Adult Beginner Piano Plan:

A Simple 7-Day MuseFlow Routine That Actually Works

Sometimes, the beginning of the year can bring stress, anxiety, or other emotional hurdles that we don't expect.

Prolonged stress and anxiety can result in respiratory problems, chronic pain, as well as a number of other issues - on top of just being plain unpleasant to deal with.

Studies show that learning to read and play music may improve mood and reduce depression symptoms.

Researchers discovered that subjects experienced relaxation, happiness, and increased tolerance of uncertainty. Novices to experts were given instruments to play and experienced these benefits over relatively short periods.

If you think about it, it makes sense that tolerance of uncertainty is a benefit of playing music. For one, jazz is highly unpredictable and requires a large amount of improvisation. You never know what’s going to come next. There’s a framework, but what’s being played within that framework is completely up to the other musicians you are playing with. Jazz is inherently uncertain.

How does music reverse the effects of aging?

There were also cognitive benefits in addition to improved mental health, including in aging adults and people with mild brain injuries. Increased dexterity and coordination resulted in an increased quality of life for a diverse group of people.

Music is one of those elements, like smell, that triggers memories in a very visceral way, especially when that memory isn’t able to be tapped into any other way. Unity Hospice summarized it well:

"when a dementia patient hears music connected to a memory, they can 're-awaken' and regain the ability to connect with people around them. Sometimes, people who haven't spoken for years find words and actually sing lyrics."

How does music actually improve mental health?

There are actually a few mechanisms through which playing music improves your wellness.

The multi-sensory workout of playing an instrument improves your executive function because the practice builds the corpus callosum, the area of the brain responsible for emotional regulation and problem solving. It’s a thick bundle of nerves that connect the right and left hemispheres and in musicians, it tends to be more developed. Over time, you can see improvement in executive function and even depression.

This is in addition to the feel-good neurochemical cocktail we get from music: dopamine (pleasure and motivation), oxytocin (the bonding hormone), and a significant drop in cortisol (the stress hormone). This naturally combats stress and anxiety.

How does music training actually improve cognition?

Music training requires complex fine motor skills, as well as increased attention and concentration. While studies reveal an increase in processing speed and improved executive function in both healthy and unhealthy individuals, the exact mechanism is still being studied.

Picking up the piano has been shown to improve cognitive function in mild brain injuries as well as mental illness. There is even a dedicated branch of therapy, known as music therapy, combining clinical research with music to address diagnoses.

What’s the difference between music therapy and music education for wellness?

Music therapy is a structured approach to accomplish a patient’s goals by a credentialed professional. It has been proven to help treat and improve a number of conditions from Parkinson’s to childbirth. It is an extremely beneficial approach that many can benefit from, but it is distinct from an ongoing practice for personal wellbeing and fulfillment.

The same mechanisms that make music therapy effective for treating a wide array of conditions are available to you, too.

Building Your Own Wellness Practice

Learning piano is a skill that you can have for life, can help you become more attentive and less stressed, and you can have fun while doing it! You can take advantage of the physical, emotional, and cognitive benefits and build a personal wellness practice for yourself.

1. Start Small: I know these benefits are exciting, but there’s no need to dedicate more than 15-20 minutes of focused piano time to begin to see the benefits.
2. Replacement: Choose one habit you’d prefer to replace, such as scrolling social media first thing in the morning, and practice piano instead.
3. Habit stacking: Tack your practice onto another habit, and soon it becomes a reflex. As soon as you wash the dishes or finish walking the dog, sit down at the bench!

Conclusion

Music learning and wellness go hand in hand. If you’re ready to craft a unique, research-backed wellness practice for yourself, try MuseFlow! Our platform is designed not only for you to learn music in the most effective way possible, but to be engaged and motivated while doing it. MuseFlow is tailored to each pianist, allowing you to enter a Flow State; allowing you to increase skill acquisition, and decrease anxiety and boredom.

Optimize your wellness - try MuseFlow for free today.

