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!

Where we are now

I realised recently that a lot of my time posting on this blog has been spent relating many of the things that have helped me support my son with his learning, and trying to explain the rationale behind much of what we do. Yet when I started writing another of my main intentions was also to record and share the process with others.

So where are we now? We are busy, as always, polishing and honing the songs my son already knows, which is all of Suzuki Piano Book 1, and the first two songs of Book 2. The links are to later versions of the books we actually use. In our, older, versions, Mrs Kataoka plays the pieces. My teacher prefers her playing to later versions because Mrs. Kataoka was taught by Suzuki himself.

The piece my son is currently learning is The Happy Farmer by Schumann. Here is a youtube video of a little girl playing it:

This is a standard piece for students of musical instruments and I particularly like it. For my son, it marks his movement into more complex pieces than the simpler, nursery rhyme-style songs.

This piece has a particular significance for him though. It's also one of the tunes to the film Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. As soon as he heard it on the CD he recognised it immediately. "It's Ponyo on the Cliff!" he shouted. A lot of his motivation to learn the other songs has been driven by his desire to learn to play this one, and his first rendition of the melody (he has still to play both hands together for this song) was great. It demonstrated to me how much of an effect the student's feelings have on performance.

I think it also shows how positive the effect is of a child having a reason to play, a reason supplied by themselves, rather than dictated to them by an adult. After all, very few children would choose to put in lots of hours learning to play an instrument if they had no reason to do so.

So for now we're going well, buoyed up by his pleasure in finally getting to a song he really wants to learn. My next task is to think of a good reason for him to learn the next song!

More tips for making piano practice fun

It occurred to me the other day, that, more than any other aspect of helping my child, the one thing I put the most time and effort into is making his practice sessions at best enjoyable and at worst bearable. For example, over the years I've collected various bright and interesting containers to keep cards, stickers and labels in. This is the first one we started with:

In the top drawer there are laminated cards with 'phrase 1, phrase 2' etc written on them. These are to help him learn songs piece by piece, breaking them down into manageable sections and making the process less overwhelming. His piano teacher informs me that this is a good skill to have: to be able to play a part of a song rather than starting from the beginning and working all the way through. This means that they can focus on just a segment of it at a time. But another advantage is that at those times when your child is feeling like it's all just too difficult, you can say: we'll just look at phrase(s) x today. Of course, yet another advantage is that you introduce an element of fun and interest by presenting them as a lucky dip.

Ah the lucky dip! Suzuki method understands the child's mind so well sometimes. Children want to play, they don't want to learn - or if they do want to learn, they want it to be fun. The times my little boy's motivation and interest has been brought back on track by the anticipation of what he's going to pull out of the lucky dip, I don't care to count. Is it going to be the one he likes, or the one he dreads? The easy one or the difficult one? Even the times that I've been tired, bored and stressed and I've been saying 'Come on, just choose one. It doesn't matter. You've got to do them all in the end anyway' (shame on me!) my son will still insist on making a big deal of which one he chooses, turning it over carefully to reveal............! He understands how interesting it is to anticipate what one he's going to pick, even if my sad adult mind loses track sometimes.

Some more lucky dip containers:

As you can see, they're ex-chocolate containers. One has laminated practice points in it and the other has all the scales that he currently knows (some better than others it has to be said).

If you look back to the first image of the mini-chest of drawers, you can see some lolly sticks in the middle drawer and some picture cards in the bottom one. The lolly sticks each have a song my son knows written on it. The picture cards are a legacy from when he was learning songs but couldn't read. He learned to associate the picture with the song. Some are quite obvious; for example, you can see a picture of a lamb, which represents Mary Had a Little Lamb. Others are less so, such as the picture of piano notes that stands for Suzuki's Allegro. It doesn't really matter what the picture is because the child will make the connection.

You may also be able to make out written on the picture of a lamb the words 'Balance Winner 2010'. This is the result of a competition the songs had last year as to which one could be played with the best balance in the hands. This is a good example of two more ways to make practice more enjoyable. The first is taking the focus off the child. My son's piano teacher is very good at doing this with young children. She will talk to their hands as if they were separate personalities from the child. Not only is this amusing for children, it also absolves them of any responsibility if things don't go well. It's their hands fault, not theirs. Silly hands! So the Balance Competition we held was between the songs, and not implicating my son's ability to play the songs.

