The beginning of the school year still makes me shudder (see my previous post), but one good thing about going back to school was the music program starting again. Sure, I started piano lessons with my grandmother before kindergarten, but I signed up for the group experience at school as soon as it was available. There are lots of good reasons to do so:

• Music supposedly grows your brain, or at least makes it lumpier, probably a good thing.
• Music can help you focus, recall memories, and develop new neural connections in your brain.
• Music lights up almost the whole brain, activating emotional responses and helping people recover function after stroke or tumors.
• Music can sharpen your mind and enhance brain function.
• The cutest girls joined the band and orchestra. Just a personal observation from my teenage self, and the reason I took up trombone.

Seriously, music has given me so much, whether the piano, trombone, or singing, that I don’t hesitate to recommend it for every child. I was fortunate enough to live in a school district that provided instruments for beginners, even though the quality ranged from unplayable to barely functional. That’s where I got my first trombone.

Listening to me practice inspired my father to buy me my own instrument, resulting in an immediate improvement in my sound from malfunctioning plumbing to seriously ill cow. The experience made the whole family appreciate the piano more, where the notes might be wrong but never tortured.

I haven’t done much with the trombone since high school except transfer my skills to blowing the shofar for Johnny during his High Holy Days, but I took a portable piano to college and formed a band (a Texas requirement) that I still enjoy. I hope our audiences do too.

So get your kid—or yourself—to an instrument or a choir and make your own kind of music. Sure, listening is great, but making your own music takes you to realms you’ve never dreamed of. I promise.