Why you should take piano lessons

I taught piano for 20 years (started at 16, you do the math). Now that I don’t teach, I feel like I can say this with less bias: take piano lessons.

Don’t do it to become good at piano. That’s a great side effect, of course. Here’s the real reasons.

Learning piano trains you to:

• Get used to delaying gratification for a bigger payout

• Focus on details and subtleties

• Get in touch with how you emotionally connect with art

• Creatively task manage (we forget it’s insanely hard to break down and play even a simple piano piece)

• Evaluate your own work

• Work independently

I could keep going, but you get the point.

Maybe most importantly, learning piano (or really any instrument) trains you to be able to sit  in a room by yourself and work on something because you say it’s important, and for no other reason.

And when you get good at that, magic happens.