“In order to become a capable composer one must have already learned harmony and counterpoint at the age of from seven to eleven years, so that when the fancy and emotions awake one shall know what to do according to the rules.”

There is something important here. It is the age at which to learn these things the grammar rules of music. Dorothy Sayers has still said it best, in her outline of the older method of education: Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric. The grammar rules of any subject are to be taught first. The student learns how to use the rules, and finally, the student learns how to defend the rules in creative activity.

Most music students today never get to learn counterpoint until they go to college. They may learn harmony, and a little about melodic composition. But are never drilled in the many facets of counterpoint.

Under the older view of learning, students learn the grammar rules of their subjects, music, language, math, etc. They now had the tools of learning to continue their own education.

When music students are given the tools of learning at a young age, by the time their minds starting racing with ideas, they have the ability to act on these ideas.

This is why I wrote “Ian Hodge’s Read, Write & Play Music.” It turns the clock back and adopts an older methodology with a better outcome for all.

Resources:

But there were some lessons we leaned along the way. One of these lessons was understanding the difference in the way some children learn. And it was a difficult lesson for us.

You see, our first two children lulled us into a false sense of security. Matthew, our oldest child, had been taught to read by his mother by the time he was four years old. He loved books. He loved reading. All we had to do was give him something to read and he’d be off with a new spurt of learning energy.

Rachel, his sister, was not much different. She, too learned to read by the age of four, and she too loved books.

But then came the challenge in the family. Peter was our third and quietest child. He loved to play with Lego, and could build these complex models without any visual aids by the time he was three. He too, learned to read by the age of four. And that’s where the similarities stopped.

You see, Pete had no great desire or urgency to read. The problem was not that he could not read, because he could read with the best of them. It was just that he did not like to read. And he still doesn’t. But it took us a few years to catch on to this. When at the end of the day we found he had finished none of his school work we initially thought he was lazy, rebellious, or just disinterested in learning. We were wrong on all counts.

What my wife eventually discovered was that if she sat with Pete and read his school work to him, he would then pass any tests with flying colors. In fact, his test scores were better than his older brother and sister. We had on our hands something we were unfamiliar with at that time: an auditory learner.

We had learned the hard way that some children like to learn by reading, while some like to learn by reading. There’s another group that like to learning by doing things.

Now, professional classroom teachers are often aware of this, which is why they mix the activities during the day. They are trying to cater for the different learning styles of the children in the class.

But as parents, we have a better choice. We don’t have classes of 20 or 25 children. We have just a few children that God has given us. And being parents, we know our children far better than any teacher ever will, provided we don’t neglect our parental duties.

So, if you’re having just a little frustration with your own children in the home, it may well be that there is some kind of conflict going on with their learning style and they way you as a parent are trying to teach them. This can happen even if you’re not home schooling.

Therefore, be considerate of the gifts God has given to your child, and try to adapt to their learning styles any lessons you have for them. Do not in any way compromise your standards of what you want them to do. But be flexible in your presentation and handling of the lessons that you give them from day to day.

If you want more help, along with some practical assessment sheets to help, click here to buy

The big question, however, is “how much.” How much time needs to be spent in practicing a musical instrument?

Before answering that, let’s get our understanding of the meaning of “practice” in place. Then you can see that this is far easier than most people realize.

There needs to be a recognition that playing a musical instrument is not practicing. When great performers appear on stage, they are not practicing. They are performing. They are bringing to the audience the months and weeks of practicing into a single performance that is the culmination of every moment that has gone on in the past, including past performances.

The great pianist, Vladimir Horowitz, in his younger years advised six-eight hours of practice a day. In his later years, he had dropped that down to two hours or less.

Why the change?

Because Horowitz, in his later years, knew how to practice. He did not need as much time to achieve the same result. He had learned what it is to become good at practice, which, in turn, made him great at performing.

Here’s the key. It’s simple, easy to apply, and will make all the difference.

Practice is training the hands, fingers, feet, arms and the body’s nervous system to respond to the commands that are issued by the brain.

Practice, therefore, is primarily spending time on something you don’t know, not playing music you do know.

