5 Reasons Playing Flute Increases Your Brain Function

Podcast Transcript

It’s a great day to play some music and learn more about our favorite subject! Flute! Today, I’m excited to uncover 5 reasons playing flute increases your brain function. Sounds kind of scientific, doesn’t it? I like to find ways to help my brain get and stay smart, do you? Great! Let’s get to it!

Well welcome, welcome back here to another episode of the Learn Flute Podcast. It’s always a pleasure to invite and meet you here for an audio lesson that helps us with our mindset, motivation, and our education.. All on our favorite subject, flute!

Now the flute is of course one of my favorite instruments mainly because the sound we make comes from our souls and right out our breath and into our instruments and out into the room for everyone to hear. I feel like it’s a tool to improve our entire being.
That might kind of sound a little dramatic, but it’s really true to me!

I was reminded of this just yesterday as one of my accompanists and I were working on a project after not meeting together for a couple of months. At the beginning of the session we were both a little sleepy and not quite sure of the direction we wanted to take.
As we moved along through the creation process, I started to notice how awake I was starting to feel, whereas before we began I had contemplated taking a short nap.
As we continued, I perked up to this phenomenon that was happening right before my eyes and decided to purposefully take note on how we were both feeling.
After about 30 minutes into our process the room began to feel electric, and the energy we were sharing was undeniable. Mind you, she was two hundred miles away from me – our meeting was virtual, and the air waves were definitely coming alive right before our eyes.

Within a bit more time I noticed that after each of us would play the sections we were creating, our cheeks were pinking up and my heart rate was definitely up above the normal resting state.
By the time we finished, I could visibly see that my accompanist had a flood of happy endorphins. We didn’t want to stop creating music. 

It was so much fun! 

We felt very alive and awake.

Now, I’ve talked about it before here at Learn Flute Online, but music and our emotions can and do create physical responses.

It’s static and, like I said, alive.
It also creates growth within our brains that we can’t see but is definitely there.
So how do we know?
Well, just that short example I gave of my musical session with my accompanist the other day demonstrates that something was happening since both of us were kind of like wilted plants before we began, and then we both felt like a vibrant jungle of plants of all colors and sizes by the end.
Well, today I wanted to go through a few of the studies that have been done to prove that learning an instrument strengthens our minds and increases brain function. Because this is what I was noticing the other day.

Number one

So in our list of 5 reasons playing flute increases your brain function, I put the first one as learning to play and read music makes you think faster.
I know this one is true.
When we learn to read and play music, something happens inside our brains, in that we start to recognize common patterns and shapes that help us process faster. 

We only have a fraction of a moment to decide what is supposed to happen and then it’s time to move to the next moment. It’s very quick and as we progress through the levels, we get better and better at this.
Experts say that reading skills translate into more success in life also, and that music and reading especially are related through the common neural and also cognitive mechanisms of our brains. Basically it’s the same area of our minds that we are using.
Apparently as our thinking processes more quickly, our ability to retain information also increases. Because, they are the same area of the brain.
Our minds are very adaptable at all ages, and continue to get better and better at functioning as we improve our musical skills. Hm, no arguments there right?

Number Two here:

Trained musicians also become very quick at multi-processing. This means that we learn to take in sounds, sights, and touch all at the same time. It takes training, but we do it within time for sure. This leads to some superior multisensory skills.
I’ve heard conflicting reports – do musicians actually multi-task? Or are we just really good at processing lightening fast so it’s basically like multi-tasking as we play our instruments?
Well, we definitely have an advantage when it comes to combining the skills of hearing, and touch, and, and well, a whole host of things. We repeat our skills so many times that they do become second nature and don’t have to be focused on anymore.
Much like breathing and walking at the same time… I have done it so many times that I don’t need to focus on one or the other to do them at the same time. In fact, I can even do other things, like talk, laugh, sing, think, I can yo-yo while I walk, and breathe. 

And like most skills, I trained my body to do them by repeating this over and over until it became second nature to my body.
Music is a total sound, touch, and feel, feel physically and emotionally experience, and much of sight is being used as well. It’s very cool.

Number three today

is that as we learn music throughout our lives, it leads to brain plasticity (thats a fancy word, right? Plasticity) is so important in our later years. While of course, it is known that children who receive musical training in their younger years have faster brain responses when they are adults, they can think faster right. Even if they stopped playing for many decades or years it is shown that their thinking is faster and has more plasticity to it.

Now, no matter what stage of life the musical skills are being gained in, the more pliable and adaptable our minds do become… so basically we just keep getting smarter and smarter through music. It’s so cool!