From the eyes of a guitarist, the world has 2 kinds of people – ones that play the axe, and others that don’t. Any random experiment to gauge the musical interests of a group of children is likely to reveal more support for learning the guitar than any other instrument. Probably because of the visible fame and stardom enjoyed by the greatest guitarists of yester and modern years, the instrument has an advantage over other equally fabulous and charismatic instruments.
Guitars as Enablers of Social Fame and Sharper Brains – What does Science Say?
Here are a couple of recent research studies that associate the art of playing the guitar with extraordinary brain functions, and super-normal social appeal.
A 2013 study called ‘Men’s music ability and attractiveness to women in a real-life courtship context’ explored how women responded favorably to advances of friendship and courtship from a male holding a guitar bag!
A study conducted on 12 guitarists in Berlin, in 2012, showed how the neural networks of the guitarists’ brains could sync with each other, not only during the course of the performance but also slightly before it.
Let’s learn more about the lesser known, yet fascinating benefits of learning to play the guitar.
Strum the chords of your Givson to shoo stress away
Researchers from Mind-Body Wellness Center and Loma Linda University School of Medicine and Applied Biosystems have amply documented how playing any music instrument helps weed out stress at a genomic level. Spending some quality time with the guitar can help reduce or eliminate stress of any kind. Not only does a good session of guitar playing amp up your mood, but also helps you shift focus from disturbing thoughts to more positive feelings.
It’s amazing how you can overcome stress just by playing your favorite song on the guitar. Just like a powerful multi-vitamin, the act of playing a guitar engages all primary areas of your brain, helping completely ward of the overbearing sense of stress that plagues the human mind. You are also likely to overcome bouts of anger and sudden surges of blood pressure by playing a mellow tune on your guitar.
The Brain of a Guitarist – A Spiritual, Sharp, and Intuitive Entity
Although no one really bothers about how well Axle Rose did in school (he probably was not the quietest person in the classroom!), but it’s been documented that playing the guitar has a measurable positive influence on the development of the brain. A study published by scholars from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland shows how musicians are better equipped to identify mistakes in their performances, and can fix them much faster than non-musician counterparts.
With the guitar in your hands, you’ll create the music with uncountable variations packed in very short time slots, which is where your brain plays its top game to identify the slightest of misses.
Your brain is stimulated when you pick up your guitar and shred your favorite tunes on it. Not only does your brain work out like the most dedicated bodybuilder when you are learning to read music and practicing all the chords, but also it gets adept to handling multiple processing requests, that’s because you need to do several little things at once when you’re playing the guitar.
The brain’s ability to identify and correct errors, eve the minutest of them, is amplified to a great deal when you learn the guitar. There you have it, learning the guitar will keep your brain healthier and help it evade the routine phases of decline as you age.
The Social Acceptance and Charisma that Only a Guitarist can Enjoy
At an airport, the guy with the guitar case draws more eyeballs than dozens of tuxedo-dressed businessmen. A recent research carried out by researchers in Israel involved a social experiment, wherein equal numbers of Facebook friend requests were sent out from a dummy profile, once with the profile image a handsome guy holding a guitar, and once with the image of the guy without a guitar. The image with the guitar fetched 14 acceptances out of 50, compared to a paltry 5 acceptances for the other picture!
Hilarious but understandable!
Research literature in Psychology of Music ably explains how women tend to associate a man’s ability to play music with qualities such as commitment, hard work, intelligence, and physical prowess. Anyone who’s spent hard days to learn the guitar can vouch for the fact that all these qualities are naturally ingrained in any sincere guitarist.
That’s because rocking with the axe requires the stamina to hold the heavy instrument for long hours, the mental alertness to fit in the band, the unflinching creativity to create those magic moments in a performance, and the dedication to fine-tuning and master the craft.
Featured Image: Image Credit
Dear #boice How many of you play guitar? Piano? pic.twitter.com/7kheBiitC4
— Peter Malick (@silvertone) January 3, 2016
I want to start learning how to play a guitar this 2016 Ikaw? Share yours with the hashtag #StartNow & I’ll rt it! ? pic.twitter.com/XhQDDTDAJY
— Thomas Torres (@iamthomastorres) December 28, 2015
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