So I just had a brilliant idea, if I do say so myself. All these relatives want to buy stuff for the kidlet for Christmas, and she needs more stuff like I need to trip over more Legos in the middle of the night. So I’m suggesting (not trolling, but suggesting to those relatives who ask) music lessons, probably over at Old Town School of Folk Music.
So what should she start with? I’m not interested in training the next Mozart, but I would like her to be music fluent. She’s enthralled with sheet music at the moment (she’s “reading” it more than her books right now, and keeps asking me to plunk out songs on the keyboard). She loves the guitar, and wants one like her cousin’s (think pink, electric). She has a little dumbek, but loud drums kind of freak her out still. She’s got a harmonica she’s not half bad on, and a recorder and penny whistle on which she can tootle the same note all day. We’ve got a keyboard (36 full sized white keys), no room for a real piano. Here she is “playing” Hickory Dickory Dock.
Her parents aren’t going to be much help whatever way she goes. We both love music, but my training is all vocal; I can’t even sight read really. I can read enough music to pick out a melody on the keyboard, but if I don’t know the song, I’m doing a lot of math and guesswork for the speed and rhythm. Chords are just not happening - my left hand is all WTF?. Her father plays amazing improvised jazzy keyboards with chords and stuff, but doesn’t know how to read music at all.
Oh, she’ll be 4 in February. We live in Chicago, so I should be able to find her a teacher for just about any instrument imaginable, at Old Town or somewhere else.
Well, my parents had me taking piano lessons from age 4 1/2, and I will always be incredibly grateful for it. I love the piano - it’s pretty much the one true solo instrument (I’m more of a loner). And it’s done wonders for my manual dexterity.
A lot of people say you should wait on the piano until the child’s hands grow more, however. Violin is very popular for little ones because they come in child sizes, but then you have to sit through Suzuki violin recitals, which is kind of a nightmare. Personally, I had violin lessons as a little kid but started piano at 8 or so, and played it through college.
I think there’s great value in learning piano basics. The keyboard makes a great visual for many things - rising and falling pitch (because it’s linear), the chromatic scale and its repetition, where sharps and flats are and where they aren’t, and chord formation. The music theory and reading of music taught with piano is transferable to other instruments. It seems to me that an appropriate-sized electronic keyboard would address the hand size issue.
Really? I’d always thought 4ish was considered an ideal age to start with piano. That was clearly the common starting age throughout my piano lesson days, anyway.
They’ve got this Little Red Piano option for 3.5 year olds. I bet I could play the preemie card and get her into that just before she turns four. She’s VERY small for her age, hands included. She’s got a handspan of about five keys, and that’s without a good arch. They start instruction on the regular piano at age 4, but yeah, she might just be too small for that.
I really, really, really (I mean really!) wanted to play the trombone when I was a kid. But my parents must’ve had a brain-fart when they signed me up for music school - cause all of a sudden I was learning the clarinette (and stuck with that untill I was 18).
The good thing about the piano and the guitar is that you can’t make a hideous brain-aching screeching sound with either of them (though if you already have a whistle and a recorder in the house you must be somewhat familiar with these sort of sunds already). I’m still trying to suppress the memory of compulsory first grade school class recorder lessons (it was years before I realised those things actually sound good when you know how to play them)
I was four (maybe four and a half?) when I first did piano. I enjoyed it. I don’t think a small handspan is too significant because it will be a while before she would be up to doing more than one note at a time. Other advantages of the piano - technically very easy to start with (Hit Key With Finger - not too challenging!) but really stretches you if you continue with it - I firmly believe if you can play the piano you can play anything.
Probably. In fact, any instrument which involves significant lip or mouth shaping to play should probably not be started before permanent teeth come in. Of course, that may not describe the clarinet–my instruments are voice, piano and handbells, and the people I’ve heard specifically talk about what braces or permanent teeth do to one’s technique play flute and trumpet.
I had a friend who was something of a musical prodigy when he was young – there was no instrument he couldn’t play well, and he wound up at least trying damn near everything in the orchestra.
When my daughter was young I asked him about what instrument she should start on and his answer surprised me. He strongly advised against the piano.
Not because of hand development or anything like that, but because playing the piano necessarily isolates you from the rest of the orchestra. He thought the group experience of playing with other musicians was as important as learning the music or mastering the technique.
So he advised, all other things being equal, that she start by playing a string, woodwind or brass, where she’d be sitting with other musicians and learning to play along with them, instead of the piano or drums, where she’d be sitting by herself and playing a part that was fundamentally different from the others.
This is a totally unique perspective. I’ve never heard any musician or music teacher frame the question like that before or since. But it’s something to think about.
I strongly suggest the piano. I hated my piano lessons as a kid but am eternally grateful for them now, since they are a huge help when you learn other instruments (for me, the viola and the guitar). Also I think the piano and the guitar are very social instruments - they are the two easiest to play and get other people involved in the music (singing along or playing another instrument together). Most of my musically-inclined friends learned piano at an early age and picked up guitar when they were a bit older.
We were able to enroll my younger son in a piano lab through the University of Kansas in Lawrence. The program was designed for children and they were grouped in classes of three to four children approximately the same ability level. The lab was not based on the Suzuki method. The absolute best part about it in my opinion was that the children always played for each other so no one got nervous at the end of the semester recitals.
I started on flute and moved to oboe and was able to use that ability to join the Army band program and then later put myself through college on a music scholarship (hey oboists are rare!). But I always wished I’d started on piano since I still struggle to read bass clef. When I play piano, I have to work HARD to sort out that part.
Your daughter isn’t too young if she wants to play. She’ll figure it out and make it work.
Out of everything, my recommendation is for piano first, with an orchestra/band instrument once the permanent teeth are in and if it seems like fun. For that, my daughter’s piano teacher encouraged just messing around with the piano until around Grade 2 of school, and said the same thing about my son. More to do with attention span and reading ability than anything else; music for kid beginners is set up to emphasize independence of hands and not work on hand span. My daughter (9) is now in Grade 4 of school and working on Grade 2 RCM piano music. (No, the grades aren’t supposed to line up - I’m working on Grade 9 at the age of 46.)
Piano is a bit better to start with than a guitar because you touch the keys and they make a sound - perhaps not with the most perfect tone quality, but you can tell that it sounds like what you wanted it to sound like. Guitar takes a bit more finger placement to get a sound rather than a thud, and depending on the instrument, fretting the strings is a little or a lot hurty…
That being said, I’ve given guitar lessons to my son, (6) setting it up in an open ‘C’ tuning and letting him use a butter knife as a slide.
i would see if they have a general music class available where the little ones get to play on lots and lots of different instruments while learning the fundamentals of how to read music, rhythm, and basic manual dexterity. She will fall into an instrument after a few months and your problem will be solved. I disagree with the piano crowd. Piano is a wonderful, versatile instrument but it translates poorly to strings, and only grudgingly to woodwinds and brass. I use the keybord to pick out new melody lines, and help me figure out what key I am writing in, but I always have to spend significant time translating that to guitar; and then further tweaking it for ease of play. Let the lil’ sprout have fun with her classes at first and get a love of music that won’t be squashed by endless repetition.
