Over the last few years, there has been an increased amount of focus on whether learning music makes you more successful in relationships, life and careers, as well as if learning music makes you smarter. Generally, they do, because the discipline and creative values that you gain while learning music are incredible and can be applied to many other areas of life. When it comes to learning an instrument, you don’t always have to measure yourself against world-famous musicians and artists. Absolutely, if your goal is to be bigger than musicians in the top 100 charts, then absolutely go for it, but learning how music can benefit all aspects of your life is the true measure of music success.
There are tons of skills you need to master just so you can play your favourite song on an instrument: keeping in time, memorizing notes, your emotive intelligence and hand-eye coordination. These skills can be applied to many areas of life that do not directly involve music. You may even find that by learning music, your hand-eye coordination improves, which in turn improves driving ability. That’s just one example of how learning music makes you smarter, and the principles you learn
through your music journey will make you realize how learning music makes you more successful. Today we’re going to break down how learning music will unlock an entirely new world for you, so let’s get to it!
Learning Music Makes You Smarter
If you hadn’t already guessed it, your brain is like a brilliant muscle. The more things you throw at it and the more of a workout you give your brain by giving it intellectually stimulating activities, the stronger it will get. Scientists studying music, who we’ll call musical scientists, have been looking at how the brains of professional musicians are different or similar to those who don’t play music.
They don’t necessarily begin playing music to become smarter, but Motor, Socio-emotional Awareness, Auditory and Reading are all skill areas where musical scientists have noticed increased brain activity and size compared to non-musicians. The hard work of the musical scientists, in a general sense, shows us that music is more than just a money-making machine or a source of great entertainment; when used effectively it can be the key to unlocking the learning opportunity of a lifetime. Let’s take a look at some skills that Musical Scientists say are proof that learning music makes you smarter:
Motor – The areas of the brain that relay motor commands to the fingers and mouth grow in size when learning to play music. As you go further down the path to music progression, your brain devotes more, fine-tuned neurons towards accurate finger and mouth movements.
Socio-emotional Awareness – If you are someone that doesn’t cry easily at sad romance films, then maybe you’ll find that learning music makes you smarter – at least emotionally smarter. Playing music can improve your emotional awareness, which when developed, helps you identify and assess the emotions in other people as well as your own. Being more emotionally aware allows you to sympathize with other people’s personal situations.
Auditory – As part of your musical journey, it can be expected that you’ll have to attend some lessons along the way. Even if you feel as though you’re progressing in all the right places, getting feedback from a professional will highlight any areas that need fine-tuning. Music lessons, like going to live music, are incredibly useful for developing your auditory system. It allows someone to improve their identification of minute differences in the frequency of the music.
Reading – If you’re someone who reads books frequently, then you’re already in good stead to becoming a pro at reading music. Musical scientists have proven links that suggest musical talent is linked to having higher reading scores. This can be a great way to change up your music lessons because now not only does learning music make you smarter, but you can read any sort of content to make you smarter.
The Connection Between Music & The Brain
The auditory system is a brilliant, interconnected network existing within our brain. Your Auditory systems receive information from multiple areas of the brain that deal with visual, motor, prefrontal cognition and touch in order to create images in your brain that will one day turn into memories. If we think back to our days at school, I’m sure all of us can remember at least one or two songs that we used to sing. Songs like Ten Green Bottles were created to help children memorize the numbers one to ten in a fun way. Songs that have repetitive rhythms help us to memorize sequences, facts and even stories. See? Even as children, we’re discovering how playing an instrument benefits your brain.
Developing your memory through repetition may seem dull, but it’s actually the best thing for your brain to retain information. A very small percentage of the world, if anyone at all, would be able to look at a sheet of music once and then be able to play the entire sequence without referring back to the sheet. Ed Cooke, Grand Master of Memory and the Co-founder of Memrise, believes that in order to remember something you need to have recalled the memory 30 times. Cooke refers to this as Mega-Drilling. Clearly, memory relies heavily on repetition.
Learning Music Makes You More Successful
So we’ve explored how learning music makes you smarter, but how exactly can learning music make you more successful? Well, as we’ve mentioned, the study of music unlocks tools and abilities in your brain that can be applied to other areas of life. Although we don’t recommend only taking music lessons to pass a driving test, hand-eye coordination skills that are developed during music lessons will improve your hand-eye coordination.
Learning Music Makes You More Successful and Confident
As your musical experience progresses, and you learn more skills, your confidence will naturally grow, which should allow you to feel more comfortable taking on more complex music projects. The sense of satisfaction once you have accomplished one project provides you with confidence to tackle the next project and so on. The idea that learning music makes you more successful should be seen as a bar that is constantly being pushed higher and higher, and the greater your horizons, the more goals you will want to set and accomplish!
Time Management Skills
There is an incredible amount of time that you need to dedicate in order to master an instrument. It would be impossible to dedicate 24 hours a day to learning an instrument because everyone needs to eat, sleep, rest and go to work. However, the amount of time dedicated to learning a musical instrument can be an indication of how much time can be dedicated to mastering other things in life. Time management is an essential skill in life to manage, when it comes to showing up to business meetings, attending interviews.
Master Your Self-Control
On the topic of discipline, it’s important when starting on your musical journey to be aware of how much focus is needed to be good at music. Self-Control is an important lesson to master in life because of how it can improve so many areas of your life. Specifically to music, in order to operate as a successful band, each member needs to be able to play in harmony with the other people in the band. It may seem obvious, but in order to operate well as a team, each and every band member needs to operate as efficiently as possible.
There will also come a time when you have to remain disciplined, like when things don’t quite go to plan, and you reach a fork in the world where you could give up or power through and achieve your dreams. Learning music to be more successful isn’t that complicated, ultimately it comes down to building on the skills you already have. Music just might be the key to unlocking more potential!
Looking To Develop Your Musical Talent and Have a Great Experience?
Learning music is truly an incredible opportunity if you’re in a position to play an instrument. Unfortunately, not everyone has the opportunity to play an instrument or have the experience playing in a live band – luckily, here at WeJam, we can help you out. Our live jamming sessions provide you with the opportunity to bring along up to six of your favourite bandmates to one of our centres. Once you have arrived, we roll out the red carpet, so you feel every bit like a Rockstar! Our celebrity Riders ensure that we are doing everything we can to give you the experience of a lifetime. Check out our booking page here!