Many parents like their child to learn an instrument; the piano is a popular choice. Children are easily inspired by the many artists that play the piano, so naturally it’s a good fit. So what are the benefits of playing the piano for children?

The main advantage of children learning the piano is undoubtedly coordination. The ability to play piano chords and certain notes together, and play music the way it’s meant to be is hugely beneficial for children. This is largely because hey have to use their fingers to put together different sequences, so that the music will flow.

Confidence. The ability to play an instrument that is as complex as the piano is a massive skill. It will most definitely give your child a sense of purpose and confidence, as they will feel good about themselves and will be used to performing in front of people.

Concentration is another huge asset that piano playing will give. Piano songs need to be played perfectly so there can’t be any mistakes, so your child will easily benefit from this.

Learning the piano from an early age is a skill for life. It could open up a wealth of opportunities for your child e.g. composing their own music and get into the music industry, some of the best musicians have progressed to a professional level and made it their profession.

On the other side there are also risks. If a child is not particularly enthusiastic after taking many lessons, then they will naturally want to stop learning. The cost of buying piano’s and taking lessons are not cheap, so a parent needs to monitor how the child feels when playing the piano.

One can never exhaust all the piano lessons and all the music pieces to play. It can be something that you can enjoy doing your whole life through. The fun thing about it is that one can never start too late. Children and even adults can learn a lot from easy piano lessons. They can learn in as few as ten lessons.

The basics of piano would include learning note names on the grand staff and how each of these notes corresponds to the piano keyboard. Some lessons introduce finger numbers instead of notes so as not to overwhelm very young students. Most books also show hand positions at the top of the song indicating where to place your fingers on. Once the student is familiar with finding notes on the keyboard they’re asked to start looking at an actual piece of music.

Then rhythm is incorporated into the playing by introducing the note durations and their name. The time signature of the many different kinds of notes is then introduced. Certain terms are also introduced in easy piano lessons. Words like legato, slur, staccato, accent and dynamics, crescendo, decrescendo, forte, piano and mezzo forte to name a few.

The speed with which to play the pieces like adagio for slow, andante for moderately low and allegro for fast. You’ve now learned what volume to use, which notes to play and the rhythm to play them in. Now you need to know what speed to play. This is where tempo markings come in. They are generally located at the beginning of the piece above the G-clef. There are many different tempo markings. Sharp and flats are also explained in easy piano lessons.

Music is one sense an exact science so there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. We can learn from experiences in the past.

Octaves, meters, minor and major chords, intervals including diminished, augmented and other kinds of chords. Then chord progression is studied. These are all included in easy piano lessons. Although it sounds and looks a little daunting at first, playing the piano can be easily learned, if you put your heart in it.

It does require much discipline on the part of the student. Mere knowledge of the basics is not enough. It is practicing them that makes perfect. If you are really interested and your heart is in it, you can surely benefit much from these lessons as they are the foundation of good piano playing.

This is an article from a couple of years back which really interested me. By the way i certainly do believe that music can improve your memory. So keep up them piano lessons.

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The hours spent mastering the violin or piano are worthwhile – music lessons boost children’s memories.

Researchers from Hong Kong have found children who are given musical training have better verbal memories than those who have not had lessons.
They say their findings could help people recovering from a brain injury as well as healthy children.

Psychologists from the Chinese University of Hong Kong studied 90 boys between the ages of six and 15.
These children may simply be making better progress because they are getting more help and encouragement
Dr Alexandra Lamont, Keele University

Half had been given musical training as members of their school’s string orchestra and had received lessons in playing classical music on Western instruments, for up to five years.

The rest, all students at the same school, had received no musical training.

Stimulation

All the children were given verbal memory tests, to see how many words they recalled from a list, and a visual memory test for images.

Those students who had been given music lessons recalled significantly more words than the untrained students, and generally learned more words with each subsequent test.

They were also able to retain more words than the other group when tested 30 minutes later.

And the longer the boys had been receiving music lessons, the better their verbal memory was as well.

However, no differences were found in visual memory between the groups.

The researchers suggest music lessons stimulate the left side of the brain, which also controls verbal learning.

A year after the first study, the researchers studied the orchestra students again.

Of the 45 original students, only 33 were still receiving lessons.

They also studied 17 children who had started music lessons after the initial study.

The beginner’s group initially showed poorer verbal-learning ability than the more musically experienced boys.

But after a year, they showed significant improvement in verbal learning.

However, the 12 boys in the original group who had stopped having lessons showed no further improvement, though they did not lose any of the abilities they had gained while they were being taught music.

Parental interest

The researchers, led by Dr Agnes Chan, said giving music lessons to children “somehow contributes to the reorganization [and] better development of the left temporal lobe in musicians, which in turn facilitates cognitive processing mediated by that specific brain area, that is, verbal memory.”

She added: “Students with better verbal memory probably will find it easier to learn in school.”

Dr Alexandra Lamont, lecturer in the psychology of music at Keele University, UK, told BBC News Online that research into the effect of music on other abilities was often complex and contradictory, and the Hong Kong study was important in adding new information to the debate.

But she added: “Research has shown that children who have extra music lessons often come from higher socio-economic backgrounds, and their parents are therefore more likely to be better educated and take more interest in their children’s development.

“These children may simply be making better progress because they are getting more help and encouragement. If this is the case, we would expect to see similar improvements in other academic areas such as mathematics.

“In comparison, visual memory is not seen as such an important academic skill, which could explain the lack of differences between the groups.”

She added: “These results give us more information to consider, but we urgently need more research to know more about what it is that is having an effect.

“Music is an important and enjoyable activity in its own right, and many researchers working in this area strongly believe it would be dangerous to promote music only on the basis of the other skills it can bring.”

The research is published in the journal Neuropsychology.

Source

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3095807.stm