Holiday piano times

Many music teachers who teach children don't offer lessons during the school holidays, and for us this brings its difficulties and its pleasures. I'm not the most confident Suzuki parent so continuing practice times without a teacher's assessment of progress and her guidance tends to leave me worrying that I'm doing everything wrong. On the other hand we are also less constrained by the teacher's direction on what should be done.

Holidays bring a relaxing of tight schedules and an element of  freedom over the direction that practice takes. I try to reassure myself that even if I fail to spot errors or take my son down the wrong path, the teacher can always correct my mistakes when lessons recommence. I don't have to be perfect!

We have reincorporated a listening task/game that we used to do when my son first started to play. His teacher calls it note hunt. In its original form, the child chooses a particular note, say for example C. Then he or she turns their back and the parent plays a C. The child then has to guess which C it was. The reward can be a decreasing number of points according to how many guesses the child needs, or gold, silver or bronze medals (imaginary!). Three tries is normally sufficient.

My son loved playing this game and awarded himself increasing numbers of points, trying to beat previous scores. (Basically, anythng that temotely resembles a computer game is a major motivator for him.) Of course, the idea is that it helps the child learn to concentrate on differentiating between the notes. My son ended up giving himself millions of points for a first time correct guess.

Just recently we've been playing a slightly different version where he chooses any key and he has to guess which note I've  played in that key in a particular octave. We're doing this because at the moment he's learning the different scales. As always, his knowledge is greater than mine and he has to show me which notes are played in that key in the first place, but we manage. In fact, I think he takes pride in the fact that he knows the keys better than me.

So, we're currently enjoying this opportunity to our own thing for a little while.

Listening and watching

We've recently incorporated a new item in my son's piano practice time. He loves going on the computer, so I thought that an opportunity to embed some computer time into practice would be seen in a positive light. The way I did it was to add a listening section, where he can go to the computer and choose one thing to watch on Youtube. Of course, I have to steer him away from Sonic the Hedgehog episodes, so he has a set category that he can search in. So far, we have done famous composers and famous pianists. Famous composers lasted us a few weeks as he worked through the ones that he knows. (He can choose one each week, so he sees a selection of their works).

One thing he really likes to watch are these graphical representations of the pieces:

They're called graphical score animations. I can't vouch for the quality of the music, but as something that may be of interest to more visually-oriented minds, I can recommend them. They're interesting because you can see what's about to come up just before it's played. My son has great fun anticipating a loud crescendo!

Once we've exhausted the known composers and pianists (our knowledge isn't extensive), we'll move onto the different types of music: sonatas, nocturnes, concertos etc. Another possibility is pieces in a chosen key. Those should keep us going for a while. At the moment this is the most enjoyable part of my son's practice. Once he's done what he has to do, some form of Twinkle, the next thing he always chooses is listening. In doing this, he's quickly building his musical knowledge, and hopefully coming to appreciate that there's a wide world of music out there to explore and participate in.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

The process by which we learn a new skill is still something of a mystery to scientists. I've been reading this book recently: The Genius in All of Us. It's quite a cheesy title for what is a very interesting book, about the respective roles of genes and environment in shaping our abilities as we grow. One thing that's clear from reading it is that there is still so much that is unknown about exactly what it is that makes us so different from each other in the things we can and can't do, and the extent to which we're able to practise those abilities.

It seems, according to the author, David Shenk, that much of what we believe to be determined by genes, such as intelligence, talent and personality traits, are shaped much more by our environment and experiences than we are aware. Mr Shenk cites numerous example of people who are believed to have God-given gifts, who in fact won their supreme achievements through favourable environments and sheer bloody hard work.

Yet exactly what's happening in the brain during the period of learning and honing those skills, and how the brain responds to what's happening in the body, is nowhere near clear to those working on those mysteries. What is known, is that prolonged periods - the current thinking is 10,000 hours - of dedicated practice of the desired skill will result in mastery of it. It's important to note that it must be the right kind of practice. Mindlessly going through the routine won't do it. It must be the kind of practice where the person either pushes themselves or is pushed constantly into new challenges. Never complacent, the student must reach constantly beyond his grasp.