So much time is wasted by students who want to go over and over a piece because they already know it, the work is easy. What is needed, however, is the tenacity to take on something that is not known.

Too many students copy my earlier mistakes. I started at the beginning of the piece every time they sat down to practice. Eventually I’d come to a passage I could not handle, struggle over it, continue to the end, and maybe start the process again.

It was only later that I would go straight to the part I did not know properly, could not play well, and work over that short section until I had it down error free. And then I would play the portions of music either side of it.

When the child starts at the beginning all the time, she quickly gets into performance mode, not practice mode. One is governed more by emotions, while the idea of practice is intellectual work. “I must make this movement to achieve this result. And I must be able to do it on demand, first time.”

Look over your child’s shoulder when they sit or stand with their musical instrument and encourage practice rather than performing.

Less time can produce quicker and better results. Try it and hear the results. Then sit back and enjoy the performance.

But Andrew also plays violin and has a background in music education. A few years ago he put together a 2-CD lecture series entitled The Profound Effects of Music on Life.

In this series, Andrew illustrates how music affects the nervous system in young children, positively and negatively. He demonstrates with examples during the lecture.

Yes, music can have a negative effect. And to put the finishing touch to his lecture, he recalls the experiment by high school student David Merrill in 1997 that won David a science award.

The experiment involved mice and music, and exposing two groups of mice to music, 10 hours a day every day for a week. One group heard the music of Mozart; the other group, the music of acid rock group, Anthrax. A third group, the control group, had no music. The experiment involved allowing the mice to navigate a 10-minute maze, then retesting a week later. This went on for three weeks, so there were four tests or each group. The results were staggering.

But what was most staggering, was the failure of the first attempt at the experiment. The group of mice exposed to rock music became cannibals, and the experiment could only be completed by isolating each mice. They could not be put in a group.

For you can then find out that the control group cut their 10-minute maze down to about 5 minutes. The group listening to Mozart’s music on the fourth test cut over eight minutes off the time.

And the group of mice exposed to the acid rock group? How did they do? Guess. But if you didn’t guess 30 minutes, you got it wrong.

Have I got your attention ? Are you interested yet? You ought to be. If I were a benevolent dictator, I would make this resource compulsory listening for all parents.

But since I’m not a benevolent dictator, you can voluntarily buy your copy by clicking on this link. Do it NOW — PLEASE!

The Profound Effects of Music on Life.

Listening to music will never be the same for you after you’ve listened to these lectures.

David Merrell’s results (in seconds):

Over 50 years ago Rudolph Flesch pointed out that the loss of phonics in the schoolroom meant Johnny couldn’t read. Since then smart parents and teachers have insisted on a comprehensive program that teaches children the sounds of the letters first, then how to blend those sounds into words.

But there is more than that, because an integrated phonics program not only uses the sight and auditory senses to teach reading, but kinetic activity such as writing to reinforce what the students see and hear.

The result has been outstanding success for students who have been taught to read and write using a simple phonics methodology.

That same student who responded positively to the multi-sensory reading program, however, will quite often quit music in his teens. Why? For the same reason that kids used to give up on the three Rs: Some of the ‘Rs’ are missing. And in the case of music, two of the ‘Rs’ are missing: Reading and ‘Riting – especially the ‘Riting part.

In the music environment slow learning results in bored students, And bored students don’t progress rapidly, not because they are incapacitated in some form, but because they don’t know how to do something. And the something in this case, is read music – fluently.

Why can’t they do this? Because their reading skills are not developed in a systematic fashion when the student first learns music. Students go to piano lessons, are given a few pieces to learn each year and expected to play them to perfection. They memorize the piece in the first week, then repeat it over and over, week after week, aiming for perfection.

Instead of perfection, though, comes boredom. Because even though they memorized the piece in the first week, the remaining five weeks they were on that program meant they never had to read another new note. This is much the same way a child will memorize a story and pretend he is reading. But pretending to read is not how you develop reading fluency.

What I am suggesting is that fluent reading skills are the missing element in the teaching of music that causes many students to quit. They quit in their teens because at that age students are seeking peer recognition. But they certainly won’t get recognition for their music skills while they are still playing elementary pieces of music. And they are at this level because they are intimidated by the number of notes on the page in the more advanced compositions. If they cannot get recognition for their violin or trombone skills, they’ll drop that for something else – a football, a basketball, or maybe nothing, and simply hang out with their friends. Idle time.

