3 Benefits To Learning and Creating Music

Learning how to create music can be an incredibly fulfilling yet frustrating experience. Although it can be a daunting proposition to start learning music, here are 3 of the greatest benefits to beginning your journey as a musician.

Creative Expression

Creative expression is an integral benefit to creating music, channeling your emotions into songs is great for mental wellbeing and clarity. It allows for negative experiences or thoughts to be harnessed into creative energy, able to give others who hear your music a shared, often therapeutic experience. "Art is a wound turned into light" - Georges Braque, artist.

Collaboration

Sharing your musical input and skills in a collaborative situation has many benefits, the social act of band practice or live performance creates a bond with fellow musicians through the vulnerability of making mistakes or sharing emotions within songs. The non-verbal communication that develops over time between musicians is almost indescribable, you begin to create a connection through the music and communicate through feeling, more so than is possible through talking in my experience.

Collaboration is one of the best ways to share ideas with instant feedback, hone your skills through practising together and to learn the dynamics and nuances of live performance, which is difficult to understand as a lone musician. Put simply, there is music that is created within bands or songwriting groups that is not possible to make on your own, a shared experience or common goal often greatly improves the outcome.

Mental Challenge & Clarity

The satisfaction that follows transcribing a tricky guitar part and playing it note for note at the right tempo is akin to that of completing a complex mental puzzle. Our brain loves problems and approaching how to fix them efficiently, which ultimately is us harnessing our creativity. When studying the benefits of creating music as a child, it was proven that language skills, memory, attention, concentration, coordination, discipline and brain growth increased. This of course continues into adulthood, if at this point you're still questioning the benefits of creating music, I implore you to give it a try! If you have a phone you can get a music creation app for free, or perhaps if you have any friends interested in music, express your interest in trying it out.

Creating music is one of life's greatest experiences, I believe everyone should have access to experiment with music and channel their energy into this creative force.