A neuroscience-based approach to learning how to play music at any age

You can learn to play music, no matter what you've been told about your musical talent or aptitude. Each and every one of us has been gifted with a fully customizable brain, one we can mold to learn anything, at any age. With the right instruction and methods, learning to play music can be an endless source of joy and fulfillment. And learning to play music isn't just fun, it's also the ideal brain fitness activity.

Dr. Turknett, a neurologist, self-taught multi-instrumentalist, and the founder of Brainjo and the Brainjo Method of instruction, which has been used successfully by thousands of people, distills the principles of learning to play music down into a set of universal "laws" that can be applied to any instrument. His innovative and proven approach synthesizes the latest in neuroscience and skill-building theory, emphasizing practicing smarter, not harder, recognizing that there is no failure, only feedback, and leveraging the immense power of subconscious learning.

Success or failure in learning to play music, just like anything else, is driven by how we learn. More specifically, it is driven by how well we engage our brain's remarkable ability to change itself. Anyone Can Play Music is about the fundamental principles of learning, an owner's manual for molding a musical mind.

The benefits of learning an instrument extend beyond the immense pleasure that it brings. Recent research indicates that stimulating neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to change itself, leads to brain growth, reverses brain aging and even restores youthful brain function. The more areas of the brain that are stimulated, the greater the benefit. And when it comes to a whole brain workout, nothing beats playing music.

While much of Dr. Turknett's detailed instructions are music-specific, the strategies underpinning this book apply not only to learning to play music, but to any kind of skill building. Our plastic brains are capable of so much more than we realize, as long as we can learn how to learn.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

WHO’S THIS FOR?

This book is a compilation of key principles, concepts, and techniques related to learning a musical instrument (though applicable to learning any complex skill). As such, you should find each chapter to be self-contained and fully digestible on its own. While the order in which you read them isn’t critical, you will likely benefit most from reading through them sequentially your first time through. After that point, feel free to peruse them in as random and haphazard a fashion as you please.

As a result of this organization, you will find certain concepts and principles repeated. Since repetition is key to retention, I invite you to view this as a feature rather than a bug.

You will also find that when examples require an instrument-specific context, the banjo is usually chosen to fill that role. This is because, while I play a few instruments, I consider myself a banjo player first and foremost. But rest assured that these principles will apply to any music-making device!

WHY BRAINJO?

Brains and banjos. To most, they are an unlikely pair. But for me, they’ve been the twin obsessions of my life.

My obsession with the brain first took hold with an eighth-grade science project and then blossomed in college, where I earned a degree in cognitive neuroscience. After concluding I’d learn more about the brain in the clinic than the laboratory, I pursued medical school and residency training in neurology. My interest in the brain has always revolved around cognition, including an enduring fascination with the mechanisms and applications of the science of learning and neuroplasticity.

My obsession with the banjo began on Christmas Day 2001. My first banjo was a gift from my family. I’d actually fallen in love with the instrument long before that when, at the age of three, I first heard Kermit the Frog pluck the iconic opening lick of “The Rainbow Connection.”

I’ll admit that the prospect of learning to play was overwhelming and intimidating at first. I could scarcely fathom how I could ever make music like the expert pickers I loved.

And, according to conventional wisdom, the odds were not in my favor. First, nobody in my family played. Second, I hadn’t started playing as a kid. And third, I didn’t have several hours a day to devote to practicing. On the contrary, I was smack-dab in the middle of a medical internship, which meant working upward of ninety grueling hours a week.

Nonetheless, I was determined to give it my best. Plus, music provided a much-needed sanctuary from the demands of medical training. Even just strumming the open strings of the banjo would reliably brighten my day.

It was during this time that I had a revelation: What if I could utilize my understanding of neuroplasticity to augment my learning process? Could I realize my banjo dreams by practicing smarter and not harder?

So, that’s what I did. And it worked. Remarkably well.

I progressed much faster than I thought I would. Faster than I’d been told I would, especially given my limited practice time, which seldom amounted to more than ten to twenty minutes a day. In a few months, I was making music that I’d previously thought was out of reach for me.

That experience left me with a nagging question: Why wasn’t this common practice? Why wasn’t anyone in the world of music education, or just education in general, talking about neuroplasticity?

We knew that, in order to learn anything, whether it’s how to tie our shoes, make an omelet, conjugate a verb, or solve a differential equation, our brain must change. And yet, the science of brain change was glaringly absent from our approach to education.

We’d learned so much about how brains changed, yet almost no one was reaping the benefits. And I knew firsthand how powerful it could be.

Even worse, much of what we learned had shown that many of our common learning practices were either ineffective or downright detrimental. This was certainly true when it came to common approaches to learning music. Neuroscience had revealed that human potential was so much greater than we’d thought, but almost all of it was still going unrealized.

It was this experience that sparked the idea for what would later become Brainjo. I knew that one day I not only wanted to spread this knowledge but integrate it into a formal system of instruction.

It took more than a decade to turn that vision into a reality, when the first courses of musical instruction at the Brainjo Academy were released. The goal of the courses is to provide the most efficient and effective path to learning music so that anyone, at any age, can play.

Since that time, thousands of people have done just that, many of whom had no prior musical background, and many of whom had previously thought music making wasn’t in the cards for them. They’ve been able to experience the same transformative benefits that I have.

The courses at the academy are based on the Brainjo Method, the system of instruction I’d envisioned years ago that would incorporate the core principles of learning and neuroplasticity. This book is about those principles, referred to as the “Laws of Brainjo.”

The gift of neuroplasticity means that we can mold our minds to acquire new complex knowledge and skills, like learning a musical instrument, at any age. Every skill we humans possess is learned. And it is how we learn, and how we practice, that trigger the brain change that makes this possible.

That means that failures in learning are not failures of aptitude but failures of process. Mastering brain change is how we release the spectacular potential in every brain. What could be more important?

Note: if you’d like to learn more about Brainjo and the courses of instruction based on the Brainjo Method, head over to brainjo.academy.