that human nature can’t do without according to Confucius, one most famous Chinese philosopher of the yonder days. Playing any type of musical instruments brings a lot joy to the player and those around him or her. It gives everybody around the player a better sense of appreciation and pride for music. Here are a several benefits of playing a musical instrument.
The link between your memory capacity and playing musical instruments
Research shows that both playing instruments and listening to music stimulates your brain, resulting into increased memory abilities or capacity. A research was performed in which around 20 kids between the ages of three to four and half years old were either given keyboard lessons or singing lessons.
Another group of 17 kids, or what is was referred to as the control group, received no musical lessons at all. Both of these groups took part in similar preschool activities. At the end of the study, preschoolers that had received regular weekly keyboard lessons get better in their memorization skills compared to the other kids. Not only this, researchers concurred that the positive results were long-lasting.
According to an article that was published in one of the leading online magazines, new research shows that persistent playing of a musical instrument alters the shape of the brain and its power, something that can be used in cognitive skill improvement therapy. There is also proven evidence that musicians have functionally and organizationally different brains when compared to non-musicians, particularly in the areas of the brain that is used in playing and processing music.
So, if you start playing a musical instrument, the parts of your brain that control fine motor skills such as the use of the hands, hearing, running, storing audio information, balancing , swimming and memory typically expand and become more active.
Increased IQ
Playing a musical instrument is known to increase IQ by seven points in both adults and children according to researchers. The main reason for this phenomenon is that the parts of the brain that control motor skills, storing audio information, hearing and memory become larger and more active when you are learning to play an instrument, something that actually improves day to day actions such as emotional perception, planning and alertness.
Helps improve your mathematical capabilities, reading and comprehensions skills
Reading or even composing music requires counting of rhythms and notes, two aspects that actually end up helping your mathematical skills. Learning musical theory also includes a lot of mathematical aspects. Recent studies show that students that play one type of a musical instrument or another or study music are normally better in mathematics and get higher grades in most subjects while in school compared to the others in the same class.
Kids that are exposed to year-long music tuition that involves training in progressively complex practical, tonal and rhythmic skills exhibit advanced cognitive performance in comprehension and reading skills when compared with their non-musically trained peers. The part of their brain that deals with reading and memorization is more developed, something that makes them remember things better. This means that their memory capacity is greatly improved by the regularly musical activities they take part in. So, we can comfortably say that playing musical instruments on a regular basis has a positive effect on the capacity of your memory and the brain as a whole.