Music tuition

[Lorelai]

Does anyone have any thoughts on starting children on music (instrumental) lessons? How old, what instrument, group or indiviual lessons etc? I'd like DD1 to learn but not sure when/how to start.

In our school lessons are offered in connection with an external music school from Year 1. They offer piano, cello and violin.

In Year 2 all children learn the recorder as part of the school curriculum.

DD started with violin in Year 1, she was just 5 and her teacher said she was the youngest she ever taught. She is still loving it but it requires at least 5x a week practice at home.

Lots of her friends started the piano. Also some friends outside her school started piano when they turned 5 or 5 1/2, private lessons though as their school don't offer lessons until Junior.

Check with your school first. If they don't offer anything ask around your area, maybe parents with children older than your DD if they have lessons. We use a school who only teaches children, the teacher therefore have lots of experience and are very patient.

Also, if you live in a city there are usually lots of classes for little ones which are a good foundation for instrumental tuition eg ColourStrings.

The school website says lessons are available for a fee, but no more information (helpful!), the county council website says lessons are offered from primary school, usually in school, sometimes after school/at weekends. I'll check with the school as to what's available in school, but I'd like her to learn something other than the bloody recorder, just not sure when the best time to start is, or if there are positives/negatives to certain instruments.

Group lessons give a taste of what is like to learn a musical instrument, but the child won't learn much. I think that seven years old is a good age to start as a younger child might struggle with the displine of practice.

Do you have a Young Musicians group in your area? Ours run kindergarten groups for 5 to 8 year olds and introduce them to various instruments. Might be worth a look.

My son has done a group lesson on a Saturday from YR-Y2 - starting with singing, percussion and recorder and then adding keyboard, ukelele and guitar by Y2. He has only an extremely basic level of competence on any of the above but has learnt a lot about music and had a lot of fun. When he's completed the third year he'll have the option of small group lessons or individual lessons on one of the above instruments.
His school offer guitar or harmonica lessons in groups from Y2. We also have local music hubs funded by the council who have various ensembles for junior children upwards and they need to have had one term of individual lessons on an instrument to join.
I think 7 is often a good age to have the focus and concentration required to learn an instrument properly and to have some chance of actual practising as opposed to mucking about happening.

Private lessons are very expensive - the group is a nice way to have a taster before they are ready to take an instrument seriously. Ours is about £6 an hour.

Our school offer them from year 2 upwards as group lessons. The fee is £15 a term - it used to be free, but they found that the cost (to hire the instrument) made it more likely that the children were made to practice at home.
I think instruments like trumpet, clarinet etc prefer adult teeth to be present first.

My dd1 started accordion in school. All 3 of my dc have piano lessons at home. We've paid for further violin (dd2), accordion (dd1) and drums (ds) out with the home and dd2 has recently started the term of free Clarsach lessons in her school.

It's the one thing I don't mind scrimping for, we pay £70 a week for music but it's worth it!

i looked into this for our ds in yr.
colourstrings had a massive waiting list and was a big commitment to a certain philosophy.
individual instrumental lessons seem too early.
we opted for a group musicianship class and will stick with that for a couple of years if all is well.
it hopefully will take the pressure off if he decides to learn an instrument as he will have the music basics already learnt.
i googled for musicianship classes or kindergarten music to find our class

The child needs to learn the instrument they are interested in. despite us not having a piano, ds was adamant that that is what he wanted to learn. We had a little guitar lying around but he never touched it and he briefly tried violin as that is what the school offered. He had always enjoyed his piano lessons and has never once asked to give up now he has hit the teenage years. He refuses to take exams but he is happy playing.

How old is she? What is she interested in ? Our local music service do come & play evenings when you can go and try out as many different instruments as you want, so the child is making an informed choice.

Ds1 has been learning piano since the beginning of yr3, he has private lessons at school.

He really hit his stride with it in Yr4, just a maturity thing I think.

He's about to start trumpet too God help us

She has just started Year 1, will be 6 in January. It does seem a bit young, but she is really on keen on 'learning' generally (she loves the increased focus on learning rather than playing this year), and is always keen to do her reading and homework, so I think that starting sooner rather than later would be good, take advantage of that attitude and hope it applies to practice as well. She has been asking to learn the violin for a while now (at least a year), but I don't know if that is too difficult an instrument to start on (I learned piano, viola and steel drums at various points and I definitely found viola hardest).

Musicianship classes sound interesting, I will google and see if there is anything like that here. Although I would prefer her to do it in school time if possible, mainly because she does quite a few activities already and the afternoons are getting full!

While you're looking into options you could do note-reading practice with her yourself and perhaps teach her the recorder so she can practise playing to a steady beat etc without too many physical/technical demands on her.

I would recommend 'Chester's Puzzles' for her to do. You can get them online.

You could also teach her sol-fa and clap along to music counting the beats in the bar.

Did you move from a violin to a viola? Your DD would still need a half-size instrument. (Sorry if you know that already.)

Poor recorder again! It gets such bad press because it's often taught badly and in too large a group to support the children properly.

Played at a high level, it's a fantastic instrument with a rich and varied repertoire. I recently had the good fortune to hear it being played at Conservatoire level; if only everyone could hear that, they'd understand that it's not just a plastic squeaky instrument of torture!