And parents begin to say to themselves, “Why on earth did I spend that money on music lessons? It was just a total waste.”

Prodigy musicians, such as Mozart, certainly had a special aptitude. But they also had something else when they were young: they were taught how to write music. Not when they were 18-years old, but when they were five or six. And that’s what enabled them to become extraordinarily successful.

It is now recognized that “talent” is the outcome of diligent work, at least 10,000 hours of practice at something – anything. If it is piano, it means 10,000 hours at the keyboard. If it’s golfing, it’s 10,000 hours on the course and range, day in and day out, with clubs and putter. In other words, you take aptitude and apply constant practice, and you end up with “talent.” The prolific composer J.S. Bach, when asked the secret of his genius, replied, “I was made to work; if you are equally industrious you will be equally successful.” It took 46 years to collect his output into 60 volumes. That’s talent.

The sooner students get those 10,000 hours under their belt, the sooner their “talent” displays itself, because now they are well-honed, well-developed thinking students who have the mental and physiological disciplines for their instrument, sport or occupation.

Just as in literature children are taught first to write letters then words, joining words to make sentences, combining multiple sentences into paragraphs, then on to short stories, so too they need to be taught the musical alphabet which, unlike language, has only seven letters spread out across five lines and four spaces. Add to the letters the range of octaves, the use of measures (units of rhythm), blend in the grammar rules of good melodic writing, of which there about eight, develop first the short phrase, the 8-bar then 16-bar melody, then move on to form which allows longer compositions in a structured environment.

To write music requires the ability to read. Many music students quit in their teens because they cannot read accurately, quickly translating a mass of notes on the written page into productive music. And they can’t read because they can’t write. Reading and writing go together like love and marriage.

So they hand in their notice: “I’m out of here.”  Because Johnny or Mary or Sally or Peter cannot read very well at all.

The home school or classroom music student can overcome this problem with the right tools of learning. And it’s time parents and teachers demanded not only phonics for literature, but music programs that teach kids how to read and write – fluently and early.

Then it will no longer be said, Johnny can’t read music. And if he can read fluently, perhaps it will never be asked, “Why did Johnny quit music early?” — because he’s still hard at work, heading towards that 10,000 hour goal when he, too, will be recognized as “talented”.

Even in a school of music, music education can still be a challenge.  Here’s why.

A lot has to do with the complexity of music education. Here’s a list of things necessary for a good music education:

• Reading musical notes
• Playing an instrument
• Understanding rhythm
• Understanding time and space
• Math and music
• Aesthetics and music
• Acoustics and music
• Morals and music
• History of music
• Science and Music

Each one of these is a subject in itself, and it can appear daunting to the homeschooling family.

But attaining the complexity of a music eduction is no different than any other subject. You start with a few basic principles and eventually deal with great complexity as the student absorbs and understands the basics.

What, then are the basics in a music education? It’s what I call the “Three R’s of Music Education: Reading, ‘Riting and Rhythm.”

The first two of these — Reading and ‘Riting — are a combo package. They must be taught together. That’s how you teach language, and it is no different in music.  By combining sight — what you see — with production — now write it — you combine the students senses to reinforce what it is she is to learn.

The last of the three ‘R’s’ — Rhythm — is a little more challenging. When you speak you use rhythm. You say some words louder than others, or stronger than others, to emphasize what it is you are attempting to convey.

Music takes those emphasized sounds and puts it in a more regular pattern. It might be simple duple or triple meter (two beats or three beats) or more complex forms of this, called compound rhythm.

Here the student is learning to hear and produce sounds in a more meaningful manner to convey the message of the music.

These three ingredients form the backbone of a good music education.  And they are not difficult to achieve.

Hear me out on this one. I’m a piano teacher. My students got to high levels quickly. But it took me a long time to figure out I may be the problem, not the student.

Now I did have some help. My final piano teacher was Russian, born as his parents escaped Leninism in 1916. They made their way to Australia, a cultural shock for the family from the center of music and arts in Russia.

