Would like some thoughts about music lessons for my daughter (5yo)

[Rod S]

Gathering some thoughts from you about music lessons for my daughter (turned 5 last month)...

 

For now, I've just let her do some exploring on the piano, as well as the general music class she has at school.  She seems genuinely interested in different instruments (I ended up picking up a melodica since she was so fascinated by it!).  My time has been freer since May now that I have left my full-time job and can spend a bit more time going forward than I have in the past.

 

Some considerations

- I’m trying not to over burden her with activities.  Her school is 8am-3pm, and she does sport activities for 1 1/2 hrs each day at the club (what we call in Brazil a club is sort of a mix between a country club and a YMCA from what I saw in the US) between 4pm-5:30pm.   She has quite a bit of energy and is usually still wide awake until her bedtime. 

- I have the option of a 3pm-3:30 pm music class at her school.   (Last year her schedule was 30 minutes shorter at school, which allowed a 2:30pm-3:00pm class 2x a week which worked well). The 30 min time slide now make the logistics a little tighter, but doable.

- She did well with 'general' music lessons last semester.  We call it "Musicalização" in Brazil (I haven't found a good English translation, I guess music introduction or music habituation).   She enjoyed the exploratory exercises and getting to know different instruments.

- I'd rather have a teacher, and I'll spend time with her sporadically on evenings and on weekends (and so not teach her myself).  Right now, I try to focus on end of day fun activities - music exploration, reading (alternating between English and Portuguese), Legos (which is the daddy activity since she was very young - I guess I have LAS as well as GAS (Lego acquisition syndrome) and just playing / games. 

- I want her to stay with the sport activities.  Socially it has been great for her, and she enjoys them.    I suck at group sports, mostly my fault, but I think I would have benefitted with a little push in this regard when I was younger.   (My dad has a disability, so he spent a lot of time with us reading and playing games at home).   I like the fact that she sees sports and exercising a part of the daily routine (we have a gym at home and plenty of space now that we moved to house), which I never did see. 

 

 

I just want her to have fun.  She's shown an interest in singing and performing (like a lot of other kids her age).   My wish would be to see her, over the long run, building singing skills and some accompanying instrument for now, but mostly to put her in a path she can choose a direction. 

 

I'm looking for general thoughts to see where to go this semester.  I'm leaning to a piano lesson 1x a week 30 min, and see how it goes.  

[JamPro]

IMO - at that age (5 years) the main and important purpose of "music lessons" should be that playing an instrument is something that people can do and is fun.  It sounds like your daughter is already there, so any lesson should reinforce that.

 

At this age, seeing or hearing you play will be a big motivator for her.  And time you spend with her in fun musical activities (playing an instrument, singing, dancing, banging on pots and pans) will also encourage her.  IMO those activities right now are more important than formal music lessons (learning scales or reading music notes on a page, and such)

[MathOfInsects]

Yes, the two things that IMO every child should be exposed to are music and team sports. Sometimes music functions as a "team sport"--for example, a choir. 

If you can swing it, the 30-minute after-school music class is a great option for that age. It's social and leveled correctly, and if she wants to do more, you can add a private lesson (even 20 mins is fine at that age) down the line.

[mate stubb]

My mother was a piano teacher for 50+ years. Her basic test for judging if a child was ready for piano lessons was an ear test to see if the child can match pitches, and a finger strength check to see if they were strong enough to play piano.

[stoken6]

Related thought: my daughter started piano lessons at about 5-6 years old. After a while she wasn't enjoying it, and we let her drop it. 

 

Then Frozen came out. We heard hear quietly toddle to the piano and try and pick out C G C G C E D E (if you know, you know). We very deliberately didn't mention it for a few weeks, and then asked "do you want your brother's teacher to help you with that after his lesson?"

 

Long story short: she restarted lessons, now also playing violin and trombone, and has recently won a music scholarship at her secondary (high) school.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[RABid]

When I was young, going to piano lessons, then sitting at home, alone, practicing... That did nothing to encourage me to keep playing and getting better. Try to at least find some group lessons or group activities so she can participate with kids her own age.

[David Emm]

Buy her a Roland Jupiter-Xm! It will fit her hands nicely.

