Why Students Have a Head Start When Learning Piano

Learning to play piano is one of the most fulfilling things you can do and believe it or not, it is easier for students to learn to play piano than most other groups of people. But why is this?

Reasons to learn piano

Looking at the reasons why people want to learn to play the piano and the relevance of the benefits to different social groups, students come out pretty much top of the list across the board:-

1. Impressing the opposite sex – no more explanation necessary!
2. Fitting in to new social groups
3. Being ‘cool’
4. Relaxing – de-stressing
5. Improving mental performance and examination success
6. Having fun

Perceived barriers to learning piano

Being a student also puts you at an advantage over many other people when you consider common barriers to learning to play piano, or indeed any other instrument: –

1. Lack of time  
- online tuition saves your travel time to lessons, you can fit in the lessons around your other obligations and rapid results methods enable you to start to play meaningful tunes after as little as 1 hour!  Student’s college / university time is often well structured and known in advance, enabling time for music to be planned in advance – a luxury that many parents or people with high pressure jobs/demanding clients can only dream about!
2. Cost 
- although there is no way around the requirements to access a keyboard, if you can’t borrow one or gain access to one for free (e.g. friends or college music department), you can buy a used keyboard on eBay for under £ 50. Sharing a keyboard with several friends can reduce the cost even further.
3. Self doubt 
- sometimes people doubt their own creativity or ability to learn new skills. Usually our doubts in this area are less evident children and grow as we become older and more concerned with other people’s opinions and social conformity. This can often be magnified later in life, perhaps after raising a family and being out of work for years. Fortunately for students, they are already engaged in focused learning and self-improvement and are less likely to allow self-doubt to stop them from following their passion.
4. Lack of social affirmation encouragement
- Many people in later life feel overwhelmed with family and work commitments and may feel unable to share their musical ambitions with their peers, which means it is harder to maintain motivation to practice and improve your skills. Playing music to others in a social environment is one of the best ways to maintain motivation, as the huge sense of fulfillment and joy when you see the positive reactions people have when they appreciate music, is incredibly powerful. Fortunately, students have greater opportunities than many to socialise with their peers and play music to their friends either with a few friends in your accommodation, whilst socialising or even organising formal performances. Peer to peer learning, where friends learn with each other is a very powerful way to have fun and accelerate the learning process.

Types of courses

The wide range of online tuition courses enable students to select the method that best suits their chosen style of music e.g. classical, pop, blues, jazz etc… and also their preferred style of learning e.g. the ‘copy cat’ style videos where you watch someone playing and then repeat or notation methods that teach you to recognise the notes in a written format. For people who want to learn to play quickly, there are a number of rapid results methods that can achieve incredible results such as playing a song within 1 hour, using numbers and pattern recognition techniques to replace traditional formats.

www.decplaypiano.com is currently running a Facebook Competition to win everything you need to learn to play including a keyboard, course and song sheets worth £500.  All you need to do to enter is to click on the Facebook Competition tab (http://goo.gl/hjmbXG) and follow the instructions.

Photo credit: t.spang

Category: Entertainment, Featured