Improve How You Work
Music lessons help you learn how to take a project from beginning to end, and to improve it over time.
Each piece of music is an exercise in paying attention to detail, and in working through the rough parts until you've produced a polished piece.
Children who study a musical instrument are more likely to excel in all of their studies, work better in teams, have enhanced critical thinking skills, stay in school and pursue further education.
Improve Your Coordination
Each time you practice your instrument, you're helping to develop or improve your hand-eye coordination.
Playing the piano can help children as young as 3 or 4 years old to develop their fine motor skills in a fun way.
Findings in a 2009 study featured in the Journal of Neuroscience showed for the first time that musical experience for as little as 15 months in early childhood leads to structural brain changes and results in improvements in motor and auditory skills
Improve Your Memory
You'll practice and work on a piece of music until you have it memorized, but you're even developing your memorization skills while looking at a piece of music.
During this process, you're essentially training your brain to work like a search engine: Each memory gets multiple connections and "tags" -- conceptual, emotional or auditory.
As a result, musicians are often able to create, store and retrieve memories more efficiently.
A Stanford study shows that music engages areas of the brain which are involved with paying attention, making predictions and updating events in our memory.
Young children who take music lessons show different brain development and improved memory over the course of a year, compared to children who do not receive musical training.
Improve Your Math, Language, Pattern Recognition & Reasoning Skills
Music lessons help students of all ages improve their ability to identify patterns, from physical shapes on the keyboard or fretboard to the auditory patterns in rhythm or melody.
Students who start learning an instrument early develop areas of the brain that enhance can enhance their academic success. For example, they can have higher SAT scores: One study showed music appreciation students scored 63 points higher on verbal and 44 points higher on math.
Children who study music tend to have larger vocabularies and more advanced reading skills than their peers who do not participate in music lessons.
Regardless of socioeconomic status or school district, 3rd graders students who participate in high-quality music programs score higher on reading and spelling tests.
Improve Your Self-Confidence
Each time you learn how to play even a short piece of music, you can take pride in your achievement.
Performing for friends and family, and using recitals to work on presentations, public speaking and overcoming your fears is another way for music students to build self-confidence.