Piano for Children

 Piano for Children

 

The starting point in private piano lessons with a child who has maintained and developed their natural musicality before beginning private lessons  

is quite different than the starting point with a child who has not been exposed to songs, dances and instrument play in early childhood.

If you have dreams that your child will become a pianist, then I recommend starting early but not with formal private instruction.  


Begin early with parent/child music classes that incorporate movement and singing and playing instruments.  

If you have dreams that your child will love the piano, then make sure there is a piano in your family!    

Find a piano or keyboard that can live with you in your home.

I have been so fortunate that many of the students who currently study piano privately with me began their music education in my Orff classes before they were 2 years old.

The benefits of involvement in baby & toddler music and movement classes are HUGE!

1. Children develop a sense of rhythm and ability to audiate before they begin playing piano.


2. We build confidence in approaching all variety of instruments and in being in musical situations.


3. We play percussion from around the world; shakers, scrapers, metals and drums.


4. We try violins, cellos, guitars, ukuleles, banjos, dulcimers and harps.


5. We hear wind instruments from all varieties of whistles through recorders, harmonicas and some common band instruments like the clarinet.


6. I create and incorporate activities that engage babies in noticing symbols for sound and pitch.  They LOVE this!


7. We move our bodies to music feeling every type of meter, a variety of tempos and also show dynamics of music.


8. We engage in creative movement using language to describe how we are moving our bodies.


9. We play social circle games that teach us musical and social skills simultaneously.


10. In addition, these early group experiences develop a natural sense of music-making within a group of people.  We learn to take turns, stop and start together, feel tempo and show dynamics with our bodies and with instruments as a group.  We develop a sensitivity to the idea of making music in community.

No More Saturdays...

Merci de Nathan!   (Nathan speaks French!)

Au Revoir!
Today was my last "teaching" Saturday...ever...well for at least a year or two!   

I predominantly teach classes at my studio and over the past few years, my private teaching schedule has grown...and grown...and grown...and taken over my evenings and much of Saturday and any little pockets of time in between classes.   

I decided that next year I wanted to carve out a little more family time in my schedule so I would let go of my evening and weekend teaching schedule and most of my private students.

 

Nathan playing and singing his good-bye song for me. 

 

Nathan's good-bye was one of the sweetest good-byes, especially considering he didn't even like music before he started his lessons with me in January.

Mom wanders in to Musicalia...
I met his mom just before Christmas when she wandered into my studio looking for donations for her youngest daughter's preschool fund raising auction.  I donated private lesson time.

She told me that both her husband and herself had taken lessons as children and didn't want that experience for their children.  After speaking with me and my philosophy about music for children she decided to bid on my gift of lessons.  She won the bid and after Christmas we started lessons with her 7 year old son, Nathan.

Nathan's love of music has a chance to sprout...
It's been pretty spectacular to watch this little boy's lights literally turn on as he sits at the piano.  He has realized how easy it is to make music and have fun doing it.  

He told his mom to tell me that he never liked music at school before he met Susan, but now that I've been his teacher, he is even is beginning to like music at school. 

He figured it out on his own!
What is so amazing to me is we only had time to experiment with writing chords for the left hand. (I call them "bridges" and "buddy notes".)  His lessons were only 15 minutes long so we really had little time to write much!

He did learn to read some treble clef, but we didn't have time to try writing melodies at all. 

His mom drew a 5-line staff for him and he figured out how to write this little tune and play it all on his own.  Honestly, I hope a traditional music teacher doesn't get hold of him!    He has so much creativity and natural talent that traditional methods might curb his enthusiasm. 

Thank YOU, Nathan!  It's been a blessing to be your music teacher:) 

Online Ear Training Program

Jenny over at  The Teaching Studio has a post today about an online ear training program.

She uses it in her piano studio.  I thought it sounded fun and am linking to her blog today because the good folks at EarTrainingPro.com are giving her one to give away!  

I'm hoping for a chance to win myself as I have several students who would benefit from playing with this.

If you'd like to put your name in the draw, just visit her site here and leave your name in the comments section for a chance to win.

Good luck:)

Online Piano for Preschoolers - Susan's Review of KinderBach

Have you ever heard of KinderBach?

It's a piano program for preschoolers that is available online at KinderBach .com and can also be shipped as a package to your home.  There are packages for use at home and also for preschools and daycares.  I watched the videos available to families but do not know what is offered for preschool centers.  If you run a preschool, maybe you'd like to check it out.

Meet Dodi the Donkey from KinderBach!

Now, I haven't used this program with children but I am always interested in programs that use modern technology and animation.  I can not see myself using any of them for many reasons...most of them being lack of "musicality" and "healing" reasons.  (I think of healing as "wholing" or "making whole" or "whole learning".) 

Except...

I think there are many families that could make good use of these kind of home-study programs with their children. With a "daypass" from KinderBach you can watch and listen to almost every lesson available for one day.  I did this.  (yes...I probably could have found things more interesting to do on a Sunday...but this is what I ended up doing...and it was fun:).