 

More seriously, I think you're on the right track: nudge her if she enjoys her musical doings, but never force it. Her best strength is that you're paying attention in the first place. Piano feels like the "best" place to start, because the layout and polyphony will give her a good foundation for many things, some of them outside music proper. I also stand by the idea of a small starter synth, because it would obviously open her ears, but the distraction of the novelty might be a bit much at age 5. I think your idea is a smart beginning. A 30-minute lesson will eventually show everyone involved what the next step(s) should be. Good post!

[bill5]

3 hours ago, RABid said:

When I was young, going to piano lessons, then sitting at home, alone, practicing... That did nothing to encourage me to keep playing and getting better. Try to at least find some group lessons or group activities so she can participate with kids her own age.

The traditional method of teaching piano is IMO horrid. Let's beat you to death with tedious exercises and music theory for months on end and you must practice those exercises 20 hrs a day and for your troubles you get to learn how to play Little Brown Jug and Oh Susannah....because we're prepping you to become the next Beethoven.

 

But almost all people taking lessons will never be anywhere near the next Beethoven no matter how much they practice...and couldn't give a rat's behind about becoming that anyway. As Billy Joel once said "most people just want to learn enough so they can play songs they like and have some fun with their friends." And there's nothing wrong with that. I get that there is work involved and anyone serious about it needs to get that, but you need to balance it with a legit payoff/reward along the way.

[mate stubb]

My mom evolved with the times. She went from one on one teaching to group piano. She bought a wurlitzer electric piano to go with her two Howard grands and 5 Everett uprights, and later owned a Roland digital piano with sequencer and GM module. Kids would rotate between time on the acoustic, playing Musicus on the computer, or recording themselves on those little micro disks.

 

Try to find teachers that offer variety.

[SteveNathan]

At that age, what matters most (imho) is to find a teacher who will nurture her love of music and not focus on fingering, posture, etc. I say this as someone who began weekly lessons w/a teacher at age 3. 

[Lou Gehrig Charles]

13 hours ago, RABid said:

When I was young, going to piano lessons, then sitting at home, alone, practicing... That did nothing to encourage me to keep playing and getting better. Try to at least find some group lessons or group activities so she can participate with kids her own age.

Absolutely!  I was a quiet kid and had a hard time meeting friends.  Group lessons or something like that would have been a revelation vs. the solo approach of walking to the teacher's house after school for my lesson.  I'd usually pass the student before me (a little girl half my age) in the foyer but even after 2-3 years of lessons I don't think any of us knew each other.

 

I think by design, the big social event for us was the annual recital, which I dreaded.

[Rod S]

10 hours ago, David Emm said:

Buy her a Roland Jupiter-Xm! It will fit her hands nicely.

 

More seriously, I think you're on the right track: nudge her if she enjoys her musical doings, but never force it. Her best strength is that you're paying attention in the first place. Piano feels like the "best" place to start, because the layout and polyphony will give her a good foundation for many things, some of them outside music proper. I also stand by the idea of a small starter synth, because it would obviously open her ears, but the distraction of the novelty might be a bit much at age 5. I think your idea is a smart beginning. A 30-minute lesson will eventually show everyone involved what the next step(s) should be. Good post!

I actually have a Jupiter-Xm. 😅

I do let her noodle on the synths....  she gets a blast.   For now I let it just enjoy it.  

Thanks for the feedback...  

[MathOfInsects]

It's always hard to find the balance between "helping kids sound cool," which is a huge motivator both personally and socially, and "properly" teaching the instrument so that if they do turn out to keep playing, the foundations are solid. You can't specifically teach for the drop-outs, you have to teach in some ways as if all your green-belts are going to go on to be blackbelts. So a careful balance between the method books--which work, and benefit from years of crowd-sourced refinement, but can be boring AF--and "fun" stuff is the sweet spot. 

But IMO the real weak link is parents. You can make most anything fun for kids if you're good with that age. They don't usually care what songs they are playing; the reductions never sound like "real" music anyway. They're almost always just happy to play anything that seems like a song, and that everyone seems proud of them for.

It's the parents who do the "If you don't practice piano you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't practice piano!?!?!" thing every day that turns the lessons into a punishment. The same ones always want to know why their 6-year-old isn't playing Rach 2 yet. They convey that sense of disappointment to their kids, and the whole endeavor starts to be a nervous-system crisis for the kids every day. 