The second way in which the competition makes practice more enjoyable is that it, as with the lucky dip, adds an element of interest and suspense. My son loves these competitions. I have to say that he isn't always the best judge when it comes to awarding merit, but he's interested and involved in his practice, and that's so important when you're asking a child to focus and repeat similar exercises day after day. Other things I do include writing down a guess as to which order he will play his Twinkles in, which he then checks to see if I was correct. He's usually extremely pleased to find that I was wrong! Or when he puts a sticker on his practice sheet, I'll close my eyes and guess which one it is. As an adult, it's quite marvellous sometimes to observe how important these little games are to him.

All kinds of surprising little things can spark a child's interest. Here are the gloves my son uses to play glissandos (sliding his fingers over the keys). He loves these gloves:

Of course, these are just things that have worked for us. Each child is different and what works for my son may be meaningless to another child. I think that's one of the greatest benefits I've experienced in going through this process: I've learned so much about my child and what makes him tick. We've also grown close through sharing the lows and highs of his endeavours. My ambition has never been that my child become a concert pianist, only that he does something that is really beneficial to his development both physically and emotionally, but along the way we've both reaped many other rewards.

Setting the Pace

One of the more difficult aspects of supporting your child in their musical journey is knowing how quickly or slowly they should be progressing. There are three people involved in setting the pace for learning: the teacher, the parent and, most important of all, the child. A few posts ago I wrote at length about setting up good habits and developing your child's motivation to play. One thing that has a significant influence on those habits and levels of motivation is your child's perception of what he or she is learning and how quickly.

Nothing will put a child off better than feeling as though they aren't making any progress, that no goals have been achieved. We all need rewards for our efforts, and a sense of achievement is one of the best rewards of all. However, feeling under pressure to progress faster than is comfortable can have a negative effect too. Putting undue pressure on your child may well make them feel that they have no control over their learning, that they're learning only to please others and not themselves, and also that, no matter how hard they try, it is never good enough because someone is always expecting them to do more.

Some of you may be thinking that it's good parenting to have high expectations of your children. After all, children will live up to those expectations, won't they? Also, what's wrong with doing something in order to make a parent or teacher happy? I agree that high expectations can lead a child to perform better and try harder because children are so easily influenced by what others think of them. Tell your child that they're no good and they won't try to be good any more - what's the point of trying to persuade someone who's made their mind up about you? Believe in them and they'll think it's worth believing in themselves.

The point where it's so easy to cross the line, though, is when you give your child the impression that they're learning to play the piano for you and not themselves. As I've said before, the best motivation is that that comes from within. How many of us didn't object to learning at school, only to learning what someone else told us to learn? How much natural curiosity and enthusiasm is destroyed by heavily controlled school curricula? (But that's another story!)

If, as a parent, you express impatience or frustration with your child's progress, as well as associating negative emotions with their learning, they will also feel that they're learning to please you and that you're difficult to please. What a dampener on motivation that must be! Similarly, if you push your child on faster than they naturally progress they'll not only fail to consolidate their new skills, they'll also experience feelings of confusion and ineptitude rather than mastery.

Of course, it can be difficult when your child is in a situation where they see other children who are apparently ahead of them, and let's be honest that as parents it's also a source of comfort and pride to us to know that our child is at least keeping pace with their peers. But the thing to bear in mind is that, as long as your child is practising regularly, they are improving their skills and they're adding more hours to the theoretical 10,000 hours required for mastery of a subject.

We once went through a difficult phase with my son's learning when a child who was a year younger than him suddenly had a period of accelerated learning and caught up to his own stage of progress. He found this very upsetting and it was so detrimental to his feelings about learning to play the piano that I seriously considered giving up. Luckily I turned to his teacher and the most effective piece of advice she gave was to ignore my son when he talked about his feelings of inadequacy compared to this other child. I did so, and when he insisted on an answer I just said that it didn't matter. This attitude turned the tide for us and I realised that by being sympathetic to his upset over this I had been unwittingly feeding into his perception that there was something be upset about.

