Five Reasons to take music lessons as an adult

The two best times to get started with music lessons is about 7 years old, and right now. Adult students are bombarded with the benefits of taking music lessons as a child, and they take that to mean that there isn't much point in taking music lessons as an adult, but nothing could be further from the truth. I have listed below five benefits of music lessons specific to adult students, there are more, of course, but let's face it, nobody wants to sit on this page and read 100 reasons to take music lessons now :). I think five will get the point across just fine.

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• You'll be more focused and disciplined than when you were a child. This is huge! An adult student will be able to get far more out of 10 minutes of practice compared to a child. I often show specific drills to my adult students that would be too tedious for a child to practice but have tremendous benefits in terms of efficiency and technique development. As an adult, you understand the value of delayed gratification and will do what it takes to achieve your goal. After all that's how you've accomplished your life milestones as an adult.

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• You'll keep your brain healthy. While your brain and your muscles behave very differently at a cellular level, there are some similarities in how the respond to stimuli. What I mean is, your brain responds positively and gets stronger and healthier if you challenge it. One of the downsides of modern lives is how repetitive life can get. As a result, people tend to do the same things and repeat tasks they mastered long ago. Over time that can lead to reduced brain power. If you instead challenge yourself by learning new things, you'll maintain your mental flexibility and strength. One of the greatest benefits of learning a musical instrument is that it exercises the entire brain. That's part of the reason adult students start off thinking playing a musical instrument is too hard. That overwhelming feeling on your very first lesson, that's just your brain stretching. Let it.

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• You'll lower your stress. There is no denying that an adult carries far more stress than a child. There is a growing body of research that suggests that achieving a state of flow, where you are completely focused on the task you are doing at the moment, can lower your levels of psychological and physiological stress. Learning to play a musical instrument is one of the activities that can allow you to enter into that mental state. You can effectively lower just stress just by practicing!

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• You'll get an enjoyable creative outlet. Music will bolster your creativity and that will overlap into other areas of your life. Plus, music is fun! 

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• You'll become a part of a new community. One of my favorite things in the whole world is to play music with people. Music is really a language and once you can understand it, it can really drop barriers. Whether you join an online group, attend an open mic night, or just jam with some buddies, those experiences are a uniquely enjoyable feature of what being a musician is.