Musical Talent

[MusicMum80s]

My daughter is 7 years old and doing grade 3 piano. She seems to have a very good ear (maybe perfect pitch) and can play songs she's heard played only once by ear (melody and chords). Recently, she also likes to make up simple 16 bar songs (melody and simple chords) and play them for fun in D major or some other key.

I know she is clearly quite musical but how unusual is this really? Is there anything you'd do to support a child that was this musically talented.

Yes, that is fairly unusual, she clearly has a natural talent for it. Maybe ask her teacher whether there are any additional resources she could access.

I wouldn't make a big thing of it though, just let her enjoy herself.

My eldest and middle daughters are both considered to be 'young' for their standard, in the UK at least. The eldest is now 11 and taking her diploma later in the year. Next year she will attend a music boarding school, which seems to be full of kids like her, from all over the world. She's unusual for her current school, and probably in the top % of piano players for her age. My 7 year old is just about to take her grade 3. She's a very natural musician, learns quickly and has good technique. However, she hates performing in public. At the moment she plays purely for her own enjoyment. One day she may be more confident and share her music, but it seems her passion lies in gymnastics. Fortunately, their dad teaches them, so at least we aren't paying for lessons! We just let them follow their interests and give them opportunities to pursue them. Next year your child will be old enough to attend a musical academy at the weekend. Have you heard of the government's Music and Dance Scheme? It's worth looking into if she want to go further with her music.

It's fairly unusual but not exceptional. Nurture her interest and see where it goes but allow her to explore other interests too so young

Your daughter sounds brilliant to me. She obviously has an interest and a talent. My kids play music and hang around with a lot of other musical kids, and just being able to pick up chords like that by ear is really rare.

In the first place, if she will let you, make lots of recordings of her playing and her songs - what a treasure :) You might at some point see if she's interested to explore ways to record or write things down herself, whether music notation paper, or our kids use an app called garage band at school, or there's a more notation based free notation software called muscore she could try out. Of course don't push anything, just offer possibilities and see what she grabs at.

Then you might look around for other opportunities locally to see if she wants to explore music in different directions.

Is a second instrument something she might be interested in/you might be able to fit in? She's a great age and stage for adding a band or orchestral instrument if that's what she wants. Or if her interest lies more that way, it might be joining a choir or a musical theatre group. Or a DJ-ing workshop or a rock band week.

There are endless possibilities and it really depends what she's interested in - or if she's just happy doing more of what she's already doing for now, it sounds like it's working great for her after all.

Don't feel you have to rush at it. When she was 8 DD's clarinet teacher told me she was very musical, but she didn't practice so stop regular lessons at 10. She sung in a choir and again I kept being told she was musical. At 14 she started singing lessons.
She is now in professional musical theatre training (I was told the same about dance).
Encourage her to enjoy music if she wants lessons that's great, but if she doesn't don't panic if they have talent it will shine through.

Add another instrument! It'd give the opportunity to join ensembles which provides a whole new experience. Where in the country are you? Asking as some of the major symphony orchestras have youth choirs, choirs being another excellent outlet for the budding musician!

Fwiw she sounds a little like my dd. Musical giftedness showed itself at 2 when she commented that some music she heard sounded like other music she'd heard previously: she could hear stylistic similarities. I'm musical but that was in another league. She too could play chord progressions by ear at 7.

By 7 she was only around grade 1 on both violin and piano, so nothing earth shattering really. But then she started playing for HOURS on end every day.

She's 16 now and playing FRSM-level repertoire. Whether or not she ends up playing professionally I've no idea (she's says not but I suspect she's not fully against it) but she's phenomenal.