Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Experiences of HG, EG, PG children learning music

Well, it may be tangential, but I'll answer because it is a topic dear to my heart...

Our DD sounds very similar, except we do have a piano and I play, so that has made it easier for her to learn on her own terms. This summer, after a lot of discussion, she did take piano lessons, with the stipulation that it be for the summer only (she also values her free time and has a full plate during the school year). I was lucky to find a teacher who understood what DD wanted from her and was willing to take her on on those terms. They also worked out of a theory textbook each week. DD practiced very little; she is an excellent sight reader, but I suspect this experienced teacher could see through that. But in this setting, that was fine. (The teacher did mention at the end of the summer that DD would be an excellent pianist if she decided she wanted to work at it, but that's a different thread altogether). If you can't find a teacher who will be flexible (or if your DD still balks), does your school offer anything along those lines? The middle school theory course here is half workbook theory, half composing, and the school subscribes to several software programs that facilitate this (DD didnt want to take the course- I suspect she thought it would be too easy, and she may have been right, but she has used the software thanks to her band teacher).

I can't bring up the names of all the programs off the top of my head, but there was a thread about composing that was pretty good some time ago. Noteflight is one, I think there is one called Sibelius, but if I recall correctly it is a paid subscription. GarageBand has some cool features- DD went through a stage of recording herself playing multiple parts and then putting it all together- pretty funny but neat. Also, I don't play guitar, but i wonder if learning the chords and progressions would serve the same purpose? Or even ukelele or something like that?

Gosh, this thread just inspired me to listen to some of the MANY sung snippets she has recorded on my MP3 player. She does this in her room and we don't hear her, though sometimes she shares. Some of them are really lovely. Her lyrics are beautiful. Her voice is slowly developing. She has times when it's just--agh, not good!--and times when it sounds really great--it's quite odd. I don't quite know what to think about that because it seems to me that voice talent is usually quite natural from an early age, but perhaps for some, a voice can be trained into shape?

We keep saying we are at least going to get a keyboard. DH doesn't really play, but he does some electronic music composition and one would be helpful. Music at her elementary school is, unfortunately, bad.

Piano and guitar are the two main instruments that let you pick out notes and play chords (or both at the same time), and of the two, my opinion is that guitar is the far better teacher of how scales and intervals work, because there are no black keys to get hung up on... all semitones are treated equally.

Of course, it's also entirely possible to pick up a guitar, look at some tablatures, and play passable music without ever learning a thing about how music actually works. So there's that.

Check out Reason software. I think it's up her alley.

My dd is 7 1//2 and has been playing for almost exactly a year now. She's started on some easy Beethoven and Mozart now that I didn't play until I was in about 7th grade and had been playing for 5 years. So I think she's moving along really quickly, especially in the last couple of months.

But she's a whiz at memorizing and that's mostly how she plays. Note reading is really difficult for her, and she still has to think about what each note is. She read books at age 3 1/2. How strange is that?

um, it sounds like you don't need to "enable her interest" - she's actively writing, isn't she? I'd let her continue as she is, and I suspect that at some point she'll most likely want further knowledge in music theory etc. It's ok if it doesn't happen right away as long as she's having fun. My ds loves to write songs too - he's taking piano lessons, but the songs he writes have nothing to do with what he studies in his piano lessons, they are mostly inspired by things he hears and enjoys, and just by banging around on the keyboard and finding something that sounds good to his ear. As long as your dd is satisfied she's able to write down and play back what she's hearing, I wouldn't stress over finding her technical help (lessons or online) at this point. Just let her be creative

polarbear

I admit I struggle with the feeling that every child should learn to read music and understand basic music theory, but she just doesn't want the lesssons right now, so there we are. The MP3 player was a "duh" innovation that has really allowed her to do more and enjoy herself, so maybe some other computer tool could allow even more exploration. She can't notate anything except for what she writes for recorder (which is, uh, not the world's most versatile instrument!--but I'm glad she has learned it).

I haven't seen recorder music in ages... is it not regular notation with the usual music notes, bars, etc? If it's not, and if you know how to read music, maybe what you could do is spend just a small amount of time showing your dd what notes correspond to which lines etc on the piano so that she can transcribe her songs - *if* she wants to.

polarbear

Yeah, she didn't learn the staff (sigh). She learned A-G-D-E or whatever the few most basic notes are on a recorder and their corresponding fingerings. To be fair, she was taught recorder in K and 1 at her first school. When she writes songs down that she wrote on recorder, she will just write D-D-G-A-E-A-D or whatever. You're right, though, that this would be easy enough to teach. In fact, for all I know she does get instruction in this in elementary school music.

It was very good for my kids to take private music lessons (violin, piano, bagpipes)because they moved at their own pace (quickly)-- which did not get to happen with school subjects. Also, this was a place they could be challenged, struggle a bit, learn to "try hard"; school was too easy, and these important skills could not be learned there. I learned that to keep the learning going, I had to change teachers a couple of times. Either a child would "outgrow" a teacher or I would see that one of them needed a teacher with a different style/personality in order to work well. The most successful two teachers were probably highly gifted individuals themselves.