A student sits down at the piano and spends 30 minutes practicing a difficult piece.
They have to read notation, keep rhythm, coordinate both hands, listen for mistakes, remember what comes next, and continue even when they mess up.
It certainly feels like the kind of activity that should be good for the brain.
And parents have probably heard some version of the claim:
“Kids who play instruments do better in school.”
There is some truth behind that observation. Students who study music are often found to have stronger academic or cognitive outcomes than students who do not.
But there is a major problem with jumping from that observation to:
“Playing an instrument makes students smarter.”
Students who take music lessons may differ from other students in many ways before the first lesson ever begins. Their families may have different resources. Their parents may be more involved. They may already perform better academically. They may be more motivated or conscientious.
So researchers have spent years trying to answer a surprisingly difficult question:
Does learning an instrument actually improve academic ability, or are academically successful students simply more likely to learn instruments?
The research suggests a fascinating but nuanced answer.
Playing an instrument may strengthen certain cognitive skills that are useful for learning, but the evidence that music lessons directly make students better at math, reading, or school overall is much weaker than many people assume.
That doesn't make music education less valuable.
In some ways, it makes the real benefits of learning an instrument more interesting.
Why Would Playing an Instrument Help Academically?
Consider what happens when someone learns guitar.
Their left hand may be forming a chord.
Their right hand is maintaining a rhythm.
Their eyes may be following chord changes.
Their ears are monitoring whether the notes sound correct.
Their brain is keeping track of timing.
They make a mistake.
They recognize it.
They adjust.
Then they try again.
Learning piano, violin, drums, trumpet, guitar, or another instrument can simultaneously involve attention, memory, auditory processing, motor coordination, timing, inhibition, pattern recognition, and error correction.
That makes music training an intriguing subject for researchers studying cognition.
If students repeatedly exercise those abilities while learning music, could some of those abilities improve in ways that help them elsewhere?
Possibly.
But this is where an important concept called transfer enters the conversation.
Getting Better at Music Is Not the Same as Getting Better at Everything
If a student practices piano for three years, we would expect them to become better at piano.
That's called something like near transfer. Practice produces improvements in skills closely related to what was practiced.
The much bigger claim is far transfer.
That would mean practicing piano somehow improves substantially different abilities such as mathematics, reading comprehension, intelligence, or general academic performance.
Far transfer is much harder to demonstrate.
And this distinction explains why the research on music and academics can sound contradictory.
Some studies find advantages among musicians.
Other carefully controlled studies find much smaller effects.
The question is not whether musical training changes a student's ability to make music.
Clearly it does.
The question is:
How much of that learning transfers outside music?
One Major Meta Analysis Found Little Evidence of Academic Benefits
A particularly important study was published in 2020 in Memory & Cognition.
Researchers examined 54 studies involving 6,984 children and 254 effect sizes to investigate whether music training improved cognitive abilities or academic performance.
At first, the overall results appeared positive.
But something interesting happened when researchers examined the quality of the studies.
The better controlled the study was, the smaller the apparent benefit became.
In randomized studies, the overall effect was close to zero.
The researchers ultimately concluded that the evidence did not support the idea that music training produces broad improvements in children's cognitive abilities or academic achievement.
That's important.
If your student starts playing violin this year, parents should not expect violin lessons themselves to suddenly raise an Algebra II grade.
Music lessons are not an academic intervention.
If a student doesn't understand factoring, they still need to learn factoring.
If they struggle with reading comprehension, they still need to practice reading comprehension.
Playing Mozart probably isn't going to fix either problem.
But That's Not the End of the Research
This is where the subject gets more interesting.
Although the evidence for broad improvements in academic performance is weak, newer research has found evidence that music training may improve particular cognitive abilities, especially some aspects of executive function.
Executive functions are the mental processes that help us regulate behavior and accomplish goals.
They include abilities such as:
Working memory
Inhibitory control
Planning
Cognitive flexibility
Attention regulation
These abilities obviously matter in school.