Teachers can be as guilty as parents for destroying a child's motivation by implying that they aren't progressing quickly enough. I would say that if you have a teacher that doesn't praise your child for their effort alone as well as whatever other small achievements they make, then find another teacher. I am not saying that it's impossible to produce excellence through making a child miserable, but it isn't necessary either. The love of any subject is at least equally as good at producing the effort required to excell, and I think it goes without saying that it's by far the preferable route with no risk of burnout or collapse.

In short, the person who is best at setting the pace for their learning is your child. Of course there will be times when they plateau, and at that point it's important to keep the motivation going by setting simpler goals for them to achieve. There will also be times when they apparently rush through a stage and I think at these times it's best to let them go with it. You can always go back and polish pieces that weren't thoroughly learned. Allow them the pleasure of indulging their enthusiasm.

Playing the piano is a skill that's developed over years, and as long as they're practising playing well, the speed with which they learn the songs in their coursebook isn't important. There is so much more to praise and celebrate than the learning of a new song. Focus your praise on working hard and playing beautifully and allow your child to learn at their own pace.

More books and other aids

Books

Previously I talked about some of the books my son uses to help him learn to read music. Today I'm going to show you some other books that he uses for other aspects of his playing.

Most important of all are, of course, his Suzuki piano books. This is his current book:

Unsurprisingly, his first book was Suzuki Piano School Volume 1. He actually wrote on the front cover of this book 'by Bettey' when he was four. His teacher's name is Betty and he naturally assumed she was the composer!

It's worth pointing out that these books aren't as well thumbed as you might imagine. Suzuki students start off by listening copiously to the CDs of their books, then pick out the first tunes, the 'Twinkles', themselves by ear. All of the Book 1 songs are learned by ear, one hand at a time. It's only once learning and playing by ear is well established that they begin to learn to read music.

We're having a great time with Book 2. There are some catchy tunes in there, which makes hearing them over and over again more bearable. Also, by coincidence, one of them, The Happy Farmer, is the theme music to one of my son's favourite Japanese animated films, Ponyo on the Cliff. He's really looking forward to learning to play this one, and we're just about to start it.

There are also many simple children's books available for learning about musical notation. We've used this one: 

and its partner the Treble Clef Theory book. I like the simple activities for children in these books. Lots of little quizzes and cartoons to keep the child interested. They introduce the basics of musical notation without making it all seem very dry and boring.

Less interesting, but something you may well come across if your child is working towards conventional music awards are books such as this:

This covers much the same material, and more, and in greater depth, than the previous book, but, as I said, it isn't so accessible. I would advise using simpler and more enjoyable workbooks in the beginning at least.

A final book recommended by my son's piano teacher is The Manual of Scales, Broken Chords and Arpeggios. This has been invaluable to me as a non-muscial person in helping my son learn the correct fingerings for scales. He's currently learning them gradually but without this book to refer to I know I would forget what goes where, and it would be a waste of lesson time to relearn them.

Aids

 Perhaps even more motivating than an interesting workbook, here is one of my son's learning aids. (Sadly, this is emptier now than it appears in this photo). The simple reward of a sweet at the end of a practice session, or one for whatever target achieved, has been quite effective for us. These are only small sweets, but he has learned to associate piano practice with something nice and has tangible evidence of the positive consequences of putting some effort into something. This jar sits on top of the piano so also works as a visual reinforcement.

I have also found it worthwhile putting some effort into creating interesting practice records, which my son completes as he practises. I make roughly ten at a time and they each last a week, so I'm changing the design every two and a half months or so. My son works with me to create a new one and I deliberately include him so that he feels as though he's at least partly owning the process of his learning. Here are two we've used:

You will notice that Sonic and Mario are a recurring theme!

He puts stickers or a stamp in each task as it's completed.

We have pages and pages of these, going back years, and occasionally we'll look at them and marvel at all the hard work he's done.

Just lately I designed a new kind of practice sheet as a surprise for him, with dragons attacking his practice boxes. 

I hope this post has given you some ideas for things you can use with your own kids.