This was brought to my mind today as I was watching my son doing his Sunday Repetoire performance. Every Sunday he'll play through all the pieces he's learned, using a lucky dip of lolly sticks with the song titles written on. For some reason, things fell into place today. He remembered and used most of the little polishing points that he's learned for each song, which for him is something of an unusual occurence. Usually he rather unthinkingly plays them through if he isn't prompted to try to remember.

What's got me puzzled is: why today? What was different about today that helped him to concentrate more? Or was it just that the penny had finally dropped, after practising those points so many times; that something had slotted into place in his brain; that enough hours had been done? When I figure out the answer to that I'll be phoning those scientists up.

We're currently working on a Kurtag book for reading. I have to confess that I'm a Philistine when it comes to this. I just wait for the pain to end and try to smile. My son is learning to read Let's Be Silly which occurs about halfway through this performance:

This is how it looks on the page:

Of course, my son loves to be silly, so has great fun with this. I appreciate our wise piano teacher's understanding of how to make music appeal to young children, but what about the parents, that's what I want to know. What about the parents?

Progress report

We're having good times at the moment. It's a school holiday here in the UK, which means that we can have piano time in the morning when my son isn't tired after a long school day. He concentrates much better, gets less frustrated and is more interested in what he's doing. We've also got a new practice sheet that shows a spider in a web!

As you can see, the practice points go around the outside and a portion of the web gets filled in as each point is covered. There are lots of flies caught in the web but the ones that are free are fighting for their friends with missiles!

We're working on learning the minor scales at the moment. My son learns them by starting with the first note, then working his way up by listening to what sounds right. As a non-musical person, it's quite amazing to me how one set of notes will sound right and even one out of place sounds wrong. I know there's an explanation for this but the fact is that even without knowing why, we can all independently and without having been taught, agree on what sounds correct and what doesn't. Humans are a quite remarkable species.

Bobby McFerrin demonstrates this to audiences regularly:

An added interest to practice is my son's teacher's use of this site: http://www.dropbox.com/ She uploads video demonstrations of practice points for her students to use. It's extremely useful to view these during piano time. Of course there's the novelty of doing something a bit different, but my son's piano teacher is the one who can play the piano, I can't. It's so much easier to simply show him a video than try to explain what the desired goal is.

I was really disappointed not to be able to get tickets to this:

World-renowned concert pianist Lang Lang invited children to audition to play in a special concert of fifty grand pianos on stage at once. Five hundred children sent in videos of themselves playing and one hundred were chosen. The title of the endeavour was 'Lang Lang Inspires'. I imagine all those children participating and watching the event will be enormously inspired to continue with their learning and enjoyment of music.

Inspiring children to compose

When children are learning to play an instrument, parents are often reluctant to let them just play around with it. They may be worried that the child may damage the instrument and many musical instruments, even beginner ones, can be quite expensive. They may also worry that the child may not take their studies seriously if they're encouraged to simply have fun. Yet I believe that composition and improvisation, or as your child will see it, simply playing, is one of the best parts of practice time.

One thing that I hope I've made clear throughout all my posts on this subject is that it's important that children practice mostly because they want to, not because they're being forced to. Now, of course there will be times when the child initially doesn't want to practice. That's understandable. I don't always want to cook the dinner, but once I've started I'm fine. So it may be that quite frequently a child will need a little nudge to begin with. Once they're into their practice session, though, ideally a child should be interested and enjoying it enough to put some effort into playing well.

One thing that can be the 'fun' part of practice can be simply playing the instrument by making things up. Children can then really experiment with sounds and the effects of how they play. They can let their imagination roam free and really express how they feel. (I have to confess there have been some times when my son has apparently been rather grumpy and fed up with practicing, according to what I've heard in his improvisations!) They can feel as though this part of practice is entirely under their control, and that it is something they're doing to please themselves.

