Being someone who has played guitar for at least 5 years, I’ve thought about learning piano just to try something different. I was curious how much learning the piano could help and I discovered some interesting things.
Learning the piano will help with guitar because it helps with music theory and expanding your mind to what is possible!
Keep reading and I’ll share 10 reasons why the piano is a great instrument to learn, 1 easy way to learn it fast, and the health benefits of learning this instrument.
Why Learn Piano if I Play the Guitar?
A big reason to learn a second instrument like the piano is to experiment with other keys, sounds and widen your overall music knowledge.
Reason 1 – More Chords – I’ve been guilty of staying in my comfort zone playing common chords such as C, G, and D. In fact, there are TONS of songs you can play with just those 3 chords.
With a piano, you can experiment with 12 major chords.
Reason 2 – Music Theory – What’s cool about the piano is you can see everything (so it’s very visual) and can also be an amazing tool for discovering music theory to further advance your skills in music.
Every “great” guitarist knows music theory very well and the piano is a wonderful tool to learn this!
It’s not easy to define what music theory is, but you could say it’s why things sound good. You could compare it to instead of driving a car opening up the hood and seeing how it works.
Reason 3 – Play Many Notes Together – Another reason piano is a great instrument is because you can play several notes simultaneously (it’s wonderful for solo play). For many other instruments you can only play 1 note at a time and you need other people to play several at the same time.
Reason 4 – Play Well by Pushing a Key – A fourth reason to pick up the piano is you can play VERY well by just pushing a key. With many instruments, people around you “might” have to suffer while you practice playing 1 note well.
Reason 5 – Digital Pianos Play Everything – A fifth reason is some of the digital pianos can play ALL instruments. You can “really” experiment with tons of different sounds.
Reason 6 – Communicate with Other Musicians – A sixth reason is it can help you speak another language with music and communicate with other musicians.
Reason 7 – Help Write and Read Music – A seventh reason is it can help you with writing music and reading it. Learning piano can force you outside your comfort zone to learn new melodies, rhythms, and chords and this will spill over into forcing you to expand your learning of the written language of it.
Next, it can spill over into broadening your mind with writing music and even the creation of music (if that is your wish).
Reason 8 – Improve Your Health – An eighth reason is it can improve your overall health in a number of ways.
Reason 9 – Enable You to Play Guitar Faster – The 9th reason is it could improve your guitar skills and enable you to play faster. Shawn Lane who is a guitar virtuoso said that playing piano helped him increase his speed. This did surprise me, but makes sense!
A guitar virtuoso is someone who plays “extremely” well such as Joe Satriani.
Reason 10 – It’s Sexy – The 10th reason is that the instrument just sounds sexy and a piano just oozes romance, coolness, and being smart!
At What Age is it Too Late to Learn Piano?
Any age is a wonderful time to learn piano due to all the health benefits.
Playing music is a full-body workout for the brain and activates ALL the areas according to this source HERE.
Learning an instrument makes the brain stronger, and is good for preventing Alzheimer’s, Dementia and improving memory.
People who play instruments have improved memory where they create, store, and get memories quicker. This makes sense because they have to play songs quickly, in a rhythm, and get the information quickly.
Another interesting thing with the piano is the brain gives memories different tags such as an emotional tag, visual tag, and an audio tag.
Most importantly studies show that learning the piano can improve your mood and prevent stress and anxiety. This is “especially” important now with all the negativity in the news and craziness going on in the world.
At the University of Bath, they took 31 adults and divided them into a few groups. The group that learned piano reported less depression, stress, and anxiety.
When you play an instrument you escape to a world that is more peaceful and works together. There is a saying that music is the ultimate language.
Ultimately it’s nice to escape to a world that is different than movies or video games that usually have some type of violence in them (just to change things up).
What’s interesting is the brains of musicians are different than the brain of non-musicians according to this source HERE. There are stronger connections in a musician’s brain.
If you do play piano and especially guitar “singing” REALLY can add flavor to it. I’m not the best singer at all, but trying is better than nothing, “sometimes.”
If you do want to get better at singing it’s VERY difficult to ask for help, but one idea that you could check out is this HERE, and you’re secret is safe with me.
Conclusion
Playing a guitar is also amazing because you can take it “anywhere.” The important thing is which instrument you have the MOST fun playing. Also, whatever instrument your kid is most interested in should be the one to start.
You might be thinking that you don’t have the money for a piano, or lessons and that a piano is WAY too big.
You can get a beginner keyboard like this HERE, for very inexpensive and it’s small. If you want to save cash on lessons I would highly recommend something like this HERE, which is very affordable and can speed up the learning process.
Plus, if money is still a problem I would “highly” recommend checking this out HERE, it’s an easy way to earn “at least” $100 at least I thought it was easy.
Hopefully, this blog post on learning piano gave you some ideas and was helpful. Bye for now.