A student needs working memory to hold information in mind while solving a multistep math problem.
They need inhibitory control to ignore distractions.
They need planning to complete a research paper.
They need cognitive flexibility when one problem solving strategy doesn't work and they need to try another.
So even if playing an instrument doesn't directly teach algebra or vocabulary, researchers are interested in whether it exercises some of the mental systems students use while learning.
Music May Have an Interesting Effect on Self Control
A 2024 meta analysis examined 22 longitudinal studies involving 1,734 children, including eight randomized controlled trials.
Researchers specifically investigated inhibitory control.
Their analysis found that music training improved inhibitory control, with stronger effects appearing in the randomized trials.
A newer 2025 meta analysis looked more broadly at executive function.
It included 46 studies, 3,530 participants, and 192 effect sizes.
The researchers reported a significant overall benefit of musical training on executive function, with an effect size of g = 0.35.
Among the executive abilities studied, inhibitory control showed the strongest improvement.
This doesn't mean:
“Learning guitar will make your child get better grades.”
It means there is emerging evidence that musical training may strengthen some cognitive processes that are also useful in academic environments.
That's a much more defensible claim.
Working Memory May Benefit Too
Working memory is essentially our ability to temporarily hold and manipulate information.
Imagine solving:
3(2x − 5) + 4 = 19
A student has to keep track of several pieces of information while moving through the problem.
Music places similar demands on memory.
A musician may have to remember what was just played, anticipate what comes next, coordinate movements, follow rhythm, and respond to auditory information simultaneously.
Some experimental evidence suggests musical training may strengthen this ability.
A randomized controlled study published in 2022 assigned 84 children ages four to six to either a music program, a Lego program, or a control group.
After ten weeks, children receiving music instruction showed improvements in working memory relative to the comparison conditions. Interestingly, the Lego group showed improvements in spatial working memory, illustrating another important point:
Music isn't the only complex activity that can exercise cognitive skills.
An earlier randomized experiment involving instrumental training also found improvements on a working memory measure after six weeks, although researchers did not find significant improvements across the other cognitive measures they tested.
Again, the evidence is more specific than the popular claim that:
“Music makes kids smarter.”
Longer Music Programs Have Produced Interesting Results
Some longer studies are particularly intriguing.
One study followed 147 primary school children for approximately two and a half years. Children were assigned to music programs, visual arts, or a control condition.
The researchers found that children receiving music education improved more in inhibition, planning, and verbal intelligence over time. They also reported evidence suggesting that changes in executive functioning could potentially contribute to academic performance.
Another controlled study followed children ages 10 to 12 receiving string instrument instruction twice per week.
Compared with children receiving more general music education involving listening, theory, and some practice, the instrumental group showed advantages across measures including working memory, attention, processing speed, cognitive flexibility, reasoning, and motor coordination.
Those findings are encouraging.
But they still shouldn't be interpreted as proof that every child who takes instrument lessons will become academically stronger.
Research in this area remains mixed, and study design matters enormously.
Why Musicians Often Look Academically Stronger
Suppose researchers examine 1,000 high school students.
They discover that students who have played an instrument for five years have higher GPAs.
It would be tempting to conclude:
Music caused the higher GPA.
But imagine what else could be happening.
Students who continue music lessons for five years may come from families with greater financial resources.
Their parents may place a stronger emphasis on education.
They may attend schools with better arts programs.
They may already be highly motivated.
They may have stronger self discipline.
They may have higher cognitive ability before beginning music.
Students who struggle academically may also be more likely to stop extracurricular activities because they need additional time for school.
All of these factors can produce what researchers call selection effects.
In other words:
The type of student who becomes a musician may already differ from the type of student who doesn't.
This is exactly why randomized studies are so valuable.
And it's why the 2020 meta analysis is important: when researchers gave more weight to stronger experimental designs, many of the apparent broad cognitive and academic benefits disappeared.
