Why I love music

I can’t remember how old I was when I first started playing the piano. My grandma’s always had an enormous wooden keyboard that took up half a wall in her living room, and my mother took piano lessons for seven years after high school. Usually I’d just bang on the notes. My absolute favorite thing to do was start at the lowest key and run my middle finger to the very highest, and then back down the other way. I loved how the sound reverberated through grams’ small, stuffy apartment.

When I was little, they’d always say I should go on the show “Morning Star”. It featured young unknown kids with strong, powerful voices and a good ear for the melody. Unfortunately, I lived here, on the brink of anti-civilization, while the Russian Hollywood was here. Moscow, the city of lights, vodka, and fancy clothing brands.

Instead, we moved here when I was 8. Without a piano, I became disconnected from music. In our highly intrusive apartment complex, I found it difficult to find time to sing. And so a few years went by living under a rock, and only occasionally resurfacing to catch the latest songs on the radio.

Then we bought a piano. I couldn’t and still can’t read notes, but I’d pick a song on YouTube and find the right chords. It was ridiculously hard at first – I’d lost all my knack for recognizing the tone and matching it with the right key – but I got there. You have no idea how amazing it feels to be able to sit in front of a piano with the rain thudding on the window in front of me and play “Apologize” by OneRepublic.

Nowadays, music took herself on a whole new level. According to Dana Strait, a music cognition researcher at Northwestern University, musical training increases your nervous system’s ability to process emotion in speech and other sounds. Yes, you read that right – musicians find it easier to tell apart the different nuances of sentiment when talking to, say, their significant other. I presume this would come in handy during the latest “I’m sorry”, “I love you”, and “honey, she’s my sister, I swear!”, among others.

And this is why I love music.


To learn more about the experiment, read here.