For a long time, traditional piano grading systems have been the standard for tracking a pianist’s musical progress. But what exactly do those systems track? And are there perhaps some musical elements that slip through the cracks of these longstanding institutions?

What Traditional Grading Systems Do Well

Many pianists around the world judge their progress through traditional grading systems like ABRSM, TCL, and RCM. We’ve talked about these systems at length in a previous blog post.

The exams are great at giving structure to your piano learning. You can use their concrete goals and milestones for motivation and track your progress through their standardized tests. The grades can even open doors in your music career, as these systems are recognized on an international scale.

When you take a traditional exam, you will likely be asked to play polished and memorized pieces, demonstrate technical skills like scales, arpeggios, studies/études, and test your aural abilities.

With their focus in these areas, exams can be a great way to learn how to:

• Perform rehearsed pieces under pressure
• Improve your technical skills
• Give yourself a structured piano routine
  

The traditional system rewards memorization and repetition as you polish your repertoire. But it can be found lacking in teaching musicianship.

What is Musicianship?

Musicianship is literally defined as the “knowledge, skill, and artistic sensitivity in performing music.” More specifically, it’s the art of being a musician. It’s the creative decisions you make when playing a piece. It’s the emotion you infuse into the notes. It’s the holistic music comprehension required to be a musician.

Musicianship involves the following:

• The ability to read music quickly and fluently
• A strong sense of rhythm
• The ability to adapt and improvise
• Creativity in your musical expression
• Confidence in yourself as a musician
  

Exploring and improving your musicianship is the journey of finding and honing your identity as a musician.

What Traditional Grading Systems Can Miss

One academic publication explains that for musical institutions, “teachers spent much of their time teaching technique and repertoire, which many authors suggest is only one aspect of professional musicianship… The focus ideally should be on ‘producing rounded musicians showing a high level of instrumental competence, a depth of musical understanding and a core of personal confidence that will allow them to express themselves with total commitment in any performing area.’”

As we mentioned in our blog about sight reading learning, sight reading only makes up about 10-15% of traditional exams. But sight reading is crucial to musicianship.

• It helps your ability to read, comprehend, and play music quickly.
• It enhances your holistic musical comprehension
• It raises your musical floor…so you need less practice to perfect a new song in your repertoire.
• It boosts your confidence…if you can play more music sight-unseen, you’ll be more confident when encountering songs and musical styles that are new to you.
  

The focus on improving just for the sake of grades can also create some learning gaps. The grades reward big milestone performances rather than steady, consistent learning. And the ability to choose music pieces that play to your strengths can lead to avoidance of developing certain skills.

While these exams do test a lot of elements that are important for musicians, it just doesn’t consider everything that’s needed for well-rounded musicianship.

MuseFlow and Musicianship

We here at MuseFlow believe in giving you the tools you need to build your musicianship.

• MuseFlow’s levels offer continuous, incremental learning. The challenge level and ability to change tempo allows the program to always meet you exactly where you are.
• Sight reading is foundational to MuseFlow, raising your musical floor by teaching you to read, comprehend, and perform new music on first sight.
• MuseFlow’s indefinite, algorithm-generated music and instant feedback encourages you to stay locked into Flow State.
  • One article explains that Flow State is “key to improving performance” and that studies show that “when musicians are in flow, their brains exhibit heightened activity in areas responsible for creativity and motor coordination while suppressing the prefrontal cortex, which controls self-criticism. This explains why performers in flow feel less anxious and play with more confidence.”
    

That focus on sight reading, incremental learning, and Flow State can help you build your musicianship and fill the gaps from traditional exam structures.

Conclusion

The ways we judge a musician’s skill can dictate the priorities of those musicians as they’re working to improve their craft. So while traditional exams can be really helpful tools, it’s also important that we think about the priorities in how we judge musical success and make sure that it includes a comprehensive view of musicianship.

As you go on your musical learning journey, never forget that you’re an artist!