How to make it difficult for your child to practise

Bryn White, in 2011 scholarship concert

Here is some more practical advice from Cynthia Richards' book How to get your child to practise ... without resorting to violence.

The earlier article gave suggestions for making it easy for your child to practise.
Here are twelve stumbling blocks which can make things harder than they need to be:

1 Indifferent home environment
2 Faulty teacher-child relationship
3 Lack of maturity and commitment in the child
4 The wrong instrument
5 Unfavourable practice conditions
6 Bad memories
7 Peer pressure not to practise
8 Not proficient enough to be competitive
9 Too many conflicting interests
10 Sibling rivalry
11 Competitive feelings with a parent
12 Communications

Some of these things can be tinkered with, to give your child every opportunity to enjoy practising. Can you see something you could do that might help your budding musician?

What would you add to the list?

Helping your children to love reading.

Two cousins ready to start school, one almost 6, one just turned 5

If you want your children to love reading and enjoy learning, you will find Trevor Cairney's Literacy, families and learning to be a great source for helping you to achieve this objective.

His article Starting school: is there a best age? is great advice for those who are thinking about whether their children should begin school in 2013 or 2014, but is probably too late for those whose children are beginning school in a few days' time.

But there is still plenty in this article to interest parents of brand new schoolchildren.

And all of this has relevance to budding musicians. You don't need to be able to read to enjoy and play music, especially when you are a toddler and participating in Early Childhood Music classes.

But good reading skills are very helpful for primary school children having individual instrumental or vocal lessons.

Encouraging your beginning musician

Cynthia Richards' advice is great for parents of primary school children, but most of it would not apply to toddlers. Four of her suggestions would be equally applicable to beginners, though:

1. Start early
2. Enjoy your children's music
3. Praise them for their successes
4. Focus your efforts on getting your child hooked on music.

How To Get Your Child To Practise

Cynthia Richards' How To Get Your Child To Practise ... without resorting to violence is an excellent book, well worth your time, but - it's out of print!

Aren't you lucky I can pass on Mrs Richards' handy tips? I read this book at my sister-in-law's place. She is also a music teacher.

Today I am passing on the positive points, but in my next post, I will tell you what she tells you not to do. The tips have all been tested by Cynthia, who is a parent and music teacher herself.

1 Start early
2 Practise with your child every day
3 Set up family rules for practising
4 Use incentives when needed
5 Handle conflicts by

a avoiding emotional involvement
b being friendly
c being matter of fact
d not giving in

6 Enjoy your children's music
7 Praise them for their successes
8 Look for stumbling blocks and do your best to remove them
9 Focus your efforts on getting your child hooked on music

If you chew over this advice, one point at a time, you will find it will help you in parenting generally, as well as in getting your child to practise.

I'd love to know what you think about these tips. Have you tried any of them yourself?

Who is the cool dude playing the flute? If you know, please tell me and I'll credit him properly. I know he was playing at Open Day, but i didn't get his name.

Free Kids Music

Free Kids Music is a wonderful portal of traditional and contemporary music for children. There are quality audio and video links to songs you know and thousands of great ones you don't know yet.

Here are two gems:

Willy Won't Smile For The Camera by Debbie and Friends



and Trout Fishing In America's all too truthful song, Day Care Blues

Introducing Children To Music

There are several excellent articles at Kid's Health on introducing children to music.

The linked article has loads of great advice on introducing toddlers to music. The most important advice given is to make music part of your everyday routine. Here are some of the reasons given for giving your child an early introduction to music:

Music does more than entertain. It can kickstart learning, serve as an important cue in a child's routine, and offer lifelong benefits.

Music contributes to what experts call a rich sensory environment. This simply means exposing kids to a wide variety of tastes, smells, textures, colors, and sounds — experiences that can forge more pathways between the cells in their brains.

These neural connections will help kids in almost every area of school, including reading and maths. Just listening to music can make these connections, but the biggest impact comes if kids actively participate in musical activities.

Of course there's another reason to introduce music into your toddler's world: It's enjoyable for both of you. That will come as no surprise to parents who sing songs with their child, sway and twirl together to favorite CDs, or listen to lullabies as they rock their child to sleep.

The article also points out the benefits of Early Music Classes, such as provided by Mitchell Conservatorium, but reminds you that

you are your child's first and most important teacher when it comes to music. To help your child really benefit from a music class, be sure to bring the music and games you learn there into your home.

What's going on in your young musician's brain?

What instrument will you play in 2012?

Violin is just one of the instruments taught by Mitchell Conservatorium staff. But did you know that you don't have to come to our studios in Bathurst, Lithgow or Forbes to learn from our terrific teachers?

Student can also learn from our staff in their own schools. Are lessons from MitCon staff available at your school? Please ring 6331 6622 during business hours to find out.

By the way, don't forget that your voice is an instrument, too. I think Playschool's Rhys Muldoon already knows this. Do you know his new song called I'm Not Singing?

The Joy of Piano Duets

Playing the piano is a great experience. You can be a whole orchestra all on your own, and don't need anyone else to be able to create a complete piece of music.

But solitude can get pretty boring after a while. Someone said that solitude is OK, as long as you have someone to talk with about it later.

Many pianists don't experience the joy of playing with others. But there is something you gain from playing piano duets which you don't get all on your own.

Today my wife, Joan and I have been playing Ulrich and Wittmann's piano duet arrangement of Beethoven's Septet. It was written for clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello and double bass. You may recognise the third movement, because Beethoven also used it in his Piano Sonata, Op 49 No 2 in G Major. This pleasant performance is by musicians from the Verbier Festival Orchestra.



There is a free copy of the piano duet arrangement at the wonderful Petrucci Music Library site.

If you are not in the habit of playing piano duets, you might prefer to start with something easier. Wilhelm Aletter's Four Easy Piano Duets might be a better place to begin.

If you go to the main page of the completely free This is a link to piano duets at the site. Some are labelled as "easy" but "easy is in the fingers of the player" [or is that "mind?"]

I love the scene in Robin Williams' Millennium Man where the robot plays the Berceuse from Faure's Dolly Suite with the little girl.



Katia and Marielle Labèque are sisters who usually play two pianos. Here they are performing Leonard Bernstein's America, from Westside Story.



But perhaps the most enjoyable piano duet is this one from a student concert of the second movement (Andante con cozyta) from P.D.Q. Bach's Sonata Innamorata.