The Benefits of Piano Lessons

As a parent, you want to give your child the world. You also want to give your child the best education you can. While schools may face cuts to the music budget, you can still enrich your child’s life with piano lessons.

What Are Piano Lessons?
Piano lessons are a form of music education. Most piano lessons are private, which means a teacher only instructs one student at a time. That gives the piano student a chance to ask questions and work toward their individual goals.

At the beginner level, these lessons usually last 30 minutes and occur once each week. As the student progresses, they can increase the duration or frequency of lessons.

Piano lessons focus on playing the instrument. However, many piano teachers include other areas of music in their lessons. Those areas can include music theory and music history. Some teachers can also teach other aspects of music based on the student’s goals.

Like other private music lessons, piano lessons can happen at the student’s home or in the teacher’s home or studio. The advancement of technology has also brought with it the idea of online lessons that occur over a video chat program, like Skype.

The Benefits of Piano Lessons
Before enrolling yourself or your child in piano lessons, you may want to know some of the benefits of music lessons. Luckily, there are many benefits to learning a musical instrument.

Musical skills
The most obvious benefit to studying music is that the student gains musical skills. Of course, that includes being able to play an instrument.

However, that can also include the ability to read music or even writer music. Some piano teachers may include more general music topics in their lessons that can further help students.

As the student learns more, they can play more pieces of music. There is so much out there for students, especially piano students. The variety does mean that, to an extent, students can learn the music that they want to learn.

Communication
Another important part of our lives is the ability to communicate. Music students have plenty of chances to improve their communication skills both during lessons and outside of lessons.

In piano lessons, the student must speak to the teacher. That can include a simple hello or a complex question about the music.

If the student also takes group music lessons, they will learn to communicate with the other students.

Students can then take these communication skills and use them in other areas of their life. That can include communicating with family members at home or classmates at school.

Time management
While this benefit may not yet apply to younger students, it will apply to all music students at some point. Attending and preparing for piano lessons requires diligent practice and time management skills.

As a student gets older, they need to take more responsibility about when and how they practice. Music students cannot get away with procrastinating as that can negatively affect the progress they made when they were not procrastinating.

Discipline
Similar to time management, playing a musical instrument requires some amount of discipline. Again, this may not apply to beginners yet. However, more advanced students will have to dedicate time to practicing and improving.

If a group of friends wants to watch a movie, your music student might have to decide if that movie is worth not improving their piano playing. While music should not consume 100 percent of your student’s free time, it is important.

They need to have the discipline to make hard choices about what they do.

Confidence
Performing for an audience can be nerve-racking for many of us. That first performance may feel terrifying. However, as your student performs more and more, they can gain confidence.

Even a compliment from your student’s teacher can give your student a boost of confidence in their skills. Your student can gain confidence being in front of people, even if a performance does not go as planned.

Enjoyment
If there is only one reason to pursue piano lessons, let it be for your student’s enjoyment. At its core, music is a wonderful thing. Being able to play music gives students an outlet to be creative and express themselves when words might not be enough.

Music should be fun, and all of the other benefits won’t be as beneficial if the enjoyment isn’t there. Piano lessons can be an amazing experience, but your student should want to go to them.

More on Music Lessons
Whether your student wants to play piano or another instrument, music lessons are the perfect way to expose your student to music. If you’re unsure of where to start, piano lessons are great.

Piano is one of the few instruments that young children can start. While they may need a higher bench, they don’t have to wait until they’re big enough to hold an instrument.

If your child has an interest in piano lessons, go for it. While they might not see immediate results, the benefits will add up over time.