Plus, you get to play songs! Now, that is fun, and your friends and family will love it. Learning to play the piano creates important traits in the personality, and those traits lead in a good direction. A person who takes care of the details will be a person who stands out on the job as a valuable worker, or who will be able to succeed at starting their own business. A person who keeps trying will have a much different result than one who walks away when the going gets tough.
So what it boils down to is this: to a large extent, the direction of our lives are determined by the small decisions we make every day, and by the habits we have as we go through each day. They were very happy about that, and I got a good-sized bonus every month because of it! The attention to detail that I applied in that job was a direct result of the habits I developed in learning the piano. Because I noticed the mistakes and corrected them, I saved the company a lot of money. Throughout my work day I would notice lots of small mistakes that were being made throughout the company, which would add up to a lot of money being lost. I was so good at noticing the details that I saved the company a lot of money. Here's one example of how that has affected my life:Īt a certain point in my adult life, I worked in corporate accounting. You work on each area until it all comes together. It's like putting together a puzzle or a model airplane. Once you polish up every detail, you've got it. The process of learning to play a song correctly is basically a process of taking care of all the little details, one by one. There's another aspect of playing piano which has directly affected other areas of my life. People comment on how patient I am, and it comes directly from the piano world. This has served me very well in certain parts of my life. If there's something I'm aiming for, and I don't have it yet, I just keep going and I'm able to stay calm about it. I have a great deal of perseverance, and it affects every area of my life. So, as a result of playing the piano for many years, I've become a person who doesn't give up easily. I've practiced a lot today, maybe I'll get it right tomorrow.” I became able to practice calmly and steadily. After awhile, if I was still stuck in a certain part of the song, I would say “that's alright. Then, since I knew I would get it sooner or later, the temper tantrums started to fade away. So if I was still making mistakes, I just had to keep playing until it snapped into place. At some point I realized that I always got it right eventually. Then I would plop myself down in a huff and try again. When I first started playing piano, I clearly had a long way to go in that department! I really liked piano, but if I was learning a song and was having trouble with it, I would get so mad that I would throw the book across the room and stomp around shaking my fists, having a big fit! Sometimes I would even yell. I read once that becoming mature involves, among other things, increasing our ability to deal with frustration. It's because we repeat that process so many times, over a period of years it becomes part of our personality. And just as babies cry when they fall - but they don't give up - we may get a little flustered when we're learning a song, but if we don't give up, we become a strong person.
Every time we learn a song, it's the same process as a baby learning to walk! We play it over and over until we get it right. The baby has to learn to combine the right muscle movements, and in piano we have to learn to combine the right finger movements.
A baby falls down over and over as it learns how to walk, and we make mistakes over and over as we learn to play a song on the piano. The combination of finger movements and mental processing is something we learn over time. Baking cookies is a little bit complex building a house is very complex. There are various activities we can be involved in, and some are more complex than others. There is work involved, and that's why it's so valuable. But there always comes the moment when they realize that there's really some work involved! And it's true. She commented that kids start piano lessons thinking it's going to be fun to play some songs. There is a book called "Note by Note" by piano teacher Tricia Tunstall, which I read many years ago.
Beverly Cashin is a professional musician and educator who teaches Piano lessons online.