Private Music Lessons for Kids by Jim McCutcheon

The idea of private music lessons for kids is the traditional approach to most instruments, but quite often a challenging project for parents, especially if they themselves are not experienced in music. The choice of a teacher, the best time to start, rules for practicing at home, and what to expect of the whole experience can be quite baffling to many parents.

For very young children, private music lessons are not necessarily the best way to start. Children 7 and younger can often benefit from classes which teach some very fundamental concepts of music such as a steady beat, fast and slow, up and down, loud and soft. At this early age, children also absorb a great deal of the teacher's own attitudes toward music, so a teacher's personality is very important in the selection process. Hopefully, skills learned in early childhood will be "automatic" when the child begins playing an instrument such as the guitar or piano, and at that point, the child will be able to focus all attention on the technique of the instrument.

As with many questions dealing with parenting, exactly when to start lessons requires some careful consideration. It varies a great deal depending upon several factors, including:

1. the child's mental and physical development: Can your child focus on an activity for more than two minutes? The first grade year usually marks enormous progress in a child's ability to do many things associated with music lessons, such as listening, following directions, and paying attention to one thing for 15 to 30 minutes.

2. which instrument the child wants to play: Some instruments, like the trumpet, are best started at about the 5th grade since they require a fair amount of physical strength to produce a tone. Instruments such as piano, guitar, violin and percussion are much easier for young children to play.

3. the availability of a properly-sized instrument to fit the child: Many instruments, such as guitar, violin, and cello are available in sizes to fit very small children, even three-year-olds! Others, like woodwinds, are not, and the small size of a child's hands and arms will definitely make it impossible to play even the simplest melodies.

4. the availability of a teacher who has both the musical knowledge as well as the ability to interact with young children: A teacher for small children must have both of these skill sets, and many music teachers lack experience, training or desire to work with very young children.

5. the availability of one or both parents to work with the child on a daily basis: Children benefit from their parents' attention when practicing. Many styles of teaching music, such as the Suzuki method, even require a parent to play an active, positive role in the child's daily practice sessions.

6. family finances: Is the cost of lessons for a preschooler a workable expense for the family budget

Depending upon your family dynamics, one excellent indicator of a child's readiness to take music lessons seriously is persistence in bugging parents about it over a long period of time. If your child has been asking "When can I start to play the..." for six months to a year, this is GOOD! By repeatedly asking for lessons, a child will reinforce the desire to learn an instrument.

Parents should not fear having to decide on the spot when a child asks about music. Rather, let your child know that music study is a real possibility. Go see concert which use the chosen instrument, listen to recordings in the background of your daily activities, and keep the possibility open with your child. If the interest is truly there, it will grow even stronger over time. Back to top

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FAMILY LIFE MAGAZINE - MARCH 1998

Bedtime Music by Jim McCutcheon

One of the easiest and most effective ways to expose young children to music is at bedtime. The lights are low, there is no distracting activity and the bedroom can be filled with beautiful music and the mind imagining all sorts of things.

Music listening can easily become a part of the bedtime ritual, and something which a child will look forward to with great expectation. CD players are priced very affordably and their sound quality is much better than the record players parents grew up with. The music can be set to play rather softly, and even at a soft level will be effective in covering up lots of distracting noises in the house which can keep children awake.

There are several ways to obtain bedtime music. Many sale-priced CDs with excellent music are available for as little as a dollar or two, but select only the labels with the DDD marking - some of these sale-priced discs without the DDD are recorded from very poor-quality vinyl LPs, and simply sound as bad as the scratchy albums they're made from. Discs or tapes given as gifts from family members and friends will remind the child of them while listening to the music, and reinforce the value the giver places on listening to music. There are lullaby discs available at most CD stores with peaceful music from around the world, in verbal languages your child may not understand, but sung and played using the universal language of music.

In our family, we went to the library with our first son and let him choose the albums he wanted to hear. Being 3 years old at the time, he chose them based on the pictures on the front! He got an earful of variety - music from around the world.

It is good to mix familiar music with some new and different music each night. When we used library recordings, we would listen to the new recordings for about a week each night so that some familiarity would be gained. At first hearing, one album of music from Africa startled my older son, then about 4 years old - since the music was so different from anything else he had ever heard, he thought the record player was broken, but later came to understand the wonderful drum rhythms he was hearing!

Occasionally I would stay in the room and listen to music with my sons. This was helpful especially when listening to instrumental pieces. I remember listening to Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" and naming the movements so they could imagine the different pictures being portrayed in the music, like the Promenade, The Old Castle, the Ballet of the Chickens in their Shells and The Great Gate of Kiev. Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite" is another interesting set of pieces without words - the "Trepak" (Russian Dance) is really fast and good for imagining the dancers - and don't be surprised if your child falls asleep during the "Arab Dance" with its slow, undulating rhythm.

It is fun to see which pieces become your child's favorites. One mother just told me her 5-year-old was listening to a violin recording and really liked it! Some children may go for the Raffi-like kids songs with words they can understand and relate to, but don't limit the listening to that style of music only. Many children love Mozart, Bach and Beethoven every bit as much, especially after several hearings of one of their pieces.

So, after a nice bedtime story, let music tell its own story to your child. Back to top

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FAMILY LIFE MAGAZINE - January 1998

The Beat Goes On by Jim McCutcheon

Youngsters listen to everything around them. Hearing is one of the first senses to come alive in the womb, and the mother's steady, constant heartbeat is a sound that the child learns well. After birth, recordings of a heartbeat are often used for the calming effect the sound has on babies.