So I always try to encourage parents to think of piano or music lessons how they think of soccer practice (or what you non-Americans adorably and incorrectly call "football," even though that's already the name of a sport that hardly anyone on the team uses their feet for), or how a grown-up might think of a personal training session (or what you non-Americans might call a "personal training session"). On a soccer team, your 6-year-old shows up on Tuesday afternoon, runs around like caffeinated rabbit for an hour, then goes home, and that's it until either next Tuesday or their next "game," which is a cute way to describe Lord of the Flies clusters of screaming maniacs.

 

Or if you go to the personal trainer, you do your hour of weirdly intimate socially acceptable BDSM, and then nothing else like that until the next session. In both cases, you *might" kick the soccer ball around in between practices, and *might* do some of the stuff you do in your personal training session, in between meetings, but also, you completely might not, and that's totally fine and expected.

Same with an instrument. Of course you'll progress faster if you practice. But you know who doesn't progress? Kids who quit because they can't take the constant stress of feeling like they are not doing well enough. So if it has to be that you leave today's lesson a half-hour better, and next week's a little better than that, and so on, and that's all it is...f*cking awesome. There is no bad way to experience the addition of music in your life. There are only bad ways to parent that addition. 

[RandyFF]

On 8/3/2023 at 9:11 AM, mate stubb said:

 My mother was a piano teacher for 50+ years. Her basic test for judging if a child was ready for piano lessons was an ear test to see if the child can match pitches, and a finger strength check to see if they were strong enough to play piano.

 Excellent!

 

You might also consider guitar.  To get to a beginners level with piano takes years, with guitar it’s more like months.

 

Or, find a teacher for piano that is good at playing/conveying the love for rock/pop/jazz, music that has some built-in excitement to it and most of which is simple chords for the beginner. Simply learning chords and some scales can bring a type of proficiency that is much more easily acquired.  Once she has the bug, switching to more serious studies will be easier.

 

Try singing around the piano.  That worked for me, I actually asked for lessons and practiced without being told to because of the great times we had singing together around the piano.

 

Go to concerts with her!  Have salons at your house where people are singing, playing, dancing!  Get a karaoke setup so that the whole family can have fun singing known songs.  Do a duet with her, perhaps 4 handed piano?

 

 

I envy you- I never did have a family and realized too late that I am well-suited for encouraging/fostering creativity in youngsters!

[David Emm]

4 hours ago, Rod S said:

I actually have a Jupiter-Xm. 😅

I do let her noodle on the synths....  she gets a blast.   For now I let it just enjoy it.  

Thanks for the feedback...  

 

 That's amusingly good news! Roland should market them to kids, since real he-man players like us demand full-sized keys, heh. I'm biased, of course, but children are like little sponges, so some synth time would seem like a natural mind expander. In my view, its a useful "module" in building their critical reasoning faculties. Learning your way around a synth is a study in comparisons and balance. Your daughter is a lucky girl. 👍        

 

[Rod S]

Late on the replies... Thanks for the feedback, all.  I'l reply to specific points. 

 

I certainly not leaning to start anything very formal now.   The teacher she had last year was pretty laid back and it looks like she's putting together a small group again, which I like.   I should get the plan this week to see what she is planning.   She interacts well in groups (actually excels, i wish I had 20% of her social skills...) and actually complains when she is alone (only child).  

 

 

[Rod S]

On 8/4/2023 at 6:02 PM, RandyFF said:

 Excellent!

 

You might also consider guitar.  To get to a beginners level with piano takes years, with guitar it’s more like months.

 

Or, find a teacher for piano that is good at playing/conveying the love for rock/pop/jazz, music that has some built-in excitement to it and most of which is simple chords for the beginner. Simply learning chords and some scales can bring a type of proficiency that is much more easily acquired.  Once she has the bug, switching to more serious studies will be easier.

 

Try singing around the piano.  That worked for me, I actually asked for lessons and practiced without being told to because of the great times we had singing together around the piano.

 

Go to concerts with her!  Have salons at your house where people are singing, playing, dancing!  Get a karaoke setup so that the whole family can have fun singing known songs.  Do a duet with her, perhaps 4 handed piano?

 

 

I envy you- I never did have a family and realized too late that I am well-suited for encouraging/fostering creativity in youngsters!

