Imagine our world without music, how boring it is! Music is one of the most fantastic things given to the world.
Music is fantastic, but playing a musical instrument such as guitar, ukulele, piano, violin is more fantastic.
Using a musical instrument is not only to help you express yourself but also good for your health. You may be wondering how, so let me explain to you seven health benefits of playing a musical instrument:
1. Enhance the capacity of memory:
This is the very first health benefit that you can see clearly in a person learning a musical instrument. During the process of practice, the learner is required to remember music notes, chords, and how to play them on the instrument, not to mention special symbols on the music sheet.
That process will stimulate your brain, force it to work continually, and your memory will be increased gradually by that.
One more thing is that you possibly play music for your whole life; it means that your brain will never cease to work.
This benefit is proved by research between two groups of children aged from three to four, one group is given keyboard lessons, and the control group is given no lessons at all.
When giving both of the groups the same activities, children with keyboard lessons is 34 percent in term of spatial-temporal skills more than the other children.
Note: One of the easiest instruments is ukulele. It is suitable for children and adult. You just need a month for leaning and then you can play songs. This instrument is cheaper than guitar, a good ukulele for beginers is only $50.
2. Increase the coordination between parts of your body:
You can imagine a drummer whose eyes are looking at the music sheet, two hands are busy with drumsticks, two feet is striking pedals, and all those different sounds from different body parts create a perfect rhythm; or a guitarist plays a song with eyes on the sheet
It is due to the eye-hand or eye-hand-feet coordination as when you read the notes, your brain subconsciously translates them and command your hands and feet to move.
In the case of a pianist, her right hand and left hand are doing different jobs at the same time, producing a beautiful melody. The more you play, the more your body parts work together efficiently. No other type of art can give you this ability.
3. Adjust the mood
Heath is not only about physique but emotion as well. Remember when you are sad, you just want to come to music, hoping it gets you better and it did.
Why does one person quickly feel happy again when listening to a happy song?
This emotional regain is easier when you create a song yourself. It gives you a chance to wrap all your undesired feelings into a song and set you free.
Scientifically, it’s proved that creating a song decreases the level of the stress hormone called cortisol, and then you can smile again. The calm mood can distribute to normal blood pressure and heart rate. In another way, music gives you a healthy heart.
4. Sharpen your mind
A group from the University of Kansas Medical Center administered a study to measure the brain function between healthy people aged from 60 to 83.
They were given several cognitive tests, and the result showed that the musicians scored 34 percent higher than other people who never played any musical instrument.
Besides, one study published by the American Psychological Association said that people who play music at the early ages keep the mind sharper when they age. As your body needs to go the gym to get the muscle stronger, the same to your brain muscle.
Learning and practicing to play a musical instrument is an excellent way to train your brain. It should start soon.
5. Boost your concentration
While playing music, you must concentrate at a high level whether you play alone or with other instrument players.
You must pay attention to quite a few factors on the stage to not make any mistake. It would be weird.
Music doesn’t include only seven notes: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si but also pitch, duration, beat, rhythm and hundreds of things can’t be listed all here. Day by day, surely your ability to concentrate will be better.
6. Increase listening skill
Music is a perfect combination of various types of sound from plenty of instruments. Music players need to be able to listen intuitively and learn how to discern notes and chords.
The learning process will help you to increase your listening skill little by little.
Many people added that having good listening skill helps you to build social relationships more efficiently. While we see many older people have hearing loss, research shows that musicians still have good ears and play music easily.
7. Treat Alzheimer patients
We all know that Alzheimer patients lose their memory, how can they remember notes to play music?
A study conducted by PubMed Central shows that music memory is retained better than the spoken word.
Researchers assumed that playing musical instruments can generate mental stimulation of Alzheimer patients over a period of time.
By that, their memory can be retained longer. Besides, music can increase their concentration. Healthcare providers consider it as good therapy.
In short,
Above are seven outstanding physically, mentally, and emotionally health benefits that a musical instrument bring to you.
The sooner you start to learn one of the instruments, the sooner you can see these benefits and your quality of life increases.
It’s recommended to encourage children to learn to play their favorite instrument.
The most popular instruments are guitar, piano, ukulele, violin,…Though anyone at any age can start to play music now. It will be so much healthy and fun.
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