I'd second the idea of trying to find musicianship classes, and let your DD experience as many instruments as you can manage. TV, youtube, buskers in town, concerts, etc. They will all help her understand the range of possibilities and she might find one she really feels is for her.

www.amazon.co.uk/The-Right-Instrument-Your-Child/dp/1409138127/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381319597&sr=8-1&keywords=atarah+ben+tovim
I think this book is well worth borrowing from the library. I found the comments about types of DCs and what type of instrument they might suit very true. My DD played clarinet, violin and flute.

I have thought about starting to teach her the keyboard myself, just so she gets an idea of how to read music etc, but I just have no idea how to get started - it's like teaching a different language - I can speak it (to a point), but trying to explain it to someone else just seems impossible. Hats off to music teachers.

I never played violin, just started straight onto viola when I was about 8 or 9, on a full size instrument (I was quite tall as a child so it wasn't an issue). I had been learning piano for a while, so could read music, my issue with viola was that I don't have good pitch, so couldn't hear when I was slightly off the note. At least with piano/keyboard/recorder etc the notes are a bit less ambiguous!

I'll look into those books/links that have been recommended, does anyone have any suggestions for books to help me teach her to read the notes/start playing them on a keyboard? She does ballet so already has a good grasp of rhythm etc.

The Chester's Puzzles are worksheets which deal with the very basics of notation - treble and bass clef.

They also do tutor books for piano.

Also, the Piano Time tutors (Oxford) Pauline Hall are good though the print is a little bit smaller than the Chester's,

Ten Fingers are good too.

Hi Lorelai -

I have only just come across your 'thread', so sorry I'm late!

As a primary school TA I taught recorder for ten years, starting in Yr2 (when fingers are big enough to cover the holes!). I also ran a Yr6 keyboard club, and coached Yr1 and Yr2 on percussion, so children could accompany the Christmas production each year.

I assume you already have a keyboard or piano, so I would certainly think the easiest and cheapest thing would be for you to start her off yourself. Our DS started 'playing' on our Yamaha organ when he was a few months old, and had to be held so he didn't fall off the stool. By age 4 or 5 he was starting to play tunes from the Kenneth Baker books. He went on to play recorder, trombone, alto sax (his main instrument) in his secondary school big band, and also in the county jazz band.

So I think the younger a child can be exposed to some form of music making the better, but it should be the child that sets the pace and 'agenda', and not be pressured into taking Grades unless they want to.

I will try and come back in a day or two with more information on how to set about teaching DD yourself, but for now I will just say I think, at first, the PLAYING is more important than learning to read music; and if its an electronic keyboard with built-in 'tuition' features (lights, etc) try to resist using them at first.

Good luck.

Yes my DD badgered me to let her play the violin at 5 ... I'd bought a piano so wasn't errr especially keen! We still have it sitting in the front living room and its rarely played :0 She's now 14 and still playing the violin and doing music GCSE. Still needs to be reminded to practise sometimes though a new teacher has breathed new life into her ... she loves playing in the orchestra which is the bonus of a string instrument or woodwind over the piano. On the piano's side, it sounds a lot nicer quicker ...!

Hi -
Are you still following this thread?

Can you confirm whether it is Piano or Keyboard you are thinking of teaching her, and if it is Keyboard, is it full size keys (and ideally 61 of them)?

If you can answer that, then I will try to give more info by PM.

Hi Lorelai:

Our school tends to exclude Class R from formal music lessons (although I hasten to add they do a lot of music (singing/ playing instruments) in class.

At the end of Year R notes go round inviting parents to put their child forward for the council's peripatetic music programmes (violin, cello & brass instruments are offered).

For DD2 - she was very interested in the violin from a very young age so was very keen in Y1 to be put down. The teacher/ school decided she was a bit young but when we applied again end of Y2 - she was accepted into the programme. The school does part-subsidize lessons but we pay £7 a lesson as well.

The school introduced free music lessons for the entirety of Y4 - but that's it - after that if they're interested it is up to you to go out and find a teacher for the instrument they teach. They don't even give suggestions to parents on who can offer private lessons for the instrument when Y4 classes conclude.

(The cynic in me sees this as the school ticking the box that all children are taught an instrument without necessarily putting much thought/ effort into thinking about how to support a child who really wants to learn the instrument).

I think they should wait until they are 7.
For something like piano, you need to be a fairly good reader too - you are doing one thing with one hand, something different with the other, and following one 'line' of music for each hand - it's not a skill to be sniffed at.
For brass instruments they need to be able to form the right mouth shapes. Same for woodwind. For many instruments they need to have the finger reach (ie, big enough hands). For others they need to have their adult teeth come through. For all they need to have the concentration span to cope with the lessons and practice, in addition to their school day and reading or whatever they do at home. It's a big ask of a child still in Infant school.

For music to be successful, I think, you need a balance of individual lessons, group playing and home practice. The piano is a lovely instrument, but it is a solitary one (you never really play in a group). For a lot of children when they are young, the motivation to keep going comes through making music together. I would say that you need one 20min individual lesson a week, one or two groups to play in and two or three sessions of home practice a week for it to really take off.
And I do believe in nagging them to do practice at home, as it then pays off for them when they play in a group.
If your child becomes really serious about music, they will need both piano and their chosen instrument to take it further.
Personally, I would avoid the recorder.