I have often been asked, “When will my child be ready for music lessons?” The truth is, there is no “official” age when a child is ready . I personally believe that a child’s individual physiology, his intellectual and emotional maturity has to be ready to tackle the challenge of learning a musical instrument.
In my time, most children started instrumental learning at age 6 or 7, unless the child was particularly prodigious. I started at age 9 and because of my late start, I fast tracked the ABRSM and completed Grade 8 when I was 16. Today, many children start at ages 3 or 4 but can hardly make it through Grade 1 at age 6. That’s taking at least 3 years trying to accomplish what a child who started at age 6 could do in a year.
Staring a young child before he is ready can be detrimental. The lack of physiological readiness is inevitably associated with bad technical habits. If they do not have the intellectual capacity to read musical notations competently, they are likely to depend totally on playing by ear, which, over time can become a hindrance to their motivation to read music. When a child is confronted with too many challenges, they will lose the interest and motivation. Another important point to note, the younger the child is when starting lessons, the more involved the parent has to be. Parents will have to make time to attend lessons and to help out with daily practice time.
My repeated advice is therefore to let a program like Kindermusik arouse the musical interest, and lay the very important foundations of beat and rhythmic sense,pitch sense(melodic), the ability to audiate music (hear music in their head), feel the phrases, dynamics, tempo changes etc in the body.
At around 4, they would have been disposed to some music literacy and have gained confidence in reading and composing music. They would have the hand-hand coordination needed to read and play music nailed down, and only then, put them to the gruelling challenges of instrumental learning. There is a huge difference between the child who just plucks out a few melodies on the piano, and the child who delivers beautiful music that moves us. I hope it is the latter that we nurture.
Chiat Goh is the Founding Director and Educator Mentor of Kindermusik Asia
