Piano Reflection Paper

Playing the piano is more than just exaggerated hand movements and intense body language. It’s the joy of making music, the liveliness of a room full of people crowded around you while you pluck a tune, singing and smiling. Warm, like a picnic in the summer. It’s also the wordless friend, when luck strikes with an idea, or when things get hard and playing provides a short escape with its sounds. The piano is simply just a mystery. There’s a song in there, lost in the halls of those black and white keys, waiting to be found and have its voice heard. It’s a beautiful instrument, having a fun and stern side. I’ve learned that in this class, we seem to emphasize on the more serious side.

As much as piano affects the outside of us (physically),

Both are just patterns, either complex or simple. Though, on sounds nice and I’m not referring to math. But tests have been done and one study focused on how it affected a group of first graders. One group had been given music that had more of a “sequential skill development and musical games involving rhythm and pitch,” and after half a year, that group had a higher score in their math then that of the other group that had traditional music. In fact, their scores were significantly higher than the counterpart group. Though it of course isn’t the case for everyone, but it does seem to be that math helps music and vice versa. “Music targets one specific area of the brain to stimulate the use of spatial-temporal reasoning, which is useful in mathematical thinking.” Science still needs to go more in depth to see the true connection between math and music, but there is no denying that there is something there that strings them both together like Christmas

But luckily, playing the piano is a great tool to help calm down and help with the disorder. There is a hormone called cortisol that is connected with hypertension and other amounts of stress. But the research that has been done shows that music helps to reduce the hormone level. A study though, in 2011, went more in depth with the cortisol hormone and how playing the piano effected it amongst the other activities they tested. Their work showed that yes, those other creative activities did help with reducing the stress hormone, but playing the piano was immensely more effective at reducing levels. Alongside that, piano playing is largely used as a form of therapy for ADD. The reason that the music helps is shown in research. A study has been made that music with about sixty beats per minute helps cause the brain to synch with the beat which causes alpha brainwaves. Alpha brainwaves are frequencies that range from 8 to 14 hertz or cycles per second and occurs when we are calm and awake. But in order to fall asleep, we need a brainwave of about 5 hertz, so to help fall asleep, listen to music for about 45