 

You touched on some good points.  

 

I do want to find things that spark her interest. singing around the piano works well with her.   She is very keen on participating, which is really cool but also means I have to pick a bit where to go.  

 

I can play basic chords on the guitar, but my brother is a good player.  I'll get in him in the house and see her reaction. 

 

I haven't tried the concerts yet, but she managed to sit through two Broadway/West End style musicals which I was impressed.    What I've noticed that she needs something visual that relates too.   I tried some videos (carefully picked) on youtube, and what worked  were the ones that had some cool visuals to them -  Some Lindsey Stirling one worked well.  Just videos of people playing didn't spark her interest yet, and I'm wondering how she would do with performances, but my wife is eager on testing it out.  

 

As I said, she likes performing (as do a lot of kids this age).  We had family over early July, and she did a sing along to Let it Go on the stairs, and then near the pool.  

 

 

 

 

[Rod S]

On 8/4/2023 at 5:22 PM, MathOfInsects said:

It's always hard to find the balance between "helping kids sound cool," which is a huge motivator both personally and socially, and "properly" teaching the instrument so that if they do turn out to keep playing, the foundations are solid. You can't specifically teach for the drop-outs, you have to teach in some ways as if all your green-belts are going to go on to be blackbelts. So a careful balance between the method books--which work, and benefit from years of crowd-sourced refinement, but can be boring AF--and "fun" stuff is the sweet spot. 

But IMO the real weak link is parents. You can make most anything fun for kids if you're good with that age. They don't usually care what songs they are playing; the reductions never sound like "real" music anyway. They're almost always just happy to play anything that seems like a song, and that everyone seems proud of them for.

It's the parents who do the "If you don't practice piano you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't practice piano!?!?!" thing every day that turns the lessons into a punishment. The same ones always want to know why their 6-year-old isn't playing Rach 2 yet. They convey that sense of disappointment to their kids, and the whole endeavor starts to be a nervous-system crisis for the kids every day. 

So I always try to encourage parents to think of piano or music lessons how they think of soccer practice (or what you non-Americans adorably and incorrectly call "football," even though that's already the name of a sport that hardly anyone on the team uses their feet for), or how a grown-up might think of a personal training session (or what you non-Americans might call a "personal training session"). On a soccer team, your 6-year-old shows up on Tuesday afternoon, runs around like caffeinated rabbit for an hour, then goes home, and that's it until either next Tuesday or their next "game," which is a cute way to describe Lord of the Flies clusters of screaming maniacs.

 

Or if you go to the personal trainer, you do your hour of weirdly intimate socially acceptable BDSM, and then nothing else like that until the next session. In both cases, you *might" kick the soccer ball around in between practices, and *might* do some of the stuff you do in your personal training session, in between meetings, but also, you completely might not, and that's totally fine and expected.

Same with an instrument. Of course you'll progress faster if you practice. But you know who doesn't progress? Kids who quit because they can't take the constant stress of feeling like they are not doing well enough. So if it has to be that you leave today's lesson a half-hour better, and next week's a little better than that, and so on, and that's all it is...f*cking awesome. There is no bad way to experience the addition of music in your life. There are only bad ways to parent that addition. 

 

I really take it light on the pressure (almost none for music), and only in the beginning.  and carefully with any awards.    We have been able to work around any pushback from her on new activities just talking to her.     Fortunately, due to both us having been much older when we had her (mid 40s), we have more free time with her than we would have 10-15 years ago. 

 

I have no inclination of going the classical route with her (as I didn't either), unless she shows some interest.  Right now I want to see what sparks her interest in just the reductions as you said.    Surprisingly, her school is pretty strong on teaching violin to young kids (starting at around age 6).  

 

 

[surfergirl]

Show her this.

https://youtu.be/7fRSY6dP9C4

[RandyFF]

Wow, that is one cute kid!  I envy you all the fun family time with her onboard!

 

You might also plan ahead for the years to come when she’s no longer living with you and comes over for family gatherings.  If there’s something you started now that has everyone singing/dancing/playing together, you’d have wonderful times at these gatherings.  

 

My cousins had a handful of songs that they always sang together a cappella, and it was an enduring highlight of their adult family gatherings, including at the funerals for their mom and dad. Salon style formats are great as well, encouraging everyone to participate, and of course singing around the piano/guitar is a family favorite.

