Of Piano Interest...

Lucas, a Level 2 Habits student, recently played for his friends at a birthday party.  His mom shared his experience with us, “at a friend’s birthday party last Saturday Lucas played a few pieces including Chimes and Jack and Jill to an audience of parents and kids – out of his own desire, we were not even there!
When my husband came to pick him up everyone said they very impressed with his technique and asked where he was learning to play so well.

Thank you for you for bringing out this passion for piano in Lucas!”

Anne, a Level 2 Players student, was also motivated after playing for some friends.  At her class she shared her experience with her teacher.  “I played all of my musical pieces for my friends.  They especially loved the Study I was working on.  They asked me to play it again and again so they could all dance.”  Laura who is also in the Players 2 class chimed in, “I played for my friends at a party too.  I got thank you notes from the parents afterwards because they loved my music so much.”

After hearing these experiences a few thoughts come to mind:

 - Playing for friends and those outside of the Academy is really motivating.  Peery students are exceptional!  You are not the normal every day piano student.  You are focused, disciplined and are attentive to details.  You play with a level of detail that is rare and unique. You also have amazing, committed parents.  Sometimes we can forget this in the day to day work of practicing.  It is such a great idea to continually share your music with those outside the Academy to help keep in perspective the tremendous job you are all doing!

 - Peery students are not afraid to share their music.  Because of how the Academy is structured they are always playing for others, and have many ears listening at every lesson.  They have monthly showcase and share classes giving them the experience to play for kids their own age in a performance situation.  They get used to it and are willing and excited to share their music.  This is tremendous and impressive!

Please continue to share your stories of how music in in your life.  It is motivating and inspiring for all of us to hear.  Now go out there an play!

According to a study by psychologists at Vanderbilt University, professionally trained musicians are better at divergent thinking and use both sides of their brain more effectively than the average person.  Not only were there qualitative differences in the types of answers the musicians gave, but their associated brain activity was greater on both sides of the frontal cortex. 

Divergent thinking is the ability to develop creative solutions to mutifaceted problems.  According to one of the researchers, musicians may be particularly good at using both sides of their brain because they have to integrate different melodic lines with both hands into a single musical piece.

Further, findings from this study show that musicians have higher IQ scores than non-musicians.  This supports other research showing that intensively trained musicians tend to have elevated IQ scores. 

This information was taken from an article on the Vanderbilt University website where Melanie Moran discusses the researchers findings.  You can view the full article by clicking here.