10 reasons to learn a musical instrument

1. It’s enjoyable! 

I thought I’d start with the most obvious point. Music is fun to learn! When you are able to play an instrument, you have a lot of fun because you can play the songs you love and your appreciation of music increases. You are also more likely to be inspired as you have the skill to be able to start writing songs and play with other musicians. So it is a very positive experience. 

2. It’s a great way to meet new people. 

Learning to play a musical instrument gives you the opportunity to meet people with similar interests. As such, it is a fantastic way to socialize and develop new friendships. In addition, playing music with others develops teamwork skills. This is because you need to be an active listener when playing in a group scenario. 

3. It builds your self-confidence

When you learn to play a musical instrument and start seeing results, you start to get more confident. When you achieve the skill of playing a piece of music, you get the confidence to believe you can even get better. This confidence boost also spills to other areas of your life where you may feel a lack of confidence.

4. Develops your patience

Learning to play a musical instrument requires patience. The reality is that when you first start, you will likely not see results immediately. It takes practice to see improvement. As such, you need to be patient and practice daily. Therefore, when you learn a musical instrument, you become a more patient individual because you need this virtue to succeed.

5. Enhances your creative ability

When you learn to play a musical instrument, you learn skills such as song writing and improvisation. Improvisation is creating music on the spot based on learned scales. This develops your creative juices as it stimulates the creative part of your brain. Developing these creative juices is also important for other parts of your life such as your work or school life.

6. Teaches you self-discipline

As mentioned earlier, to learn a musical instrument requires a lot of work! Without practice, the chances of you succeeding are next to none. So, one of the most important traits that learning a musical instrument develops is discipline. This is because you have to be disciplined to practice regularly in order to see results and in turn succeed. This discipline involves committing to a regular daily practice of at least 30 minutes per day.

7. Boosts your memory

There are two areas that develop your memory when you learn a musical instrument: 

a) Physically: Learning a musical instrument develops your motor skills. Your brain develops motor/muscle memory and that’s how you improve your skills. 
b) Intellectually: Learning music develops your memory as you have to remember such things as the note names, chords, musical signs etc.

8. Brings with it a sense of achievement 

As we have seen from the points written above, learning a musical instrument is not always easy. As we said, it requires patience and discipline. But the good thing about it is, when you succeed, you get this great sense of achievement. This in turn, makes you a very happy person with goals you want to continue to achieve.

9. Reduces your stress levels

All of us these days live stressful lives that can easily get us down. Learning a musical instrument is a wonderful activity for time out and to forget about all your worries. When you play a piece of music on your instrument, you can emotionally escape into the feel and expression of the song and find time to truly relax and unwind.

10. Improves cognitive skills

Yep! Music makes you clever! Much research has been done that proves that children who learn a musical instrument do better academically at school than children that do not have the opportunity to do so. Learning music works on both sides of the brain: the right hemisphere of the brain is the creative side and the left hemisphere is the logical/academic side. This academic side of the brain is very important when learning music. This is because music is actually mathematical. It features things like musical notes of different values, bars that need to contain notes of exact value, time signatures etc. Think of it…quite amazing that I play a musical instrument. I was not exactly the brightest student in mathematics at school!