We have known for centuries that music has a pronounced effect on the human mind and spirit. According to Plato,. Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, and life to everything.William Shakespeare wrote “music hath charm to soothe the savage breast” and he called it “the food of love.” But not until modern researchers began to experiment with music therapy as a healing tool did we begin to grasp the scope of just how profound the effect of music can be in restoring and maintaining our physical and mental health.The American Music Therapy Association, founded in 1950, has a long clinical definition of music therapy on their website but what it means simply is music and music instruction can be used as medical tools to improve and heal patients in a variety of health situations.One of the most promising and heart warming of these areas is in dealing with children who are physically or mentally challenged or disabled. Listening to music seems to promote healing and progress in most all situations but the more impressive results are achieved when a child with a learning disability starts to play a musical instrument.The value of learning to play the piano as a therapeutic tool was made clear to me recently as I watched an amazing video of a young boy with a profound learning disability who was playing a song on the piano after only a short time of actually learning. He had trouble speaking, lacked communication skills, had trouble relating to and interacting with others, and a variety of other problems associated with his condition including severely impaired learning abilities.The system he used was a simple plug and play keyboard and software package designed as a video game. According to his mother, her son’s language abilities and IQ at seven years of age were about equal to that of a child of two when he began working with the game. She explained later how much his comprehension and language abilities improved and she attributed his rapid improvement to the piano game.In commenting on this positive change the developers of the software said “To see that kind of improvement and development well after the normal window of language acquisition has passed is probably a great testimonial to the power of learning to play the piano and how it stimulates the development of the brain.”In describing how she started the mother said, “My son likes the song Twinkle… so I started him… at a snail’s pace, I pushed his finger down to strike each note and told him to hit the right color note like the one on the screen… after a few minutes, he got it! He was playing only with the right hand, but he got it! A few days later I added the left hand successfully, then I slowly cranked up the tempo.” This young man is not a piano prodigy and had no special ability whatsoever in the beginning. He just took it step by step and learned.Fast forward three years. The mother sent another video to the company showing her son at 10 years old. He begins by playing a beautiful song on the midi keyboard. He then moves to a regular piano and begins to play as he reads the sheet music. This is not only an impressive testimonial to the power of using a game to learn a valuable skill, it is down right inspirational to see the profound change in this young man and hear the glowing reports of his mother as she describes how he struggled in the beginning and the sense of accomplishment he gained as he progressed.Because of this piano game approach to learning and the sense of accomplishment this young man achieved, his overall ability to learn and communicate has vastly improved. His language skills, ability to comprehend complex tasks, and his confidence in his own abilities, have improved tremendously. His mother is so pleased with the change in her son that she has become an unpaid voluntary spokes person for the product. Her complete story and step by step description of her son’s musical journey are available at the author’s website.
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