Here's my initial take on the home program:
Pros

1. I think many children (preschool and primary ages) would love this kind of fun, animated, colorful program.
2. Inexpensive due to the fact you revisit and rewatch any lesson at any time and several children can watch the lessons simultaneously.
3. Inexpensive due to the fact parents can provide a small electronic keyboard or even a paper keyboard to start .
4. Lovable characters that help to teach every concept from beat, rhythm, melody, notation
5. Some catchy tunes/arrangements.
6. PDF downloads for children to color that support concepts taught on the online video.
7. It's a discovery program not a performance program which keeps learning fun and playful.
8. Excellent alternative for parents who are housebound (for whatever reason) with small children and can not get out the door to a real teacher.
9. The child does need an adult to assist with organization of some materials.  I think this is a good thing.  For some parents this will be a con!
10. I enjoyed Karri Gregor.  She is the creator and voice behind the lessons.  I like her pink crocs!
11. Lessons progress very slowly and for most young children this will be great.
12. Excellent method to convey extremely basic music theory concepts regardless of what instrument you are learning.
13. Offers a more valuable way to spend time in front of screen than watching most children's TV shows. 
14. Even adults could learn about music with this program. My husband was riveted by Dodi the Donkey and his home in between the 2 black keys.  :)
15. There is an introduction to composing through "Bach Talk".
16. I LOVE finger football...the coaches help children learn about fingering...it made me laugh!

Cons

1. My personal dislike of the kind of electronic music in this program is that there is nothing really "healing" about it.  My husband asked to turn off the sound after a few minutes...so I used headphones...but even I turned off the sound and ended up reading some of the lessons.  
2. Acoustic learning offers something that is just unavailable with modern technology at this point.  So this program doesn't fall into my sense of acoustic instrumental learning.
3. To complete this program you have to sit with a computer screen or TV.  The physical vibrational and emotional effects of sitting with a real person (as opposed to a computer or TV) are healing (even if you don't think you need any "healing") and unless an attentive (key word here is attentive) parent sits with the child during the whole program you don't get this healing with the program.
4. To complete this program you have to sit with a computer or TV.  The physical vibrational effects of touching and hearing an acoustic keyboard are healing (even if you don't think you need any "healing")  and you don't get this with the screen program KinderBach.
5. The immediate feedback a child receives from a real teacher just can not be offered by a computerized program
6. No real experience improvising or playing in real time with a real musician.  All those non-verbal cues and emotional learnings are most effectively learned from a real person and are some of the most valuable skills a musician can possess.  Children improvise right from their very first lesson if I'm involved.
7. Learning to play piano this way is primarily a "visual" learning and not so much "auditory" learning.

Would I recommend this to parents?

More Pros than Cons according to my review EXCEPT for me the cons carry more weight than the pros.  I will definitely tell the parents at my studio (even parents of my piano students) about this program.  It may be interesting to some of them and a nice resource to have in the house...rather than watching TV.  I  know it's not going to be that attractive to them though.  They are choosing to make the effort to leave their homes so their children have the opportunity to spend.time.with.me. 

If you are a teacher...I recommend letting as many people as possible know about these programs because it gives so much more value to the developmental-people work you are doing and that you are excellent at doing!

Learning technique and theory are valuable and really can be conveyed by machines and computer programs but the intangible learnings seem to be absorbed by hanging out with real people.  

Ever wonder why piano is always offered in these kinds of computerized children's programs and not violin? harp? cello? ocarina?   

I think it's because piano can be taught visually and music theory is easier to teach with visuals.  Often the most musical musicians don't play piano...they've had to learn music with their ears and hands not as much with eyes.  

Just interesting to me!

Playing a Paper Piano

Recently I read about a young gifted pianist who first learned to play piano on a paper piano.

This gifted young pianist from Algeria 

was written up in Canada's, Globe and Mail.

Yes, learning to play on a paper piano means a piano keyboard drawn onto a piece of paper.  The paper lays flat on a tabletop and the child plays on the table...no sound.

This is a commercially-produced paper piano... 

I have a feeling Mr. Ghazi (above) had a hand-drawn one though...and look how far he has come!  

I did have a piano student once who learned this same way.  

The only time he heard his pieces were the days he had a lesson with me at my studio on my piano.  The rest of the week he played his tabletop paper piano.  His progress that year was comparable to children who played on real pianos at home.  

It was not my expectation...I mean...would you expect a child to make much progress when they can't even hear what they are playing?  Amazing...

I know another pianist (he loves to play Chopin) who first learned on a paper piano.   His first year learning to play as a little boy was on a paper keyboard at home.  He only played a real piano at his lessons.  He is a grown man with children now and has a real piano. 

I wonder how many other children there are out there who play on paper pianos?

Playing Piano

I'm into a new book and loving it.

Actually, it was published in 1978, so it's not new-new but it's new to me.  It's been sitting on my shelf for 2 years and today I had a chance to open the cover and dig in.

Jazz Improvisation for Keyboard Players 

(Complete Edition) 

by Dan Haerle

I played for an hour through pages 1-12, creating melodies, improvising with chord tones and scale tones.  It was relaxing and satisfying.  

Next week my lessons with tweens and teens will be infused with some of this.   I'd like my students to experience this relaxed feeling and I think this is a way to get there.