Karen's Creative Keyboard

What a successful recital at Steinway Gallery! So proud of my students. They worked so hard and did so well. I wrote a script about a sheet music store shopkeeper who kept finding shredded music in the morning. He had to solve the mystery.

If you want to teach something, put it into a song.

“Sunday school teachers, marketers, hymn writers, rock stars, and kindergarten teachers are all well aware that ‘what is learned in song is remembered long.’⁠
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And neuroscience backs this up,” wrote Jen Wilkin in 2021. “Pairing information with music helps our hippocampus retrieve that information with ease.⁠
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Sacred or secular, the songs we steep ourselves in are shaping us. This should stop us in our tracks. ⁠
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How are the lyrics of our worship music forming us?”⁠
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From the CT archive:
https://chrst.today/4sOuYeJ

The Payam Piano Method: What’s “fun” and What isn’t! CBS, 60 Minutes, in a brief quarter hour segment, gave its blessings to a transformational approach to piano lessons: a “fun”-filled journey inspired by Payam Khastkhodaei, a music lear…

Detainees at the St. Louis County jail learned to tickle the ivories this spring.

Here's how the piano lessons are helping boost the spirits of residents at a jail that has struggled to provide them with enough recreation time: https://www.stlpr.org/arts/2026-07-10/piano-lessons-st-louis-county-jail-creative-outlet-detainees

Few adults play musical instruments, and even fewer do so in a group, Caroline Mimbs Nyce wrote in 2024. What health benefits might they be giving up? https://theatln.tc/oglkQfzJ

“Kids receive plenty of music education, but as people get older, they fall out of practice. Many stop picking up their instrument,” Nyce writes. “This is unfortunate, in part because plenty of research shows that adults could benefit from playing music.”

Playing music helps build larger brain networks and new pathways. “Musicians tend to have better attention than nonmusicians,” Nyce continues. “Banging on a drum or tooting a horn can also relieve stress, reduce burnout, and help with anxiety and depression. For older people specifically, research has shown potential cognitive benefits along with a possible decrease in dementia risk.”

Adults may be skipping out in part because music education is associated with childhood and coursework. And after people grow out of music education in their childhood, they tend to think that music is a special talent, Nyce writes, not something that just anybody can learn.

“Of course, people are busy; they simply may not have the luxury of sitting down to study Bach once a week, much less the money to pay for an instrument or private lessons,” Nyce writes.

Playing music in groups has additional benefits, such as allowing adults to feel more trusting of and connected to one another, and to the world in general. But while it’s easy to go to a park or gym and pull together a game of pickup basketball, “piecing together people at the same skill level to play a concerto or even just jam in a garage is another matter.”

Nyce herself recently began to play the recorder. “I plan to keep learning,” she writes, “not because it strengthens my neuropathways per se (though I certainly don’t mind that), but because making music, even when it’s silly—perhaps especially when it’s silly—is just a whole lot of fun.”

📸: Photo Media / ClassicStock / Getty

True!

A beautiful reminder from the brilliant Sir Stephen Hough on the true purpose of music. In times of uncertainty or darkness, music isn't a luxury - it's a lifeline.

What does playing the piano mean to you during difficult times? Let us know. 👇