Piano Musings

At the start of January, Matthew told me he really, really did not want to take piano lessons any more. Not that he didn't like playing the piano, but he just didn't want the lessons right now. We decided that we wouldn't push it and I let K know that there would be only two students at our house. She understood and is using the extra half hour now to spend with Andrew each week because his grade 3 exam is coming up at the end of the month.

I was just thinking about this change in our household and have discovered something. Matthew is spending about the same, if not more, time at the piano. He plays his favourite music he learned in his lessons and he has been working away at another piece he loves that his brothers can play. They've helped him out with correcting the notes and even fingering and that piece has come along nicely. It sounds great! All this in two weeks, no stress attached! He and I agreed that we would sit together and I would help him whenever possible with the pieces he would like to learn on his own. But, no stress!

Since there are no longer two students for the Music for Young Children programme, K is concentrating on grade 1 pieces with Nicholas. He is thrilled and spends loads of time at the piano practicing and perfecting the assigned pieces. He is also continuing to work through the various other popular music books we have, picking and choosing what he feels like playing, reading the notes or figuring it out by ear and sometimes checking that against how the music reads. He hasn't opened the MYC book for weeks now (he spent the majority of his time over Christmas playing Christmas carols; most of them were not specifically taught but he taught himself), and is enjoying this challenge. I'm not sure what will become of the MYC programme around here since K was sure it would be helpful to both Nicholas and Matthew, but she was the one to drop it when Matthew was no longer interested. They had completed about a dozen MYC lessons out of the 40 or so that are listed in the back of the book. I'm not disappointed that Nicholas is finally being challenged, I just regret the $$$ spent on two MYC books that could have been better spent on something different for music!

Andrew's time has been spent on a lot of technique - scales, triads, clapping back patterns, sight reading. He is willingly going to practice these things on his own. He still enjoys sitting at the piano and playing just for the pure enjoyment of the music, going through his entire repertoire at times from the simplest to the most challenging pieces. He does spend a lot of time on his specific exam pieces. We have discussed future exams. He's not sure that he wants to do another one this year, although K is certain he could do his grade 6 exam in June of this year. I told him that taking exams are completely up to him, we're not going to force him to do them! He hasn't said he's nervous about this upcoming exam as a reason for not doing any others. He would just like to play to enjoy playing for a while. I can understand the need for that!

All in all, piano playing around here has become more enjoyable in the last several weeks and I have not had to remind anyone to practice. Interesting how things work out when something turns out to be a positive change!