Sounds Good: Building Confidence With Music

Practice, Practice, Practice!

Music is one of the few things that every culture has in common. It doesn’t matter if you’re deep in the Amazon rainforest with tribal peoples or in Cleveland at a crosswalk, if you start tapping your foot people are going to follow suit. This is a universal trait among humans and even some animals.

In fact, it’s so universal that it can be explained using mathematics. This is an important thing to know because it means that people can tune music to be processed how they choose. You simply need to learn to play within the mathematical thresholds which can be thought of as time signatures, keys, scales, and notes.

How do we learn these thresholds? You play! For endless amounts of time, you practice until you can’t any longer. You might also take music lessons to avoid having to make too many mistakes on your own before learning the correct methods. Without any doubt at all, once you begin to learn to play an instrument your life will forever be changed.

Character Building

One of the most desired human qualities is to understand oneself fully at the deepest levels. To “know who I am.” Playing music affords a person this opportunity in countless ways throughout the time they have their instrument in hand. Every time you pick up and play you’ll learn a new part of yourself. It may not be able to be verbally expressed, but somewhere deep inside there is a gratification felt from having the freedom to explore your mind in a way that others can’t.

The notes can also help in this regard. Some scales are upbeat and make you feel good such as a major scale. Some are kind of eerie, sad, or scary-sounding such as a minor scale. This becomes even more emotionally stirring when you start learning pentatonic, diminished, and other more complex note combinations. These can help determine the kind of person you want to be. Depending on what you feel from each note, you will begin to tune who you are.

Ease Your Mind

Music brings a magical sort of element to such a magic-less existence. It really does have a way of moving people that any other form of art just doesn’t compare with. Even those that don’t play instruments can enjoy this aspect of musical therapy. No matter what is happening in life, music has a way of helping us cope or contrarily helping us become distracted from the reality of our situation.

It isn’t uncommon for people to relate a specific song to an unforgettable event in their lives, whether good or bad. For a musician, it isn’t just common, it’s necessary. Musicians will create songs for moments of extreme anger, sadness, and even happiness when the time is right. This helps to alleviate stress in many ways, but it also helps the person remember these moments in a healthy way and without negative coping mechanisms.

Depressed people have been known to use music as a tool for healing as well. Playing instruments and having the ability to write your own music is a tenfold expansion of this scientifically proven fact. It just makes you feel good! There’s no other way to say it.

Go Play!

What type of instrument you choose doesn’t matter. The important part is that you’re playing one. Everyone wants to play guitar and be in a rock band, and that’s awesome. However, that is exactly why the rock scene is bursting at the seams with guitarists. Get out there and make your own trends. Play oboe for a rapper, or play drums in ballet, do whatever you feel like doing, but do it because YOU want to!

Even if you choose to never get out and play with other artists, that’s just as respectable. Never feel like you should have to do more than you’re comfortable with. If you ever choose to step out of your comfort zone, the fact that you’ll have an instrument in your hand will make it that much easier to do!