Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash
I was (finally) graduating from college.
I had to meet with my faculty advisor to review the entire record of my doings at the university, to make sure I was approved to walk across that stage. I’d never met her before, but she was nice enough. She had obviously done this many, many times before.
She reviewed my good grades with pleasure and said, “The music students make our college look good.”
I was surprised. My music school friends and I had never talked about grades. We weren’t obsessed with great test scores or academic achievements; it never came up. I had no idea what kind of grades they got, but I assumed we were an average bunch, just like in any other school. We were interested in learning great music, listening to great music, and… well… we were really quite interested in having fun. I can’t remember grades every having been on any of their minds.
I asked my advisor, “Do you mean the music students get better grades?”
She replied in the affirmative. “You guys bring up our whole college’s average. You make our college look good compared to the other colleges in the university.”
This faculty advisor was focused on the academics of thousands of students from every background, in every different field. And she considered it a no-brainer that music students were among the best students in the university. I was blown away. Obviously. Here I am, 24 years later, and I still think of that conversation.
Did you know that? Did anyone ever tell you that? I had studied music for 15 years before that moment, and no one had ever told me that music students did better in school than non-music students. And the only reason I ever did hear it was because of an accidental offhand comment.
If studying music makes kids smarter, then shouldn’t parents be told that, when they’re choosing which activities are best for their kids?
Research.
This is not just one woman’s observation; there is a lot of research showing that students who learn an instrument do better academically than students who don’t study music. For example:
- Academic performance. This study of over 110,000 Canadian high school students showed that music students, especially the kids who learned to play instruments, scored significantly higher in science, math, and English—often by about one academic year ahead of non-music peers. This held true regardless of socioeconomic background, gender, or ethnicity.
- Intensity matters. A long-term study in Hungary tracking kids from ages 6–12 found that consistent instrumental training (e.g., piano, violin) strongly predicted better math and reading skills, with effects growing over time. Check out this quote: “Learning to play an instrument is a complex activity that may facilitate the development of several musical and nonmusical abilities. It requires persistent and focused attention, decoding of complex musical patterns and visual symbols, acquisition of musical structures (e.g., intervals, scales, and chords), continuous improvement of motor coordination, and familiarization with music styles, as well as the expression of emotions through musical content. … Furthermore, the daily practice of playing a musical instrument may enhance the development of personal characteristics, such as persistence, determination, even mastery motivation, and self-regulated learning, which are beneficial to learning and academic achievement.”
- Instrument study most powerful. This article lists several studies; they show that even basic instrumental music study (e.g., beginner recorder or piano lessons) shows some cognitive and academic benefits, particularly in young children. The effects are even stronger for students who commit to serious, sustained study.
How Can Learning Music Make Kids Smarter?
Why does learning an instrument have such a powerful effect on the development of a child’s mind?
- When a child studies music, he learns skills of focus, discipline, and memory (even when he is not memorizing a piece outright).
- The child has to train his ear, to listen to what he’s doing.
- The child has to listen to the other people he’s playing with—studying music causes students to turn their focus off of themselves and onto the others around him.
- Learning to play an instrument teaches a child to overcome fear of failure. When a child performs in the recital, he has to swallow all of the fears, pretend to be confident, stand up in front of the audience, and perform his piece. This is a useful skill for all of life.
- Music students learn self-control over their bodies. Playing an instrument is a very physical discipline, and we train our bodies hard, just like a sport.
- Beyond all of that, students who learn an instrument must train their minds to make the music not only correct, but to have the added, intangible quality of being truly musical and beautiful. They have to raise their thoughts above simple, mathematically accurate playing—which is hard enough!—but they think beyond that, to the level of making those notes turn into music that uplifts the soul.
All of these things, and more, challenge children who learn an instrument to think, and continuously to become smarter and better at thinking. This, then, causes them to be smarter and sharper at every other subject they study. For all of life.
Of all the activities you can choose for your child, studying music might provide the absolute best lifetime benefits for him, better than any other activity. There is no other activity that challenges students in so many ways, and produces such great results to his mind and soul.
Yet is so delightful!! And isn’t that the best thing about music? That, in all of this challenge and work, it is all after the goal of doing something that is an absolute pleasure—making beautiful music!!
Private Lessons.
I’m a band kid. I couldn’t wait to join the band, and I played in the band from 6th grade until college. I played a lot of beautiful music, and I learned a lot from my band directors. I still get chills when I remember playing a transcription of “Elsa’s Procession to the Cathedral,” from Wagner’s Lohengrin, in high school Wind Ensemble. (Thank you, Mr. Smith!)
But the biggest factor in why I did well in band was because I also took private lessons.
In every band, there is a dramatic difference between the kids who take private lessons and those who don’t. This is why band directors encourage the students to take private lessons. Your band director wants the best for each of the students, and there’s only so much the band director can do—he or she has got a whole band to direct!
It just makes sense! Having your own personal tutor listening to what you’re doing, giving you specific pieces to learn and things to work on is obviously going to be a really great help.
And the great thing about private lessons for music is that they are not very expensive! Tuition for an exclusive private school education can be many hundreds, even thousands of dollars a month. But for a fraction of that, you can give your child academic—and more—advantages that will help him do better in every area of his life, just by giving him instrument lessons.