Why Music?

We hear it all the time--why should my child stick with music lessons, if they don’t plan on being a musician for their career? Music helps children (and adults!) learn important skills that carry over to every aspect of their life. Here are a few of the big ones!

1. Responsibility and accountability. While being in lessons is important to improve your musicianship, the progress really comes from practicing consistently. It is the student’s responsibility to practice on their own time and apply what they learn in their lessons to their practicing.

2. Patience. Learning a new piece of music can be hard! It takes a lot of time to practice a piece enough to feel like it is worthy of performance. A lot of times, we want to be able to play something perfectly right away. Practicing teaches patience--over time we learn to perfect our pieces through hard work.

3. Social skills. Music is a social activity! Even in private lessons, students are learning to communicate openly and honestly with their teacher. In group settings, students learn to work as a team to make the music the best it can be.

4. Prioritization. There are SO many different concepts to practice in music! From notes, rhythm, dynamics, phrasing, articulation, and so on. Students have to learn how to prioritize what to work on first based on what is most important for each specific song.

5. Outlet for emotion. Of course, music is a great outlet for any sort of emotion. Even if a student doesn’t continue with music lessons for their whole life, they gain that skill to use their music as an outlet for whatever they are feeling.