But I was introduced to the piano techniques that made the Russian School of Pianism great. It was intermingled with another school or pianism, of the famous Polish teacher Theodore Leschetizky, who also produced an array of talented and famous pianists. Perhaps the most famous was Ignace Paderewski, who eventually became Prime Minster of Poland. But not before he earned millions in his lifetime as a concert artist, giving most of it away. One three-month trip to the USA paid him what was then a large fortune in the 1890s – $300,000.

Among these “schools of pianism” there were some real differences both in style and performance. But they were all united on one thing: to practice piano and learn quickly you had to practice slowly.

Now this is not just an idea for musicians. Many sports people use this as a method to train muscular coordination. The ability to hit a tennis ball powerfully means you need to find, and know how to use in an instant, the “sweet spot” on the racquet. This requires co-ordination of hand, eye, and feet to position your body so that when you swing your arm, the racquet will connect with the ball at exactly the right time and place.

Musicians, of course, don’t hit balls. But a pianist needs to train his fingers and arms to apply pressure to a key at exactly the right time, for the precise amount of time, no more or no less – to create the desired musical effect. It takes him some time to develop the strength and independence of the fingers so that he can produce the sound he wants whenever he wants it.

Like the tennis player or golfer, the position of his body weight relative to the way his hands sit on the keyboard, is an important factor. So all these things are coming together at a performance – but no one, except the pianist, is going through the mental gymnastics of listening, preparing, reacting to the sounds already created to give continuity to the musical effect that is being created.

The violinist, on the other hand, does not press keys. His battle starts, first of all, with learning how to hold his left arm up for extended periods without getting stiff. Then his right arm is moving back and forward, up and down, sliding the bow, bouncing the bow, using the upper part, or the lower part, all to create a musical experience for the listener. And the challenge for him, is not to let the wrong muscles get in the way and destroy the smoothness of his bowing action. This is exactly the same challenge the golfer faces on the green: don’t let anything interfere with the smooth movement of the putter to guide – not hit — the ball into the hole.

It is muscular coordination that needs the slow practice. When practicing slowly the brain is better able to grasp, and the muscular system better able to remember, the demands being made upon it. Then, subconsciously, the muscles are able to recall these demands in a split second when the brain sends the signal, “do this” or “do that.”

Slow practice, in other words, speeds up the learning process for those requiring the coordination of brain and muscles – nearly everything.

Take a young piano student who has a problem section in the music. That problem can disappear in about three or four attempts if the student will slowly practice what is required. That memory then remains, and the problem usually disappears. Chronic problems take longer to fix, but the key is not to develop the problems in the first place.

Slow practice nearly always eliminates the development of problem areas. And a child can learn pieces quickly, commit them to memory, then concentrate on the development of hand, arm, and ear to perfect the performance.

So if your child is slow in learning, look at the way she is practicing the right way. You do not need the music teacher to tell your child “slow down”. You can instill this habit at home. And if successful, the teacher is going to be surprised at the ability of your child to learn quickly and accurately.

That’s all it takes — slow practice.

There can be a significant difference between the meanings of the words “short” and “detached”. Something that is short means its length (or height) is not very great. In music we deal with sounds, length of sounds in time, so “short” means not very long in duration.

The word “detached”, however, does not speak about the length of time. It merely means separation. To detach one sound from another in music is to separate the sounds.  It is true, of course, that in order to detach one sound from another, it is necessary to make the first sound shorter to create the separation– but not always short.  Get the idea?  There is a subtle — but important — difference between short and shorter.  Every musician needs to understand the difference, otherwise he will misinterpret the meaning of staccato.

For many pianists the idea of staccato presents a particular problem: they don’t understand how staccato applies artistically, and therefore they often make bad judgments how to play music that is marked staccato.  The result is often a clipped, and somewhat harsher sound from the keyboard, whereas the particular composition is just asking for sounds that are détaché.

