Music Lessons For Kids

Miss Mary Mack started piano lessons this week. The piano's been in my family for maybe 25 years now, a Kawai upright that I took lessons on. It's survived a couple moves and a couple kids plunking relatively aimlessly (if joyfully) on the keys. Miss Mary Mack's wrapping up second grade, so we thought now was a good time to start and see how she likes it. She's sung in church choir and done other music-related activities, but this is the first time she's had an instrument with daily practice as her task. She's taken to practicing with gusto, but it's only the first week and so I know that's indicative only of the newness of the activity and nothing else.

I know a number of readers here have kids of similar age (or slightly older) and I'm wondering how the music-lesson process went for you. Was it painful for your kids from the start, or has it been completely wonderful for them? What was hard for them? War stories, success stories, weird stories -- share 'em if you'd like down below in the comments.

(As for Little Boy Blue, I'm happy to report that this morning he amused himself by singing a number of songs to himself, so perhaps music lessons are in his future a couple years down the road. Of course, I could've done without the music at 5:20 AM...)

Comments

[SD_Mikey]

My daughter started piano lessons from Yamaha's music program when she was almost 5. One of the nice things about the Yamaha program is that the actual lesson is done in a group setting. They also throw in some singing, dancing, and rhythm to complement the piano.

The class part has always been fun for my daughter, but practice is sometimes a struggle. A year into the program, my daughter now sees that the practice has paid off because she is able to play pretty well. This has made the classes a lot more fun for her. Of course, there are still days when practice induces fits of crying, but she gets over those after a bit.

Now what is really neat to see is my daughter sit down at the piano on her own and just play for fun.

Good luck with the lessons!

[Katy L]

I can echo a lot of what SD said about her daughter with my two daughters. With both of them it was hard for the first 3-6 months--younger on the piano (conventional lessons), older on the harp (Suzuki Method). But once they could play a few songs on their own it became its own reward. Now they relish the challenge of a new piece. Most of the time.

A requirement of Suzuki is that the parent sits in on every lesson and then becomes the teacher between lessons; also, because it's an inductive method (learning songs by ear, then introducing music reading/theory) we're supposed to listen to a CD of harp songs 2 hours/day. We almost never reach our quota of 2 hours (too much other great music to listen to--thanks to you, Stefan!). But it has helped. We've noticed older daughter has gotten much better at her pitch when singing.I think a lot of how it goes depends on two things:how much the family supports it and participates with them; and each child's personality.

Oh, and the coolest thing ever happened in the past month. Both girls learned the same song in the same key ("Lightly Row"). The piano teacher transposed a harmony piece for our budding piano player, and now they can play a piano/harp duet. It's absolute heaven for me and their Dad to listen to!

Good luck with Miss Mary Mack. I bet she'll do great!