10 Reasons Why Learning to Play a Musical Instrument is Good for You

Are you looking for a new hobby that will challenge you and keep you engaged for hours? Or maybe you're interested in enhancing your creativity and expressing yourself through music. Whatever your reason, learning to play a musical instrument can be a life-changing experience that offers numerous benefits for your mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing.

Here are 10 reasons why learning to play a musical instrument is good for you:

1. It's a fun and rewarding hobby that can bring you joy for a lifetime.
2. Playing a musical instrument can relieve stress and promote relaxation, making it a great way to unwind after a long day.
3. It enhances your creativity and allows you to express yourself in new and unique ways.
4. Learning a musical instrument can improve your memory and cognitive function, keeping your brain sharp as you age.
5. It's a great way to connect with others who share your passion for music, and can help you build a sense of community.
6. Playing a musical instrument is a form of therapy that can help you manage stress and anxiety, and promote overall mental health.
7. It offers a sense of personal development and accomplishment, as you work towards mastering your instrument.
8. You can take your skills to the next level and potentially turn your passion into a career.
9. It's a unique talent that can set you apart from others and make you stand out in a crowd.
10. And last but not least, it's just plain fun!

If you're interested in learning to play a musical instrument, look no further than ASO Music. Our experienced instructors are passionate about teaching and can help you take your skills to the next level. Sign up for lessons today and start your musical journey.

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Copyright 2023 ASO Music.

Psychology of Music: The Zone/Flow

"The Zone" aka "Flow"

The Psychology of Flow
by Jeremy Dean*

What is it like to be fully alive, right now, engaged with what you are doing? That’s the psychology of flow.
When the happiness and creativity expert Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi was studying how painters work, he noticed an odd thing. When their painting was going well they didn’t care about getting tired, hungry or uncomfortable, they just carried on.

But when the painting was finished, they rapidly lost interest in it.

What was this special state of mind that seemed to absorb the whole of your being? Csikszentmihalyi called it a ‘flow state’. It’s the experience of being fully engaged with what you’re currently doing.

When you’re in a flow state:

• an hour can pass in the blink of an eye,
• you feel what you are doing is important,
• you’re not self-conscious,
• action and awareness merges,
• you feel in full control,
• and the experience is intrinsically rewarding.

To create a flow experience, you need:

• to be internally motivated, i.e. you are doing the activity mainly for its own sake,
• the task should stretch your skills almost to the limits, but not so much that it makes you too anxious,
• there should be clear short-term goals for what you are trying to achieve,
• and you should get immediate feedback on how you are doing, i.e. you can see how the painting, photo, blog post etc. is turning out.

The experience of flow has been studied amongst surgeons, writers, artists, scientists, athletes and people just socializing and playing games. The experience of peak performance is very similar, whatever the activity.

Flow states require a balance, though, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says in his book on the subject, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience:

“Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person’s capacity to act.”

It’s not always easy to achieve but being in a state of flow is a beautiful thing.

*Jeremy Dean is a psychologist and the author of PsyBlog. His latest book is "Making Habits, Breaking Habits: How to Make Changes That Stick". 

Music Therapy For Aphasia

Let's talk with Oliver Sacks about aphasia—a condition in which there is an impairment of speech and speech comprehension—and note that music is being used as therapy for aphasia patients. Can you explain this and tell us how promising the therapy is? Are there other areas in which music has therapeutic value?

Aphasia is a terribly frustrating and isolating condition. Some people experience temporary aphasia (say, following a stroke or brain injury), but others are left with it for months or years. Yet many people with expressive aphasia, unable to utter a sentence, may be able to sing. I often greet such patients by singing “Happy Birthday” to them, whether it is their birthday or not. Everyone knows the words and melody of this song, and often aphasic people can join in. In 1973, Martin Albert and his colleagues in Boston described a form of music therapy they called “melodic intonation therapy.” Patients were taught to sing or intone short phrases—for example, “How are you today?” Then the musical elements of this were removed slowly until (in some cases) the patient regained the power to speak a little without the aid of intonation. One sixty-seven-year-old man, aphasic for eighteen months—he could only produce meaningless grunts and had received three months of speech therapy without effect—started to produce words two days after beginning melodic intonation therapy; in two weeks, he had an effective vocabulary of a hundred words, and at six weeks, he could carry on “short, meaningful conversations.”

This is a very specific use of music therapy, but there are many others. People with Alzheimer’s or other dementias will often respond to music even when they are able to respond to little else. Music, especially familiar music from one’s early years, can help to orient and organize such people.

Music works because it engages so many parts of the brain. Rhythm, actual or imagined, activates areas of the motor cortex, crucial in synchronizing and energizing movement—whether for athletes or people with movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease or Tourette’s syndrome. In Musicophilia, I described a man who has incessant seizures, which only stop when he plays music, though this is a highly individual thing, for some people with epilepsy may find that music of a particular sort can actually trigger seizures. By and large, though, there are few, if any, bad side effects of music, and music can often work where no medications can.