Piano For The Very Young

I get correspondence from many people who want to start their child at the piano at the age of two or three.

I think that there is no age too young to start piano, in the sense that alphabet training, and “This Little Piggy” are appropriate for any age, and represent the beginnings of reading and math.

But the approach must be completely different, and with completely different expectations.

If you teach a three year old and have even five year old expectations, you are in for a rude awakening. True, there are amazing talents even at three, but 99.9999999999% of three year olds are very delicate creatures.

Examine first your motives. If you want the child to be a concert pianist, you are close to engaging in child abuse, for the life of a musician is slavery, and it is unthinkable to condemn a child to that without their mature assent.

If, however, your motivation is to simply awaken music within the child by means of the piano, you have selected an easily attainable goal. Let the child’s reaction guide you as to how much further to go past awakening a sense of enjoyment.

FINGERING

Pretend it doesn’t exist. The index finger is fine.

RHYTHM

It exists in the simplest form: you produce it, and they feel it. Don’t expect a three year old to understand it the way even a six year old does.

CHORDS

They exist mostly if YOU play them, but you can try to introduce two note chords, just to get them to use two fingers, and to plan for the future. Don’t expect much on their part, but they usually can participate in ear training: is it happy or sad?

BLACK KEYS

They don’t exist at first. Later they might, but they confuse the very young, who can’t understand an extra set of keys on another plane. Stick with white piano keys at first.

COUNTING

Easy and natural to do, just don’t make it complex.

HAND POSITION

It doesn’t exist. You can play an exploratory game with a quarter on the back of their hand, but you’ll be lucky to get them playing with two index fingers, much less a flat hand position. It is meaningless to a child.

SITTING PROPERLY

It’s irrelevant unless they’re not even on the bench. Avoid bringing up issues they can barely control.

PRACTICING

Are you kidding? Find a song they LOVE and see if you can interest them in it. Insist on nothing, expect nothing, and you may be pleasantly surprised.

ATTENTION SPAN

Five minutes may be a maximum. You have been warned. When the child says the lesson is over, specifically or implicitly, the lesson is over. Period. Most kids are happy with maybe ten minutes, and very few regularly want twenty-odd minutes. When the moment has passed, it has passed. Your job is to make sure they want another five minutes.

PLAYING WITH BOTH HANDS

Coordination of the brain hemispheres comes much later, but you can try. Children vary wildly in this development, and there is no one rule. I’ve seen 12 year olds who still have issues with it, so be very careful not to frustrate the child. In general, though, very young children have extreme difficulty with anything approaching two-hand coordination in the pianistic sense.

In conclusion, keep it fun, forget pace and curriculum and instead try to find some element that amuses and fascinates them, and then elaborate upon that.

The younger the child, the more you must make a piano lesson seem not a chore.

Think of the piano as this big furry animal, and you have to get the child to like it and want to interact with it again and again.

You can only win the battle of the piano over the long term.

And the battle can be lost forever in a single moment of impatience, anger or guilt.

Reverse Psychology and Children’s Piano

Some children can be guided directly to an appreciation of playing the piano.

Others cannot be approached directly and need to discover it on their own, usually as part of a humorous game.

Here are common situations and reverse responses:

I DON’T WANT TO PLAY

Say, “Neither do I. Let’s not.” The child will be very surprised. Tell them there is a secret device that will explode or emit a terrible smell if they play Middle C, so they won’t want to play that, will they? Block them physically from playing and beg them not to hit the Middle C button. Once they play that, add other keys and claim it’s a secret spy code. Sooner or later they will have played enough notes for a song. Put it all together, and you have a child making music in spite of their stated desire for the opposite.

What they are really saying: “ I don’t mind playing but don’t make it boring, and see if you can engage my mind instead of just my obedience.”

I DON’T LIKE THIS SONG

Say, “Neither do I, it’s a terrible song. What’s a great song you like and would like to play?” Be prepared to play four dozen songs until you find one the child likes. If it turns into “Name That Tune” so be it, but there’s a lot to be learned from a session of Name That Tune. Sometimes, if the book they are reading from is old or discardable, I tear out the page they don’t like, which always startles them. Find a song then child likes and then be clever enough to disguise learning it as a game. If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t be teaching kids the piano.

