In short, playing the piano is a very complex activity!
Mentally, it’s not really like anything else. It uses all the senses except that of smell and requires directing those 2 bodies & 10 legs in a single flow of movement with precise timing while also listening intently and feeling the music one is playing. Yet when teachers try to make learning fun in the beginning, kids often don’t establish a sound foundation. They often make very slow progress and later have to take time to unlearn and relearn things. Eventually, for many, that is no fun. As the great piano teacher and pedagogue Francis Clark said, “Teaching isn’t telling. Teaching is creating an environment in which the student learns what the teacher wants them to learn.” Her method, The Music Tree, sought to make the reading aspect make more sense. I’ve long thought her assertion was correct, yet it’s very difficult to achieve. What most piano teachers want in the beginning is to establish a sound foundation. This means learning the basics, physically and mentally, correctly without also learning wrong things. What is a sound foundation?
A sound foundation in learning to play the piano is built on 5 basic pillars:
- Rhythm — coordinating the body according to the beat of the music.
- Sound — making the piano make the right type of sound.
- Listening — hearing the sounds & rhythms one is making.
- Technique — using the body effectively and healthily, such that skill demands are met efficiently and without producing long term problems.
- Reading — translating what is on the page to what one does with the fingers on the keyboard.
Learning is most effective when all 5 pillars are being established simultaneously from the beginning, but this is a lot of stuff! Added to the challenge is that kids want to have fun and usually want to play songs. Play and discovery are children’s natural vehicles for learning. As Fred Rogers put it, “Play is the work of childhood.”
Musical Mind Piano seeks to enlist children’s natural way of learning and engage their natural abilities to develop familiarity and skill in coordinating rhythm, sound and movement at a pace that feels natural to them. It’s approach is through breaking things down into small steps so as to lead these natural processes.
Physically, it works on training the larger muscles of the arm and wrist first, then the hand and then the individual fingers. Mentally, it works on physical experience first, then on naming things and then on more abstract understanding of things. And overall, it seeks to do these things through activities that are interesting, fun and easily learned by young students.
Although the process is directed by the teacher and the organization of the method, the experience of the child is not one of being told and being demanded to comply. Rather, it is a process of being led down a path of discovery and play.
Once the basics of a strong foundation are laid, interest in continuing has a lot to do with how much a student is engaged by what’s done in lessons, the music learned and participating in musical activities outside of lessons, such as performing on recitals or at festivals, playing for family or friends, having the opportunity to play for class mates in music class and other activities in which what has been learned is used in the course of their daily life.
I have not found there to be any truth to the common belief that kids don’t like classical music. I don’t think genre categories are of any relevance to what music kids like. Rather, they like or don’t like individual songs and pieces of music. So, really, that’s the key when it comes to the music they play. The more music and playing piano becomes a part of their life, though, the more likely they’re going to want to continue. For at the heart of play is learning. Learning is always a sort of play, one we never outgrow.
