Music Lessons for Adults: A Path to Better Mental Health

Magesh is a professional musician and educator who teaches Drum lessons and Piano lessons online. Find more information about his lessons and book to start achieving your playing goals.

I have taught hundreds of students in my 22-year career as a music teacher. I've learned that when teaching adults, there are certain factors in playing music that have a positive effect on memory, anxiety, depression, and general level of happiness.

I would like to talk about a few cases where I clearly noticed how learning a musical instrument benefited an adult student's mental health.

I recently started teaching a student in his late sixties.

He asked me if we could learn his favorite song “What a Fool Believes” by the band The Doobie Brothers. I was happy to teach this song to him, since I had played it as a teenager. This student loved playing the drums, and asked me if we could learn it without having to read music notation. I explained to him that that would be like asking me to teach him to read a book without teaching him the alphabet first.

Having a student who wants to play a song, and has the motivation to practice it is a good start. A pop song may be three and a half minutes long, with over 200 bars of music. It is no easy feat for someone to learn this! I have a system of breaking down each section, verse, chorus, etc., into small pieces of information. Once the student can read it I ask them to memorize it as quickly as possible. This student successfully learned the song with the help of my system. Playing the whole song gave him an amazing amount of joy. Two months after learning this song, he said to me “My wife says I always forget my wallet, keys, and phone. I told her yeah, but I can now remember over 200 bars of music!”

Several years ago I taught another student in his thirties.

He told me in the first lesson that he suffered from performance anxiety. I really felt he had a lot of natural talent on the drums, and this could only improve his condition. He told me he was confident when playing the drums at home, but would almost have a panic attack when someone would ask him to play something on the drums in public. I suggested the best way to overcome this obstacle would be for him to play at a concert. He immediately started laughing and told me he would probably have a heart attack if he had to play in front of a lot of people. I suggested we do this in small steps.

I had been playing at a local bar every Friday night. It was a small venue with a maximum capacity of around 80 people. I invited my adult student down to have a drink. Halfway through the second set I had the keyboard player announce we had a special guest in the audience. He then went on to invite my student on stage to play a song. The look on my student’s face was priceless. It was a combination of terror and confusion, yet with a hint of excitement. As he took a seat at my drums I said “You've got this, the song is ‘Uptown Funk’” which he had learned several months before. In this situation there simply wasn't enough time for him to get anxious so he just got on with things. He played so well he asked me if he could come back the following week to sit in with the band.

During his next drum lesson he told me that being thrown in the deep end made him get out of his head and into the reality of what was happening. It was a great life lesson as he told me that the anxiety-causing scenarios he so often imagined very rarely, if ever came true. In closing I have noticed that learning an instrument gives a person a real sense of pride and achievement, simply because it is something they have accomplished by themselves. This has a positive effect on their self esteem and confidence even when they are away from their instrument.

Image: Original artwork by Magesh

ABOUT MAGESH As a musician I have performed with Rhianna, Lionel Richie, Ricky Martin, Chris Brown, Kimbra and Vernon Reid (Living Colour).  I was ranked one of the 'Top 20 Millinium players' by 'Drumscene magazine. I have appreared in 'Modern Drummer' (U.S.A), Rhythm (U.K), Percussion (Italy) and 'Newsbeat (Canada) magaizes.  > Book a lesson with Magesh

Magesh's lessons are rated five stars in 35 verified student reviews, like this one:

Magesh is a very patient and awesome teacher. My son loves his lessons and is eager to play and practice. Magesh's love for playing the drums comes out during the lessons and my son feeds off of it. Can't wait to see where these lessons take him.

-Latisha, review from June 23, 2021