Top 10 Benefits of Being a Piano Nerd

After years of practice, attending adult piano lessons, and perhaps even performing in amateur piano concerts, you’ve accepted that the piano is a focal point of your life. Perhaps you’ve even reviewed our top 10 warning signs that you may be a piano nerd, found yourself in all too many items on the list, and embraced your inner musical nerdiness.

It’s time to celebrate! For all of you self-recognized piano nerds, here are our top 10 benefits:

10. You can put on your contact lenses with any finger (not just the index one)—a rarely revealed benefit of scales and arpeggio practice.

9. For icebreaker questions during workplace retreats, such as “name your favorite musical artist,” your answer of Schubert or Brahms makes you seem unusual, even mysterious.

8. No expensive manicures required for you! As my first piano teacher told me when I was in middle school, “musicians never have long nails.”

7. Even though your senior prom was years ago, you still get to shop for a long dress or a formal suit, because you must look the part when you perform.

6. At parties, you dance on the beat.

5. History suddenly becomes accessible when you divide Western culture by musical periods—Baroque, Classical, Romantic—so no need to memorize the dates of major wars.

4. Your piano teacher, after years of lessons, often becomes your counselor and therapist—a two-fer-one!

3. You can impress little kids with a magic trick: place a fork on top of a plate on the piano, simply depress one key, and voila, the fork rattles! (Hint: on my piano, the resonating key is F-sharp.)

2. You understand the agony that Chopin, Beethoven, Schubert, and other composers experienced by simply playing their music… without having to die early!

1. On the bench, practicing, you arrive at a place of retreat, even serenity, as you contemplate your days and access your truest self.