David D. Owens - Director of Bands and Orchestra - Grant County High School
JoAnn B. Owens - Director of Bands - Grant County Middle School

 

 

 

 

 

Benefits of being in band

  • Sociability: Playing a musical instrument encourages a child to reach out towards new friendships and to grasp opportunities for social interaction.
  • Poise: Music is the perfect balance between education and fun. Lessons help a child develop the ability to cope appropriately in difficult situations.
  • Coordination: Learning to play a musical instrument develops manual dexterity. The child who plays music often does better in sports because of the good eye/hand/ear coordination that has been developed through music study.
  • Satisfaction: The knowledge that something has been accomplished, even as small as a music exercise, teaches satisfactions in a job well done.
  • Perseverance: From the first few notes to a piece well played, a child immediately see the rewards of sticking with a project and making a firm commitment to oneself.
  • Patience: Like any new skill, a new piece of music can take time; however, as time unfolds, a child will see the rewards of patience come together.
  • Self-Respect: As a child learns, a noticeable new self-respect will be reflected from this personal pursuit into other areas of endeavors besides music.
  • Confidence: A child with self-confidence has a better grip on handling life's many curve balls. Music education instills that confidence ands helps a child overcome shyness.
  • Creativity: Music helps a child explore his or her imagination and encourages creative thinking outside of music. Soon, that child learns to improvise many things in life, such as science, art, and writing projects.
  • Achievement: Because music is learned step-by-step, it provides a real sense of achievement at any levels while teaching a child to set goals in life.
  • Self-Expression: Music stimulates a child's instincts for self-expression, and, individually, the child learns to communicate his or her feelings and tastes to others.
  • Discipline: Through regular practice, music helps a child graduate to a higher level of self-discipline which enables him or her to acquire good habits in many areas of life.
  • Concentration: As a child learns, the ability to concentrate is sharpened which helps to improve verbal, written, and math skills. Music also helps to develop the capacity to make commitments.
  • Pride: Music experience offers a build-in "pat on the back" and helps a child to develop "thumbs up" pride in his or her abilities.
  • Relaxation: A child who is learning music realizes how enjoyable music is. It becomes a wonderful way to unwind and relax, and it is a gift to be treasured all through life.
  • Fun: Best of all, a child learns right away that playing a musical instrument is terrific fun. It teaches the joy of participatory activities and offers a welcomed alternative to watching TV. Most children find that music brings smiles to their faces and also to the faces around them.

 

WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Dozens of studies conducted over the past decade show and support the following:

  •  An interest in band leads to a high state of motivation that produces the sustained attention necessary to improve performance and the training of attention that leads to improvement in other domains of cognition (other classes and academic areas).

  • Specific links exist between high levels of band training and the ability to manipulate information in both working and long-term memory; these links extend beyond the domain of band.

  • In children, there appear to be specific links between participation in band and skills in geometrical representation (certain types of math), though not in other forms of numerical representation.

  • Correlations exist between band participation and both reading acquisition and sequence learning. One of the central predictors of early literacy, phonological awareness, is correlated with both music training and the development of a specific brain pathway.