Band practice, orchestra rehearsal, piano lessons.  Students do not prefer to hear these unpopular musical based activities, but parents quite often require their children to play an instrument or attend a musical class.  Due to negative stereotypes, students believe that music class does not mean anything; but what they do not know is that there are benefits to playing instruments at a young age.  All students should learn how to play an instrument because it teaches life-long skills.

Students develop life-long skills such as discipline, hand-eye coordination, and better time-management when they learn how to play an instrument. The actions people do when they are adults are typically a result of all their experiences when they were young.  To make sure that their child becomes a better person in the future, some parents make their child play an instrument to teach discipline.  According to Michael Matthews, who was a member of the Florida Symphony Orchestra, “One of the qualities that musicians learn is discipline. Practicing often and working on the hard parts of music and not just the easy and fun stuff requires discipline” (Matthews).  Mr. Matthews explains that becoming a musician is hard work, but it does teach discipline which is vital to reaching success.   An additional life skill that playing an instrument helps to develop is coordination.  Hand-eye coordination remains extremely important to everyday life and it strengthens when people play instruments.   According to Lutz Jäncke, a psychologist at the University of Zurich, “The parts of the brain that control hearing, memory, and the part that controls the hands among others, all become more active. Essentially the architecture of the brain changes” (Alleyne).  Another life skill that playing an instrument helps to develop is a student’s improvement of time-management, one of the most important characteristics of a successful life.  Carving out time in life for playing an instrument restricts people from procrastinating for other activities, and learning how to control the ability to use one’s time in an effective manner becomes ingrained in their minds.  According to Chris Ellis, author of the book Music Symbols Made Simple, “Practice is a big part of learning music and practice takes time. Time must be factored into your already busy day, and your practice time must then become efficient so you don’t waste time” (Ellis).  Overall, learning an instrument corresponds to playing a high school sport.  It is  physically exhausting, it is hard work, it is mentally challenging, but the reward is definitely worth more than the disadvantages.

Although there are many benefits to playing an instrument, some continue to insist that it is too time consuming.  In order to improve anything in life, it requires time and effort.  Many people give up because they do not have the patience and sometimes they even throw the instrument out of frustration due to the fact that it could take a lot of time.  According to John McNiel, a professional guitarist, “Every player I know that really got good at their instrument had a time in their life when they were fully immersed in playing–usually around 5–10 years of serious dedication to it” (McNiel).   Even though Mr. McNiel is an instrument player, he still acknowledges the fact that it takes a lot of time to become familiar with playing a new instrument from scratch.  It is understood that people do not want to spend an exceedingly large amount of time on something they might not even enjoy; however, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages because the advantages are long-term.  In a study done by Dr. Kraus, she found that participants of the experiment “who had four to fourteen years of musical training had faster responses to speech sounds than participants without any training” (Bhanoo).  Contrary to what many students believe, instruments have long-term benefits and by teaching children instruments, society can ensure that they did their best to improve the future world.  In general, while playing an instrument does take time, it has healthy long-term impacts, and the long-term advantages should not be overlooked.

In summary, students who play instruments will learn how to have discipline, have better hand-eye coordination, and develop into time-management masters; which are all important life skills needed for a happy and healthy life.  Why not play an instrument when it could benefit one’s life so significantly? 

Practicing an instrument may seem at times as time consuming as spending a couple of years isolated from all humanity, but in the end, all those long hours will definitely pay off.  If you are interested in improving your child’s future, call the school and enroll your child into a music program.  You will not regret it!