Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner List of interesting facts about people who play piano?

I've been curious to find something describing anything unique about pianists or studying piano/instruments in general. Like perhaps points about differences in how a musician's brain works or changes in physical aspects from piano playing. Perhaps things that a pianist can do that other people can't do. Maybe someone has done studies and published a journal or articles about it. Anyone come across anything like this?

If you go to any research journal and just look up "piano" or "pianists" you'll find a huge amount of interesting stuff. Endless content!

One thing that I remember most, and that struck me: even highly trained pianists have no more agility in their fingers than the average person. You'll read all kinds of interesting stuff like this.

Pianists: Unique reading skill?

The next time you pick up a book, try reading two or more separate lines of completely different texts concurrently, with instant comprehension. As impossible as this may seem, this is precisely what pianists do when reading music.

Don't speed readers do the same? Perhaps. But there's more. As they read, pianists act simultaneously in accordance with precise instruction.

Ten fingers on the keyboard are directed thereby with two different sets of instructions - abstract notation requiring instant deciphering with a bit of words and abbreviations - one for the left hand and the other for the right hand, and even another set of instructions for the feet - the brain receiving and implementing all processes simultaneously.

Quite remarkable when we think about it.

Classical pianists generally are barking mad during the full moon.

A high percentage of classical pianists are necrophiliacs.

Many classical pianists think their hands are made of something other than what regular people's hands are made of.

Classical pianists tend to either (a.) wear enough scent to annoy others at a distance of 20 meters, or (b.) smell funky because they think deodorants will hurt them.

During autopsies, it has been discovered that many classical pianists do not have differentiated left and right brain hemispheres, or even brains as such, but instead have skulls full of a mysterious substance that resembles lumpy polenta.

HMMM BRAINS TASTY!

But that's not just pianists -- it's people in general!
In fact, the fact is that the human body, inside, is just solid straight through, like a baked potato. The mumbo-jumbo about "internal organs" and stuff like that is just a fraud perpetrated by the medical establishment, to perpetuate the notion that they have any special expertise.

(that was a joke)

And BTW I can't take credit for it. The National Lampoon said it, circa 1971.

But anyway....the OP does deserve serious thought. It's quite possible that people who are remarkably skilled at things like playing the piano and/or memorizing complex music (which are separate things!) have outlying aspects of their central nervous systems -- not way out, but maybe 1 or 2 or 3 standard deviations from the norm -- and that even if they don't, playing the piano and working on complex music over a period of time produces such changes to some extent. And we'd have to say also that this wouldn't be unique to piano and pianists; we could speculate similar things about any number of other endeavors.

About physical aspects: If you mean in the hands and arms, sure. I think people with larger or more supple (or whatever) hands are more likely to become serious pianists, and playing the piano can make our hands change. (Like, just ask Schumann.)

Journal articles and the like?? Maybe some people know of something, but I don't.

I am extremely good at remembering patterns, for example, when I am grading papers with short answers, I memorize the pattern of the answers. I'm sure ths is piano related.

Surf over to the teachers' forum--there's a thread there discussing a Huffington Post description of a study comparing English speaking musicians, English speaking non-musicians, and Cantonese speakers on several pitch related tasks. The thread has Cantonese and Mandarin in the title.

Follow the links to get to the real study write up, follow the references for that study, do a citations search, and you'll find what you are looking for. There exists a considerable body of research.

Not sure if it's a result of my musical abilities, but I have a knack for looking at a group or pile of things and being able to instantly tell you how many there are.Like if you had a bunch of toothpicks in your hand, I could look at it and in less than a second tell you how many there are. If I'm not dead on I'm usually within 2-3 off the actual number.

I read in one of those "men vs. women" books that this was a gender trait - that in general if a man looks at 5 objects he knows how many there are without counting, whereas a woman has to count them. I don't know of any other researched facts, but my favorite personal theory is that I now have better reflexes than I used to - because I will often catch things I drop before they hit the floor.

I read in a book that learning an instrument is a great way to prevent Alzheimer's.

Pianists are the masters of tapping their fingers on a table.

This ability also creates the ability to be banned from transport by commercial airlines.

Pianists can do many things with their fingers that 'normal' people can't - like 'drumming' |(i.e. trilling) with the third/fourth/fifth fingers while resting (and without moving) the thumb and index finger lightly on the table.

Impress your non-playing friends and foes this Christmas.....

I'm really good at pressing buttons.

Expertise in ceiling appreciation.

^