From birth onward, a child's auditory perception sharpens and all kinds of interesting sounds are absorbed, from the soft sounds of rustling leaves, bed sheets and purring kittens to the exciting, loud sounds of fireworks on the 4th of July.

Children are very perceptive to spoken languages at a very young age, and studies have shown that listening to foreign languages at an early age can help them learn the unusual sounds of that language later in life. The music of a culture is usually related to its spoken language in many ways. Children, like sponges, soak up any musical sounds they hear and learn about them.

One thing that distinguishes music from most of the other sounds they hear is the beat, the element of music which you feel when you're tapping your toes or clapping along with a song. The steady pulse of music is one of the first things a child can learn, and it can be done at a very early age.

There are many ways to experience the beat with your child. I've seen Moms and Dads holding babies and rocking them back and forth with the beat while listening to music - this simple activity teaches the baby a relationship between music and movement. Parents can sing or chant nursery rhymes with their babies and bounce them on their knee or hold their hands and move to the pulse of the music.

The beat can be experienced any time music is present. Children will imitate clapping hands, patting knees, tapping feet - anything that makes a little noise. While riding in the car, our kids used to love patting their hands on their car seat, keeping the beat while music was playing.

There is a difference between the beat and rhythm. The words of a song are sung in rhythm, while the beat is very steady and always pulsing. For example, "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" has syllables that fall on the beat, but the words pause at the end of each phrase while the beat goes on. In "The Farmer in the Dell," the beat falls on "far-," "in" and "dell." If a song has words, children usually try to clap on each syllable, and this usually is not the beat. When a child can sing in rhythm and clap on the beat at the same time, you can tell that a new level of accomplishment has been achieved.

To do rhythm at home, it is not necessary to go out and buy any equipment, although there are many percussion instruments available which have very interesting sounds. It is fun to improvise drums with objects found around the house. Empty Pringles cans work very well, as do metal cans that have plastic lids. The clear plastic boxes with reclosable lids often used in foodservice also make great drums. Children learn to experiment with all the different sounds these cans can make, depending on where you strike them (the top, bottom, sides or corners all sound different) and what you strike them with (pencil erasers, spoons, fingers, toothpicks).

Playing rhythms with a child is really fun, and it doesn't take a lot of musical talent. Happy drumming! Back to top

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FAMILY LIFE MAGAZINE - March 1999

Helping Your Child Build a Recording Collection by Jim McCutcheon

Kids love to collect things - bugs, leaves, sports cards, just to name a few. More and more kids are starting their own collections of music, and they can talk about it with the same authority they have when quoting a baseball player's batting average or ERA. That's pretty amazing!

When I was growing up, I remember having access to a few recordings that I would listen to over and over again for hours. Some belonged to my parents, some were my big sister's. When I finally had the money to buy recordings, I started my own collection. This article will attempt to make some suggestions on beginning what may well become a lifelong connection with music listening.

Many recordings feature settings of well-known children's songs, which work great for toddlers. Beyond age three, there are many CD/cassette releases from talented musicians who also write songs for kids, such as John McCutcheon (no relation to the author) and the duo of Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer (a favorite of mine is "Air Guitar"). Songs which tell neat stories and teach positive values abound, and are usually set in a folk or soft-rock style which kids can easily follow. Other recordings actually teach things about the music being played, as in my own "Guitar Man" recording.

For orchestral listening, some version of Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" is a must for a youngster's collection. A narrator tells the story in between orchestral music sections which feature different instruments playing musical themes which belong to the different characters. Many versions have been recorded, featuring narrators such as Star Trek's William Shattner (Captain Kirk) and Patrick Stewart (Jean-Luc Picard), as well as a rather creative version by the rock star Sting. Violinist Itzak Perlman has also recorded a very nice version. Actually, you can't really go wrong selecting one of the many available.

Another set of recordings that are wonderful for kids is from the "Classical Kids" label from Canada. There are at least five in a continually growing series of musical biographies about some of the world's greatest composers, including Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky and Mozart. They tell historically accurate stories of the composers' lives from a child's point of view and intersperse the narrative liberally with musical performances of the composers' best-known works. What a great way to educate kids about the world's greatest music! Even as an adult, I enjoy listening to these recordings. Classical Kids has also begun to release videos of these stories.

Other classical music which children enjoy would include opera overtures by Rossini, such as the William Tell Overture, which a lot of grownups know as the "Lone Ranger Theme," or the overture from "Barber of Seville." Kids always respond to the fast action in these overtures, the booming crescendos, and the frequent, clear contrasts in the music. Since the themes in these pieces are very singable, it is common to hear children humming them after they've heard the recording just a few times. Kids singing Rossini? Pretty cool!

Many local stores have areas specifically set aside for children's recordings. The selection is often quite large, as at Borders Books & Music on SR 725. Most children's recordings exist in both CD and cassette format. As your child assembles a collection of recorded music, keep in mind that seeing music performed live is essential for a complete musical experience. Even with excellent sound quality available on CDs, it cannot compare with the real thing.

Throughout the school year at Memorial Hall, the Dayton Philharmonic has several programs geared to youngsters, including a Family Concert Series called "Do-Re-Mi" as well as three Young People's Concerts. During the month of March, the DPO also schedules several Magic Carpet Concerts held at sites throughout the Miami Valley. Ticket information can be obtained at 224-9000. Other area arts agencies, such as the Centerville Arts Commission, the Dayton Jewish Community Center, and the Washington Township Recreation Center sponsor one or more children's concerts in their annual series. Call your local arts group for information about their musical activities and to be placed on their mailing lists
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