Playing a musical instrument regularly can relieve stress, reduce burnout, and help with anxiety and depression.
For older people specifically, research has shown potential cognitive benefits along with a possible decrease in dementia risk. And research shows that the brain benefits from learning to read and play music later in life – after 50, after 60, whatever.
Musicians tend to have better attention than non-musicians.
I have been trying to teach myself to play piano for three years now. I picked my guitar back up about five years ago and have been reteaching myself to play chords, and to sing along, as well. Stefan built me a mountain dulcimer and presented it to me for Christmas last year, sending me into a crying jag that lasted for SEVERAL minutes, and I’ve got a few songs I can stumble through on it. I’ve also started fooling around with a ukulele.
I have tried to practice piano at least four nights a week, and practice at least one of those other instruments afterward as well.
I know this is just anecdotal, but since I started I have felt much, much better mentally than any time in the first 10 years (and more!) that we moved back to the USA. And that includes the sudden bouts of melancholy that would hit me when I was going through menopause.
The first few years in the USA were horrible. And our first few years in our home now weren’t so great either. I won’t, yet again, go into why. But I so wish I had picked up my guitar far sooner, and I wish the moment that Stefan’s dad and he finished putting our new flooring in I had tried to find a piano. Everything would have been so much better if I had. Not perfect, not wonderful, but way more tolerable than it was.
I wish I was better. I wish I didn’t still play all of these instrument like a 10-year-old that’s being made to take lessons. I’m never going to get up on a stage and perform – I’ll never be that good. And that hurts sometimes, because I know of so many people who, after just three years of learning an instrument, some for the FIRST time, they ended up in a band. I long to be that good. I would so love to be able to open up a hymnal and play a song from it, without really knowing the song, let alone one I actually know. But I’m not sure if I practiced three times as much that I would be much better than I am.
I drive Stefan right out of the room when I start practicing. One can listen to someone struggling to play the same song only so many times before one has to flee. I get that. And Lucy HATES IT, and starts growling for us to fluff her bed in protest.
Still, I keep at it. I struggle along. Because I do enjoy it. I wish I had started so much sooner.
I hope you will give it a try as well. Seriously. Do it. You don’t even have to tell anyone.
It’s hard not to compare myself to others, but I do. I see people who have picked up so much more in half the time as me. I’ve heard of people who have played far less than me joining bands in less time. There are all these videos who picked up these instruments so, so much more quickly than me and are so amazing.
On the piano,
from 42 Famous Classics Arranged for Easy Piano Paperback, arranged by Allan Small: Spring Song, by Felix Mendelssohn and Theme from Bells of Kamenoi-Ostrow by Anton Rubinstein.
adapted by me from the Baptist Hymnal, 1956 (Southern Baptist), Away in a Manger.
On the mountain dulcimer:
Greensleeves (traditional), Mountain Dulcimer Arrangement by Patricia Delich
Old Joe Clark (traditional), from Dulcimer First Lessons, by Mel Bay
Don’t This Road Look Rough and Rocky, by Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, Mountain Dulcimer Arrangement by me
At least I enjoy it. I do these videos mostly for my mother, and also to encourage people to do whatever it is you really want to do, even if you aren’t very good at it. Because if you enjoy it, it’s worth doing.
And my imperfect recital for November, piano only (5:03): Musetta’s Waltz from La Boheme by Puccini Sixth Syphony Theme by Tchaikovsky arranged for easy piano by Allan Small & Over the River and Through the Woods, from 101 Timeless Songs: A Resource for Easy Song Leading
Also see:
The music portion of my YouTube channel, with all of many painful, imperfect recitals.
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