We all know the old expression: Practice Makes Perfect
Better words were never spoken!
But, what if there was a way that you could practice better? Like to learn piano online. Playing scales on the piano is all good and fine, but what if we could give our piano teacher a helping hand? What if we could learn how to impress our friends at parties by playing guitar?
Technology has the potential to unleash what we already have.
Companies like HALO Neuroscience and DARPA are experimenting, selling, and marketing brain enhancers of various sorts. HALO sells headphones that stimulate the motor cortex of the brain. Basically, the pathways from your brain are enhanced so that neurons sent to the fingers, legs, and joints work in harmony. In other words, your practice time is cut in half.
Dexterity improves.
Coordination improves.
Endurance improves.
HALO promoters show that wearing the headphones a mere 20 minutes a day can help a novice piano player become a maestro, simply by motivating stronger neural pathways between the brain and the fingers. You won’t have to stomp on the sheet music and kick it in the bin.
But that’s not to say it’s a substitute for actual practicing.
●For one thing, it costs $749 just to get started.
●Another is that you can’t tell if your neurons are actually being stimulated.
●Is tampering with your brain really a good idea?
To answer the last question, we can turn to DARPA. DARPA is a military defense research agency that develops “brain chips” to enhance the senses. Motor skills, learned memory, and, for amputees, they can better interact with robotic limbs. You can also detect, and even change, some people’s mood swings to avoid depression and PTSD. These brain chips are basically for soldiers—you can’t order one off Amazon; at least, not yet.
But the potential is there, especially if you decide to get music homework help for music theory.
While the possibilities are limitless, that doesn’t mean we’re ready to start swallowing red and blue pills to enter the Matrix. After all, stimulating the motor cortex doesn’t really help if you don’t have the drive, the passion, and the willingness to put in those practice hours to begin with. You can’t play the piano unless you actually sit down to play the piano.
The second half to playing the piano isn’t just pounding out notes. It’s listening to what you produce.
Read the notations—Accelerando, Allegro…all the way down to Tremolo and Vivace. We’re not just memorizing where to put the fingers, but to feel the rhythm, the flow, and the beats. You don’t play Beethoven like you play Jay Z—well, I guess you could—but that doesn’t come from wearing a headphone stimulator.
It comes from practice.
And concentration
And listening to what you play.
And loving it.