Have you been thinking recently that you’d like to play the piano? Has your mind been imagining how good it would feel to be able to play your favourite songs? Well just to convince you further, here are 10 reasons why you absolutely should learn the piano!
1. Wish you’d never quit!
I hear this all the time and it drives me bananas! I wish you’d never quit too! Instead of spending all that time wishing you had never quit, choose to dedicate 20 minutes of your day to improving your piano skills and working towards some achievable goals. Soon you’ll be wishing you quit quitting sooner, or something like that.
2. Relaxing
Dedicating those mere 20 minutes a day to playing the piano can have incredibly relaxing effects, especially after a hard day at work or at school/college/uni. Focusing on music for a while can ease the mind and help with stress relief. It is especially good for mature adults as it can help with keeping certain mind-related illnesses at bay.
3. Good for your brain
Playing the piano is actually excellent for your brain as it makes you use many different parts of it at the same time. If you think about some of the different elements there are to piano playing, such as reading music (two different lines at once), using all ten fingers, listening to what you’re playing and consciously trying to improve your sound, keeping time etc., then it is clear that once you begin to master these elements as a whole, your brain will be in excellent shape and you will start to have great ideas that impress everyone you know.
4. Easy to understand music theory
Out of all the instruments the piano is the easiest to learn music theory with, as visually it is all laid out before you. It is far easier to explain a concept using the piano too, because the piano is awesome. It can be daunting at first to enter the theory world, however once it is all explained clearly and you begin to understand it, you will realise that it wasn’t such a big deal in the first place and you can spend more time playing piano and less time worrying about it all.
5. Play your favourite songs
What better than to be able to jam out some of your favourite songs at parties, down the pub, or wherever there is a piano? If you apply yourself to learning the piano using effective practice methods, you’ll be getting your repertoire together in no time and heading off to open mics to show off your awesome skills.
6. Pianos come in all shapes and sizes
Think you can’t fit a piano in your house? Think again! Modern pianos have been made with this in mind, and are much more compact that the old fashioned square ones with candlesticks coming out of the front. Not only that you can get weighted keyboards that can be moved around easily to suit living conditions, and other keyboards too, although the smaller you go, the more restrictions you have as they won’t have the full 88 keys, which is ideal unless you are more of a synth player, in which case you can play tiny keyboards all day! If you truly love the piano, you would rather get rid of a sofa or a table and not worry about what guests might think, as you will wow them with your incredible piano brain power anyway.
7. Enhance your production skills
Know about beats, but confused about chords? Feel limited to Am and C with a bit of F? Want to get your keyboards skills up to make better tracks? You absolutely need to learn piano, and don’t worry, we won’t make you learn anything you don’t want to, but we will make you super knowledgable about keys, chords and harmonies.
Being able to communicate with other musicians is crucial to being a great producer and learning piano and a bit of theory can set you on the right path.
8. Accompany yourself if you’re a singer
Fed up of relying on other people to back you up? Learn piano and discover the joys of being self-sufficient as a musician. It allows you to play whenever and wherever, according to your schedule and no one else’s. Although it is fun to play with other musicians, sometimes people’s circumstances can stop you from seizing opportunities, so to have the option of playing by yourself makes you a much stronger musician than those who rely solely on others to support them.
9. Join a band
If you learn piano you can join a band! It can be a lot of fun and you won’t necessarily be the center of attention - unless you want to be of course! Playing in a band really stretches you as a musician as you are always thinking about what everyone else is playing, and how you fit into the overall sound. It can give you opportunities to work on solos, play different genres and hang out with other musicians. In other words, learning the piano makes you cool...
10. Other instruments you can play once you’ve learned the piano:
Accordion, synthesiser, organ, glockenspiel, marimba, melodeon, virtually any instrument in any of the midi softwares, the list goes on, but as mentioned in point number 4 - music theory is easier to grasp using the piano as a guide, so once you have a good knowledge of that, it can be easily related to any instrument of your choice.
So what are you waiting for??? Book your first FREE lesson at Newbridge House of Music and start learning now! We teach piano, guitar, vocals, bass, songwriting, ukulele and music theory. Check them out and start learning now, there is nothing stopping you!