We had a lovely afternoon yesterday, upstairs at The Courtfield in Earl’s Court, thanks to our talented students who played a selection of songs and pieces for everyone. A huge thank you to all the families who made the effort to come out on a wet and windy Sunday afternoon! Even Chloe was impressed…
The next concert will be on Sunday 24th March - make a note in your diary!
Here at Artpeggios, we hear many versions of this question. In this article, I’m going to focus on younger children (under 10y) and mostly I’m going to talk about piano, but the same advice applies to all instruments.
As parents, we feel that, in music lessons, we are able to give a fantastic gift to our children: a way for them to express their creativity, to improve cognitive skills, to learn discipline and even to participate in Western cultural heritage. Okay - that sounds a bit grand, but who doesn’t melt at the idea of their little darling playing Mozart? But the reality can often be a bored, exhausted child who dreads lessons and just wants to give up and go back to their iPad.
There are several reasons for this.
First of all most children in our society are over-stimulated - internet, social media, TV, movies, smart phones, games, tablets - and in addition, many are so overbooked with after school activities that they don’t have down time where they are able to process their day. They don’t have time to get bored. And boredom is important because it is (along with necessity) one of the drivers for creativity.
Secondly, many children feel tremendous pressure to be perfect. Maybe they have advanced older siblings. Maybe the pressure comes from their peers or their school. But perfection in music is not attainable for years - if ever. Having unreasonable expectations can be very demoralising. Learning to play an instrument requires time, patience, persistence and the ability to work through your frustration - but the good news is that music practice can teach these things.
So how do I stop my child from becoming demotivated ?
Children are motivated by progress. But progress is only achieved by practice. No child is going to learn an instrument from an hour’s lesson once a week. It is the practice in between which teaches them. Think of the lesson as an agenda, and the practice part as the learning. They learn by engaging with their instrument between lessons, working their way through a piece, difficulty by difficulty, practising whatever the teacher has set, with patience and diligence and getting used to listening to themselves play without judgement.
The without judgement part is important. As parents, you can help by not commenting on a ‘wrong’ note, their skill, or their rate of progress. In theory, there is no such thing as a ‘wrong’ note - just listen to some free form jazz if you don’t believe me.
How do I get my child to practise?
1. Children under 10 generally need their practice to be supervised by you. I can’t emphasise this enough. The good news is that it needn’t be long - 10 to 20 minutes a day.
2. Practice needs to be every day, but definitely on the day of the lesson. If your child’s lesson is on a Thursday and she doesn’t start practising until Sunday, the memory of it will have faded and she will be left playing the bit she already knows, which will bore her and not help with progress. So straight after the lesson, sit down with your child at the instrument and ask her what she has learned and what her teacher has asked her to practise. Get her to scribble a note to herself. Practice soon after the lessons allows the information to move from short term to long term memory, so practise for the first few days after the lesson at the very least.
3. Don’t make it into a chore, try going to the instrument with them and asking to listen while they play. Ask them to teach you - children love this power inversion and hearing you make mistakes reinforces to them that mistakes are part of the learning process.
4. Your child needs clear, small goals. The teacher should make it clear when they don’t expect the piece to be perfect for the next lesson. We all know that old axiom that perfection is the enemy of progress. But perfection is not a motivator for young children - progress is.
5. Shyness: no one would be motivated to learn with an older sibling laughing at their mistakes in the background. Try to provide privacy, either with an electronic keyboard with headphones or by moving unhelpful family members to another room.
I hope this helps! Do leave a comment below if you have any other tips or thoughts for future blog posts!
Dr. Ash Cloke
We were delighted to see so many friendly faces on Sunday for our first students’ concert since the start of the pandemic. Our new venue, upstairs at The Bolton in Earl’s Court, is larger and more comfortable than previous venues and we had a good mix of keyboard and guitar players ending with a fun (unrehearsed!) jam at the end. Many of the pieces were quite difficult technically, but all our performers did really well.
Performance is a key part of learning to play music so it is important that students have a go, even if they are a little nervous at first - and of course it is great if they can do so in a supportive environment. So once again thanks to everybody for your contribution to a lovely afternoon, both musicians and audience - and a Happy Christmas from all at Artpeggios!
(Psss - the next concert will be on Sunday 27th March - so get ready!)
We love our adult students. Starting as adults means they often have fantastic motivation and passion and we just love to watch their music grow.
One of our adult students has sent us a Youtube link entitled How To Play Funk - and it’s great! Thank you Pascal!
We would like to thank all of you for your tremendous support in the last 3 months or so. The upside of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the wonderful kindness we have seen for our small business. All of our teachers have taken their lessons online. We continued to support them by paying them at their in-person rate while giving our clients a significant discount. This paid off with an amazing uptake rate, with many students increasing their lesson frequency.
It has opened the way to lessons during the school holidays. Even if you are away from London, lessons don’t have to come to a halt and students can continue to make progress. It adds structure, and prevents loss of learning across the long vacations.
However, now that the end of lockdown is in sight, those of our clients who prefer in-person lessons have started to think about meeting their teachers again. There are no hard and fast rules on this. We think generally, that Autumn will see the resumption of something close to normality, but like everyone, we are playing it by ear. (Pun intended!)
Hello everyone!
Well January is traditionally the month of good intentions, so I guess it’s not a bad time to tell you that this year I’m planning to resurrect the Artpeggios blog. I’ll try to post once a month with news, videos, photos and various musings to, hopefully, entertain if not inspire you in your music. I’m looking forward to your comments - so feel free. I’m starting slowly though…
In December, we had our first students’ concert at The Bolton, a comfortable and welcoming pub in Earl’s Court. It was our first concert for the year. We had a great mix of beginners and more advanced students, from children as young as 6yrs to adults, playing in a variety of styles. Sadly I missed it as I had managed to break my leg a few days before, but I’m determined to come to the next one!
Performance is a really important part of the learning process: ultimately, playing music is not a singular activity, the aim is to play with and in front of other people, as an act of communication. So the friendly and supportive atmosphere of a Sunday afternoon at an Artpeggios students’ concert is a great way to start.
I’d like to say a big thank you to our lovely teachers who accompanied and supported our students and filled in for me in taking photos. The next concert will be at the end of March - we’ll keep you posted!
Ash
We had a very nice concert with the students from "Artpeggios" last week.
It's great to see the improvements of every students.along the years.
I thank those who helped me to organise the concert.
Thanks for the supports from Guillaume Bonpun, Jacques Nazaire and the teachers, Jana Vargova, Alessio Meloni, Josef Veselský, and Siegffried Loew, who put all their dedication to the students, and brought all their positive energy.
It was fun!
Benjamin Gasiglia
Kinzy and Maria are organising a fundraising event at The Troubadour for the Chain of Hope charity. The studens and teachers of Artpeggios will provide the entertainment. There will be raffle tickets and private donations and multiple prizes to win. We hope you can come and donate for a great cause while enjoying food and entertainment.