Some children will baulk when faced with a carte blanche opportunity though. They need some sort of minimal guide, or some kind of starting point, to spark their inspiration. Some ideas for inspiring a child to compose are:

• Choose an animal and play the way it sounds. The parent has to guess the animal.
• Play a story with different characters (Peter and the Wolf is a great starting point for this idea)
• Choose five notes in an octave and play using only those notes
• Play with your hands crossed over
• Choose a favourite character and play their tune
• Play a particular emotion (or a series) again for the parent to guess
• Play the black notes only
• Use any part of your body to play - palms, forearms, elbows, forehead, feet
• If your child has a favourite musician or type of music, play like......
• A lucky dip of random words

As you can see, there are many ways to give a child ideas on composing their own music. Here's my son having fun:

It's important to always be 100% positive about your child's efforts. There is no right or wrong, after all, and it can be crushing to receive criticism for something you've created as a personal expression. I've found that over time my son's attempts have become more musical and coordinated without me imposing my advice. I think his compositions are one of the parts of his practice that he listens to most intently and learns the most from.

Composition

I came across this webpage recently, which discusses how to teach composition to piano students. It occurred to me, is it really necessary or possible to teach composition? Can we actually teach people how to be creative? I think there are often attempts to do this - courses on teaching people how to write fiction, or how to paint - but ultimately what actually happens is that the student is taught how to mould their efforts into an already recognised and accepted structure. What is taught is convention, not how to create something new and different, nor how to express that unique individual's persona.

We always incorporate composition into my son's practice. Depending on his mood, this can form the largest or smallest part of the session. Sometimes he'll really enjoy himself and create something pleasant to listen to, other times you can clearly hear him saying 'why do I have to do this again!' through the keys.

Of course, it isn't enough just to say to a child: right, compose something. For a start, if composition hasn't been built into practice sessions right from the beginning, the child will be confused. They will be used to learning how to play other people's songs, which, once they've mastered them, sound quite good. Faced with the prospect of playing something of their own, they might not know where to start. Also, some children (and some adults!) find creating something from a blank slate quite daunting. How will they know if what they're doing is right?

The answer to that is there is no 'right'. If a person expresses themselves in some kind of creation, who are we to say whether it is 'correct' or not. It simply is. Whether it's beautiful, or pleasing, or meaningful to others are the questions that we can attempt to answer, if we want to, but there is no need to take that path with children's exploration of music until they want to.

Trying to convince a child of this is not always easy, though. Children are brought up to obey, follow instructions and learn. We try, often as part of 'good' parenting, to suppress their natural impulses. This is a great shame because children are the most naturally wonderful creators of all human beings, in their play and discovery of the world around them. This is why I believe that allowing them free rein on the piano during composition is paramount. If the child's natural impulse is thwarted, what they're doing ceases to be a true expression of themselves and instead, like so many aspects of children's lives, becomes another thing under the control of an adult.

In our efforts to make learning the piano something that children enjoy and want to do, we can use composition as an opportunity to hand control over to them completely. Some children may find this daunting, but there are ways we can spark them off and help them feel safe that I'll talk about in my next post.

Emotional ups and downs

Had an interesting practice today. One of my goals with my son is to encourage him to listen to himself as he plays, and to take some ownership of his learning. I think it will be an important step for him to take control. I'd really like him to feel as though he's doing this for the enjoyment that he gets out of it, and a sense of satisfaction and achievement. It's probably a lot to ask of a seven year old who, let's face it, would rather be on the computer for most of his waking day, given the choice!

Anyway, today we were working on The Happy Farmer so I had another bash at this little plan of mine, and asked him to listen out for ways he could make it sound even better. We often do this and he resists - he doesn't like thinking about anything, he just wants to play and have fun - so I usually end up making suggestions. Today I persisted, though, and hit upon the idea of asking him to play a part of the song in two different ways, then decide which one sounded better and think about why that was. Success! After a little to-ing and fro-ing he decided he could play the chords on the left hand more legato and that would sound better.

Now I'm interested to see what happens tomorrow - will he be better at remembering this little piece of polishing because he thought of it himself? We'll see.

Not all was so good, though. As happens quite often when he's learning a new reading piece (Petite Berceuse in Methode Rose) he felt daunted and overwhelmed and became a little teary. He always manages to play whatever he attempts eventually, though admittedly sometimes it takes quite a while; so I don't really know why he feels this way. This initial feeling makes his final success sweeter I think, but I'd rather he didn't feel this way at all. Hey ho, children are creatures of the moment, I suppose.

To finish, his piano teacher has recommended this performance as an inspirational piece for young piano students:

It'll be a while before we get to this level!