What they are really saying: “I thought music was pleasurable. You deliver drudgery.”

Here are a few further rules or pointers:

1. No matter what happens, it is a cause for amusement. If you are disappointed the child didn’t practice, express it wryly, humorously, in a way the child can understand, and with no tone of guilt. The point is, your anger or sourness isn’t ever going to get them to practice. Finding a way to interest them, on the other hand, will get them to play, perhaps later to practice. Sweet works, sour doesn’t.
2. Always go with their suggestion. For example, if a child idly plays a bit of a song by themselves it means they are interested in it. Drop whatever curriculum you have prepared and work on that song and see where it leads. Often you can find a way to use the song to subtly illustrate your curriculum (fingering, chords).
3. Never leave a lesson with the child feeling guilty or down. A child remembers how the lesson felt emotionally. Leave them feeling that you had a fun time, tried to learn a few things, and wouldn’t mind trying it again. Four dozen piano lessons later, you’ll be glad you did.

Never forget that most children’s secret fear about piano teachers is that the teacher may get mad and humiliate the child. Once you establish that this will NEVER happen, the sky is the limit, and you have a willing candidate who can work at his or her own speed, with occasional gentle prodding.

Children at the piano are expecting drudgery. Reverse psychology demands that, instead, they get absurd, uplifting fun. Train them to expect that, and you have a budding pianist.

Piano Practice Ideas for Adults (and Children)

Children rarely master the idea of how to practice, but that is no surprise since kids are just learning how to approach both tasks and their completion. A child’s piano lesson can subtly become practicing, and an experienced  children’s piano teacher knows that lesson/practice may be all the child gets that week.

But adults are used to budgets, routines and constraints, and are actually better candidates for real progress at the piano than children because of their acceptance of self-discipline.

But what discipline? Routine is fine if you’re certain a routine will give the results expected. If you go to a conservatory, you have the skills already to carry out whatever routine they give you. And they give you the routine, exactly. Follow it and you may succeed.

The simplest overview of learning a specific song is this:

1. Notes: learn the notes and their location. Memorize them.
2. Assign fingers to produce the notes more efficiently. Use them consistently.
3. Correct the rhythm.
4. Find the worst places and refine them before endlessly playing the easy parts. Don’t just play what you can play. Play what you can’t play.
5. Join all the parts together, easy and difficult, and repeat #4 until perfect.

But what if you’re a beginner, with no skills and no experience? What if you have no teacher to guide you in every move?

What exactly do you do during each repetition?

What basic ideas are common to practicing as a whole, and which of them can you apply to yourself without a piano teacher? In other words, what was the hypothetical teacher thinking when they devised your routine?

1. Discern two types of playing: either play through a piece for continuity, or stop and start to clean passages. They are entirely different approaches and if you confuse the two you will waste time and effort. Beginners always start at the beginning, play through the piece, and then wonder why it isn’t any better.
2. Find the place in the piece that is most difficult, and play ONLY that part for a while, a day, five minutes, whatever you can stand. Isolate the spot. Do not ignore it like dreaded homework. Face it straight on, persistently, even when no progress appears.
3. Relieve the stress of playing the hard parts by playing the easy parts.
4. Play hands separately on difficult passages until you have some sense of control.
5. Play slower than necessary. Never play faster than you can control without major errors. Most time is wasted playing things too fast and then you learn nothing from that repetition except how to fail at the passage. The answer is always, “Play slowly until you have control.” Make each repetition count.

The most important practice rules are to embrace and play the hard parts, and to play everything slower generally.

All of these ideas apply to adults, and to children of all types as well, provided you simplify the commands and expectations. For example, with children, the “easy” parts are just as difficult, and you’d be well advised to apply these ideas to the easiest passage first before you attempt any higher level of difficulty.

Don’t just start from the beginning every time. Find what’s broken and go and fix it, and it is rarely the beginning of the song.

Here’s a good book to get started with if you’re an adult and you like classical piano:

http://pianoiseasy2.com/easyclassical.html

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Piano Is Easy

Thanks

John Aschenbrenner