So Does Music Help With Math?
This is probably one of the most common versions of the question.
Music certainly contains mathematical elements.
Rhythm involves ratios and subdivisions.
Time signatures organize beats.
Intervals involve relationships between frequencies.
Musical structures contain patterns.
But we should be careful about assuming that learning these patterns automatically transfers to classroom mathematics.
A student can become an excellent drummer without becoming excellent at quadratic equations.
Likewise, an outstanding calculus student might know absolutely nothing about playing drums.
Skills do not automatically transfer simply because two activities share some abstract characteristics.
If your goal is specifically to improve math performance, the most direct intervention remains:
Learn the missing math.
Practice math.
Correct mathematical misconceptions.
Solve increasingly challenging math problems.
Receive feedback on mathematical reasoning.
Learning piano may have many benefits.
But it shouldn't replace Algebra tutoring if Algebra is the problem.
What About Reading?
Similar caution is appropriate here.
Musicians learn to interpret a symbolic system.
They recognize patterns.
They track information across time.
They develop auditory discrimination.
Those abilities could plausibly overlap with certain language processes.
Some research has reported positive associations or modest effects on language related skills.
But once again, broad transfer into academic achievement is not firmly established.
If a student struggles with reading comprehension, they still need to read.
They need vocabulary.
Background knowledge.
Comprehension strategies.
Discussion.
Practice interpreting increasingly sophisticated texts.
Music can complement an education.
It shouldn't be presented as a substitute for academic instruction.
There May Be Another Academic Benefit That Is Harder to Measure
Imagine a 12 year old learning guitar.
They try a chord.
It sounds terrible.
They try again.
Still terrible.
They adjust their finger position.
One string buzzes.
They reposition it.
Eventually the chord rings clearly.
Then they learn another chord.
Then they spend days trying to switch between them smoothly.
Eventually they can play a song.
Something important happened during that process.
The student experienced:
Difficulty → practice → feedback → adjustment → improvement.
That pattern is enormously valuable.
Music gives students repeated opportunities to experience the idea that:
“I can't do this yet” can eventually become “I can do this.”
That lesson is relevant far beyond music.
It doesn't require claiming that guitar practice directly raises math scores.
Instruments Provide Extremely Clear Feedback
Schoolwork can sometimes make progress difficult to see.
A student studies history for a week and receives an 84 instead of an 81.
Did they improve?
Maybe.
It's difficult to know.
Music provides unusually immediate feedback.
Either the chord rings clearly or it doesn't.
Either you're on beat or you're not.
Either you can play the passage or you can't.
Students can often hear themselves improving.
A song that felt impossible three weeks ago suddenly feels manageable.
That creates an extremely concrete relationship between practice and competence.
For students who believe ability is something people simply have or don't have, that can be a powerful experience.
Music Also Teaches Students How to Practice
Good musicians don't simply play an entire song from beginning to end repeatedly.
They isolate difficult sections.
Slow them down.
Repeat them.
Analyze mistakes.
Practice transitions.
Increase the speed.
Combine sections again.
Notice how similar that is to effective academic practice.
A student struggling with calculus shouldn't simply complete another entire practice test.
They might isolate related rates.
Then identify the specific part causing trouble.
Set up ten problems.
Practice that skill.
Review mistakes.
Then integrate it back into larger problems.
Effective musicians learn to break complex performance into smaller skills.
That's an extremely useful approach to learning generally.
Whether students spontaneously transfer that approach to academics is another question.
Parents and teachers can help make the connection explicit.
Playing an Instrument Also Requires Being Bad at Something for a While
This may be one of music's most underrated lessons.
Beginners sound bad.
There is almost no avoiding it.
A beginning violinist doesn't sound like a professional violinist.
A beginning guitarist struggles to change chords.
A beginning drummer loses the beat.
A beginning pianist presses the wrong keys.
And everyone can hear it.
Students have to tolerate imperfection.
They have to continue practicing while their performance is visibly, or audibly, incomplete.