 

If you start that now it’s just something your family does when they get together!  Much harder to initiate at later ages.

[Docbop]

I like the Victor Wooten thoughts on  this topic and that is to leave the kid alone with whatever instrument they think they'd like to play.   Get them an instrument and show them just enough of here's how to blow, pluck, strum and people kind of hold it like this, just the bare essentials.   Then leave the kid alone for a month or so and see if they start bonding with the instrument.   Are they trying to make sound on it, are they trying to imitate things they hear, are they doing this on a regular basis bonding with the instrument.    If they do seems to be bonding then think about give them some lessons.  The key is they are show real interest in playing that instrument.   They might not bond with that instrument, but are still showing interest in music so time to try and find what instrument they do bond with, or maybe they decided something else if more interesting for now.   Key is let them show interest first by trying to play it on their own. 

[Steve Nathan]

My wife's Painting Professor always said, if your kid likes to paint, buy them  paint and shut the f*ck up!  You don't teach them how to "properly" hold the brush, or how to stipple, you just let them have fun.  We're taking about a 5 year old.  As Maria Montessori would say, "Follow the child".  

[jazzpiano88]

I don't think there is a unique answer.   We have examples of nature and nurture and combinations of both.

 

For me it was a combination of both.  I thank my parents for not letting me quit piano lessons before the age of 14, even though I played most everything by ear.   It allowed me to become literate and eventually sight read and learn from better players.

 

It also allowed me to be able to tell the non-educated musicians in the band (guitarists) which chords and notes to play. 

[Rod S]

15 hours ago, Docbop said:

I like the Victor Wooten thoughts on  this topic and that is to leave the kid alone with whatever instrument they think they'd like to play.   Get them an instrument and show them just enough of here's how to blow, pluck, strum and people kind of hold it like this, just the bare essentials.   Then leave the kid alone for a month or so and see if they start bonding with the instrument.   Are they trying to make sound on it, are they trying to imitate things they hear, are they doing this on a regular basis bonding with the instrument.    If they do seems to be bonding then think about give them some lessons.  The key is they are show real interest in playing that instrument.   They might not bond with that instrument, but are still showing interest in music so time to try and find what instrument they do bond with, or maybe they decided something else if more interesting for now.   Key is let them show interest first by trying to play it on their own. 

She already has a bit of this general music lessons - the teacher show different instruments and lets them play.     More than I could at home (either I don't have the instrument or probably don't have much knowledge.   But it's a difficult concept to follow unless you rent different instruments and have someone to show them.   But let me try a few things.  

 

 

[Rod S]

On 8/7/2023 at 12:04 AM, JazzPiano88 said:

I don't think there is a unique answer.   We have examples of nature and nurture and combinations of both.

 

For me it was a combination of both.  I thank my parents for not letting me quit piano lessons before the age of 14, even though I played most everything by ear.   It allowed me to become literate and eventually sight read and learn from better players.

 

It also allowed me to be able to tell the non-educated musicians in the band (guitarists) which chords and notes to play. 

I agree... for now I wanted to pick everyone's brains, so a big THANK YOU to everyone that chimed in.   I have a few ideas moving forward.  

[Rod S]

On 8/6/2023 at 11:39 PM, Steve Nathan said:

My wife's Painting Professor always said, if your kid likes to paint, buy them  paint and shut the f*ck up!  You don't teach them how to "properly" hold the brush, or how to stipple, you just let them have fun.  We're taking about a 5 year old.  As Maria Montessori would say, "Follow the child".  

Agree - Thankfully I'm in a house now with plenty of play space that she can try different things (huge leap from the apartment), alone and with friends.    Interestingly enough,  my mother in law is a pretty good painter (she could have made some money if she wanted, just stuck with giving lessons), so my daughter picked it up and enjoys it.  

 

I like to see her explore her creating side.   One of the things she does exceptionally well (a lot of teachers comment) is story telling - she can start making up stories on a whim which sometimes get pretty complex and you have to pay attention to follow through. 

[Rod S]

On 8/6/2023 at 11:07 AM, surfergirl said:

Show her this.

https://youtu.be/7fRSY6dP9C4

Thanks - she enjoys this.    We often tune in to the Voice Kids show and it certainly draws her attention.