Music is a form of communication. Like the use of other art forms, such as painting, there are ways of communicating ideas.  Sometimes to communicate, you need to highlight one note or section to make it stand out.  We do this in normal speech every day, laying emphasis on words in various ways.  If you were painting a green tree on a hill covered by green grass, one of the things that would be necessary to address is this: how will you make the tree stand out from the background. You have several options:

• Make the tree a different color
• Make the tree a darker or lighter shade of green than the background
• Put an outline around the tree.

Each of thee “techniques” has its musical equivalent.  To make something a different color, you change its audible image, say from very high notes to very low notes.

To make something darker or lighter, you make the audible sound louder or softer.

When it comes to putting an outline around music, you ask how do you make outlines?  The answer is that you use contrasts: black against white, yellow against blue.  Contrast are usually opposites, as you see here.

Now in music the opposite to sound is silence, and you put silence between notes to make them stand out. There are ways of doing this in music.  A silent note (a rest) is one way to place a longer silence.  But for a shorter silence, the composer will place the staccato sign (a dot) above or below a note.  The instruction?  Highlight the note, make it stand out.

So the artistic meaning of staccato is to put silence between the notes. In other words, you detach the sounds from one another.  You can say you make the sounds shorter, but not necessarily short.  A long note (a half note, for example) may have a staccato symbol.  It does not mean to play the note like a sixteenth note, or an eighth note, or even a quarter note.  If the composer had wanted quarter notes he would write them, then put rests in between.

But it’s not that simple.  When you see, in Beethoven’s music, for example, a staccato in the middle of a long run of sixteenth notes that are running quickly, you know he cannot mean to play the note shorter or detached: you don’t have time to do that.

But if you understand that the purpose of staccato is to make something stand out, then your artist’s pallette can be used to solve the problem of the staccato.  In the case of the Beethoven example, you would need to hit the note a little firmer, playing it louder, making it stand out.

Voilà!  Staccato achieved, but not by playing the note short or even shorter.

If you played violin instead of piano you may not have made this mistake in understanding staccato.  String instrumentalists have a bowing technique known as détaché.  When the violinist sees a number of notes with the staccato symbol over (or under) them, he knows he is to play one note for each stroke of the bow.  That means he has to change the direction of the bow after each note.  The idea is not to put silence between the notes, but the change in direction of the bow creates a new emphasis — a highlight — of the notes.   Artistic effect achieved.

For some reason, which seems to be related to technique issues in piano playing, staccato has lost its older meaning, and so many performances of older works lose the character and the intention of the composer.  This is not always bad, since there is always artistic “license” — aesthetics –  involved in interpreting music.  But just like poetry, music interpretation is bound by its context and the effect the music is design to have.  There is a place for a very crisp emphasis, which the violinists call spiccato.  It’s a variation by degree of the meaning of staccato.  The string player can also make use of martelé or ricochet and dance his bow around to make notes stand out in a brilliant fashion.

The piano is not a member of the string instruments: it is a member of the percussion group.  The art of good piano playing is to make a percussive instrument sing like the violin, dance like the piccolo, rumble like the double bass and tubas, and provide an exciting night of musical enjoyment.  This is not achieved by approaching the keyboard with a hand that is intent on imitating a sledgehammer.  Instead, it requires hours of skill and practice, of perfecting a “technique” that gives an audience enjoyment, and a chance to relax and recharge their spiritual and emotional batteries.

Avoid the mistake of translating staccato as “short”.  You need to be more creative than that. Think of it as shorter or detached.  Better still, think of it as an instruction from the composer to make something stand out.  Then use your artistic judgment to make that happen.

Parents don’t want their child to go through these experiences – but they want them to learn a musical instrument. They realize that their parents spent a lot of good money on their lessons, but they quit. And everyone agrees it was a waste of time and money.

So with their own children, they attempt to reduce the financial risk of providing music lessons for their children. They do this by doing two things:

* They find the cheapest teacher in town;
* They buy the cheapest instrument they can find.

Here, I’m interested in the second point, cheap instruments. They might find a hand-me-down violin that’s been around for decades. The strings are worn, the pegs can’t be moved easily, the bow is missing half its hairs; anyway, there’s no rosin for the bow and no chin-rest. It hasn’t been played in years. But this is Little Mary’s starting instrument.