That can be especially valuable for high achieving students who are accustomed to things coming easily.
Music provides a relatively safe environment for discovering:
Struggle is not evidence that you lack ability.
Sometimes struggle simply means you're learning something difficult.
What If Playing an Instrument Takes Time Away From Homework?
This matters too.
Extracurricular activities aren't free.
They consume time.
A student practicing violin for an hour each evening has one fewer hour available for something else.
If a student already sleeps six hours a night, has three AP classes, plays a varsity sport, participates in clubs, and is overwhelmed academically, adding intensive music lessons simply because someone said:
“Music makes you smarter”
wouldn't make much sense.
The potential cognitive benefits of music need to be considered alongside opportunity cost.
Students need sleep.
They need unstructured time.
They need time to study.
And they need time to simply be kids.
More activities are not automatically better.
Should Parents Encourage Their Children to Learn an Instrument?
Absolutely, if the student is interested.
But I wouldn't make this pitch:
“Play piano because it will improve your grades.”
I would make a much simpler one:
Learn an instrument because learning to make music is valuable.
Music can give students a lifelong skill.
It can provide a creative outlet.
It can become social through bands, orchestras, ensembles, or simply playing with friends.
It can teach persistence.
It can provide opportunities for mastery.
It can challenge coordination and attention.
It can help students experience the connection between deliberate practice and improvement.
And research suggests it may strengthen certain executive functions, particularly inhibitory control and perhaps working memory.
Those are plenty of reasons.
We don't need to promise an SAT score increase too.
What Should Parents Look for?
If your student wants to learn an instrument, focus less on which instrument supposedly produces the biggest cognitive benefit.
Let them choose something they actually want to play.
Guitar.
Piano.
Drums.
Violin.
Saxophone.
Trumpet.
Bass.
Cello.
It matters that they want to keep practicing.
A theoretically perfect activity provides very little benefit if your student quits after three weeks.
Then encourage the habits that make music instruction valuable.
Practice consistently.
Break difficult pieces into smaller sections.
Slow things down.
Notice mistakes.
Try again.
Track improvement.
Play with other people.
Perform occasionally.
Learn music the student actually enjoys.
Most importantly, allow progress to take time.
Parents Can Help Students Transfer the Lessons of Music Into School
This is where I think music can become especially useful educationally.
Suppose your student spent three weeks learning a difficult piano piece.
Now they're frustrated by chemistry.
A parent might say:
“Remember what you did when that section of the song felt impossible? You didn't keep playing the whole song. You isolated the difficult measures and practiced them. What's the chemistry version of that?”
Maybe the answer is stoichiometry.
So isolate it.
Practice it.
Analyze mistakes.
Repeat.
Then put it back into the larger context.
The instrument didn't magically improve chemistry ability.
The student learned something about how improvement works.
Helping them consciously apply that lesson elsewhere may be far more useful than hoping cognitive benefits automatically transfer.
The Bottom Line
So, does playing an instrument make students better academically?
The evidence doesn't support a simple yes.
Students who play instruments often perform well academically, but correlation does not prove that music caused those outcomes.
A large 2020 meta analysis found that apparent broad benefits to cognition and academic achievement became negligible when researchers focused on stronger experimental designs.
At the same time, newer research provides evidence that music training may improve specific executive functions, particularly inhibitory control, with some studies also finding benefits involving working memory, planning, attention, and cognitive flexibility.
That's a much more nuanced conclusion than:
“Music makes you smarter.”
But I think it's also a more interesting one.
Learning an instrument asks students to focus.
Listen.
Coordinate.
Remember.
Make mistakes.
Analyze those mistakes.
Practice deliberately.
Tolerate frustration.
And gradually turn something they cannot do into something they can.
Will learning guitar automatically make a student better at Algebra II?
Probably not.
But learning how to work patiently at something difficult until you improve?
That's a skill worth developing whether or not it ever appears on a report card.
