Is Music the Key to Success?

This article studies the affect of music and how it can lead an individual towards achieving great success in their life. Studies have shown that music study is linked to academic achievement, but how is it correlated to success outside in other fields? Many well known people doubled as musicians as well. Woody Allen played the clarinet, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, Paul Allen, played the guitar, and the NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd, plays the french horn.

This phenomenon extends beyond the classroom. These high-achieving individuals have said that music “opened up pathways to creative thinking.” Music training has helped to sharpen other qualities as well: collaboration, the ability to listen, a way of thinking that helps to weave together different ideas. It has helped with “the power to focus on the present and the future simultaneously.” Chuck Todd put it, as years between practice and competition, it is the “drive for perfection.”

Shannon B.