For parents who choose piano, the financial risks are higher because a piano costs more to buy. Never mind. Someone has an old one that just needs dusting, it hasn’t been tuned for 45 years, the ivory is cracked or missing off the keys. And some of the keys don’t work anyway. They stick after you press them down, and you have to pull them up in order to use that note again.

Now I understand the cost saving. But it is also necessary to admit these instruments sound awful. They sound awful to adults, they sound awful to the teacher – and they will sound awful to the child as well. And they are no fun to play at all. There’s no possibility of the sound of the instrument getting the child excited.

No matter, say the parents. When my child display a real interest in music, we’ll get him something better.

Except that day never arrives. Little Mary or Little Albert never do take to music. They know they’re on a horrible instrument. Why persevere. Mom and Dad don’t care enough to get me a good instrument.

If you want your children to succeed at music, make sure they have an instrument that is in tune, or that can be tuned, and in the case of string or wind instruments, have bows and reeds that are top condition. They need to hear and make for themselves, musical sounds that are a reasonable quality, and you cannot get reasonable quality off a bad instrument. Then your child will know you care enough to insist they have something better. Put them with a good teacher and they’ll do well.

It does not cost the homeschooling family a fortune to have a reasonable instrument. It just needs a commitment to quality education and quality music in the homeschool.

But here’s something I have not seen included in the discussion. It has nothing to do with music, but it does have something to do with acoustics.

I’m reading the book, Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns: How Pop Culture Rewrote the Hymnal. It’s a good read on the problem of religious music today, and offers some relevant suggestions.

But in my observation it is not the fact that Johnny can’t sing — it’s the fact that he doesn’t sing. Or if he does, he does not do it very well.

There are numerous reasons to explain this, such as the decline of singing generally in the home where most kids will get their love for, and ability, to sing. Thus, in adult life they are continuing what was done in childhood.

There are also the musical issues that relate to style of music. Contemporary religious music, with its syncopated rhythms, harmonic movements that often defy musical relationships, and melodies that are designed for individuals not groups, lends itself to the problem. Add to this the fact that the music might relatively new, the overhead projection system does not give him musical notes to follow — not that it matters if he can’t read music — and he has to guess what is coming next in the melody.

But there is another problem, one which I have experienced as a performer on stage. When the Sydney Opera House opened its doors in 1973 after almost a decade of political wrangling between the state government and the design architect, who was eventually fired from the job, it was a flop. It looked great inside and outside, but for those of us who got to perform on stage it was disastrous. Why? You could not hear yourself. For an accompanist, this is deadly. For if you cannot hear the soloist, you don’t know if you’re playing too loud, drowning out the performer — or too soft, not giving the soloist the support he needs.

Somewhere along the path of construction, the acoustics of the major concert hall became lost in the battle between Jorn Utzon, the Danish architect, and those who completed the project, state government employees. The outcome is that the performer could not hear himself or herself adequately while performing. This was a problem for acoustic singers, not those who used microphones and speakers.

But instrumentalists and orchestral members struggled to balance their performances and create the nuances of sound that make for a great performance. Audience could hear quite well; the sound traveled away from the stage quite magnificently, so attending a concert was, and remains, a great sound experience.

In many contemporary church buildings the same acoustic problem exists, not just on stage, but now throughout the whole sanctuary. You cannot hear yourself sing. They were not designed with the idea that the congregation members should hear themselves sing. Rather, the contemporary church building is designed for speaker systems, electronics, and a sound level way beyond the bounds of decency.

So when Johnny arrives at church and he has the opportunity to sing, he is not only hindered by a lack of youthful singing and an inability to read music, but since he cannot hear his own voice in the crowd, he doesn’t sing. Well, not very well, anyway. And he as no incentive to try. He cannot tell how well he is doing because he cannot hear himself. The acoustics in the building are not designed for that to happen. In fact, they are designed so that it won’t happen, and the crowd on stage with the microphones and amplification will be heard over everything.

The Sydney Opera House resolved its problem with a set of acoustic rings that are suspended from the ceiling above the stage to reflect the sound back down to the performers. It is a satisfactory, if not ideal, arrangement.

But contemporary church buildings don’t have that option. They need to be rebuilt — starting on the inside.