Music and the BrainI practice my drum kit everyday—not because I have dreams of becoming a rock star—(Well, I do have dreams of becoming a rock star…)—but because of the mental, physical and spiritual benefits I receive. It is an essential discipline on my journey to become the best version of myself.

I founded Practicing Musician to bring those same benefits within reach of everyone, everywhere with a desire to learn to play an instrument.

To bring the power of music to as many people as possible, our service has been designed to be both effective and affordable. Private lessons are the most effective form of music education, so we deconstructed the private lesson process and designed our online service to deliver a private lesson experience—for about the price of a Netflix subscription. This makes getting a private lesson experience not only much more affordable than a private music tutor, but more affordable than other, less effective, online platforms.

After three years of development and field use, our service has received accolades from K-12 teachers and at-home users.

Providing Practicing Musician as a tool for under-funded and struggling music programs has been a particular focus of ours, so we’re excited that K-12 teachers report better music proficiency among their students using Practicing Musician over those who don’t.

What kind of benefits can learning to play an instrument bring you, and your children? Studies[i] show a number of benefits that are helpful to school students and adults seeking to maintain or improve mental, physical and emotional well-being. Those benefits include:

  1. Cognitive
    • Improved memory
    • Better problem-solving and reasoning
    • Heightened math and language skills
    • Strengthened auditory, kinesthetic and spatial intelligence
    • Creative thinking
  2. Physical
    • Improved coordination and dexterity
    • Health benefits from improved breathing
    • Heightened senses
  3. Emotional
    • Confidence from a sense of accomplishment
    • Fear/anxiety management and risk-taking
    • Mindset of excellence and good work ethic

Because these benefits are transferable to other areas of our lives, they are crucial to preparing both young people and adults for a society and economy evermore dependent on skills associated with content creation and creative arts. These benefits can foster better grades and job performance for both school students and adults.

Older adults who are interested in maintaining or improving cognitive and physical performance can benefit from effective music education as well.

Practicing Musician is committed to delivering an effective and affordable world-class private lesson experience. Because of this, we are raising money to integrate the world’s leading assessment software to complete our private lesson experience process. This will add feedback functionality that provides you with the experience of a live teacher listening to you play and providing real-time feedback. We will also use the funding to continue to expand our library of classes.

We invite you to provide feedback to help Practicing Musician in our quest to bring better music education, not only to struggling schools, but to everyone, everywhere.

For another great article on the benefits of playing a musical instrument from our friends at Record Player Pros, click HERE.

[i] Playing an Instrument: Better for Your Brain than Just Listening, Penn Medicine News, Sally Sapega—Jan 30, 2017

10 reasons you should take up a musical instrument, Classic FM Digital Radio—Jan 5, 2018