“I’m intensely passionate about cognitive development, personal agency & arts citizenship.”

About The Piano & Brain Connection

The field of neuro-musical research which studies musical experiences and music processing in the brain through direct brain imaging techniques, provides ample evidence that learning a musical instrument and its associated literacy supports the development of the brain and the formation of new synaptic connections across the corpus callosum.

The transfer and integration of cognitive, sensory and fine motor information required for learning new knowledge and skills associated with playing a musical instrument, stimulates these connections. The piano facilitates the equal and independent use of both hands and all ten fingers, across the entirety of music notation while facilitating knowledge acquisition via visual access, making it the ideal ‘go-to’ instrument which more easily leads to other instruments.

While these connections happen over an extended period of focussed effort and attention called ‘practicing’, the experience of ‘making music’, through ‘the hand-eye-ear feedback’ loop, begins immediately, thereby providing its own ‘reward mechanism’ for continued effort and attention – skills that are transferrable to other areas of learning and development, across the lifespan.

About Dr Grace Q.

In January 2021, I responded to a demand for piano lessons in the Nambour and surrounding areas, centred at Infinite Music teaching studios. My studio quickly grew to accommodate both in-person and online students, aged 8 to 78, all seeking to learn piano for a wide variety of reasons. In mid-2024, I further responded to a demand for piano lessons in the hinterland, centred at Montville State School and servicing students both at the school and in the community of the Blackall Range. Prior to 2021, I was . . .

An Art Music Specialist & Academic . . . when I harnessed my artistic sensibilities as a performer and academic to explore, re-vision and craft innovative approaches to my music practice.

A Special Parent . . . when I identified my roles as mother, carer, teacher, therapist and advocate, while my coping mechanisms combined with my research skills to became my tools for raising an interdependent citizen.

A Special Educator-Practitioner . . . I when I merged new knowledge and skills with my artistic, academic and special parenting experiences, honouring the potentials, ideas and agencies of my students.