to think young children who are grade 8 in piano

[SnarfEggbert]

cannot really understand all that they are playing?

My dc is 6 and is taking his grade 2 (no stealth boast this is not a remarkable achievement), the step up from grade 1 to 2 is huge, so therefore to grade 8 must be extreme.

My dc is having to learn about dotted quavers being worth 0.75 of a crotchet and semi-quaver being worth 0.25 of a crotchet. And add semi-quaver's to minims and all sorts of fractional equations. And how 6/8 work etc. Now my dc can play the music, but is slower at the maths (and in class is classed as being advanced at maths) element of the music.

So these children who go through music rapidly at a young age, are they just taught the music without knowing really what they are playing? Or are they all maths prodigies as well?

And do they have theory of music as well, and the scales or just the music pieces?

[IvorHughJackolantern]

I can play piano up to grade 4. I have dyscalculia though so that was as far as I could get, I couldn't cope with the theoretical side of it at all.

[lljkk]

I would have thought it's about having a terrific ear & sense of rhythm which makes understanding the note differences quite intuitive, that's why young children can sometimes do it. I am terrible at rhythm & pitch, but am very good at math.

[IvorHughJackolantern]

I have a great ear, if I hear a piece of music I can re-produce it note for note most of the time. What I can't do is read music very well at all. You have to go in 'blind' in your grades and obviously the pieces get harder and harder so by the time I was looking into grade 5, and seeing the sorts of pieces I'd be given, I knew it was time to bow out. Hence why I stopped with the exams and just settled for bashing about on it at home

[cory]

I was very far from a musical prodigy, but I certainly learnt the value of notes long before I knew about fractions in maths and so did everybody else in my family (middle class family where basic piano playing and singing to the piano was part of childhood). If you have a sense of rhythm you just hear it.

I also think imagination can do for life experience in many ways. After all, even great writers and composers haven't lived all the emotions they portray; they use whatever experience they have to imagine something different. Some people are very good at that even at a young age. And I don't think one should underestimate the level of emotional life that a sensitive and intelligent child is capable of.

[throckenholt]

I think you can make it mathematical - the basis of the scale is mathematical - but to actually read it and play it you don't need to. You just need to know x symbol is this long, y symbol is that long, and 2 x's is the same length as y (extended to match all the symbols). There aren't that many and it isn't too difficult to pick up. It isno harder than learning which line or gap corresponds to which note.