Help Your Child Practise Music Better

Generating Excitement!

Try to approach each practice session as an exciting new experience. In my teaching I'm always looking for new ways to explore the elements of music and how it feels to play. If you're not a musician yourself this is still very possible — ask your child to describe how it feels to play the music. What are the challenges? What are the easy bits? What are the sensations of playing this or that particular note?

New opportunities and experiences don't have to be limited to playing the instrument either. For phrases and notes your child finds easy, try getting them to clap or sing the song, or dance it expressively with their body. Get involved, join in, and don't be afraid to get silly! Developing a stronger emotional connection to music through these kinds of experiences is a vital part of getting your child to want to practise.

Maintaining Interest

For children, learning a piece of music — easy or difficult — has several stages, both practically and mentally. Once a child can play a piece well, it's tempting to simply move on to the next challenge. But this is actually when the most important creative practice can begin. Now the real exploration starts.

There are many ways to have fun and express oneself with a familiar piece of music. Why not try exploring and improvising with some of the ideas below?

Play with Tempo

Getting your child to play in time is important and should be carefully maintained — but that's no reason not to have a little fun with speed. Try playing the piece very slowly, very fast, or experimenting with speeding up and slowing down at unusual or interesting moments in the song. This builds awareness of rhythm and musical shape in a playful, pressure-free way.

Vary Volumes

Playing with volume — dynamics — is a wonderful way to develop shape and structure in a piece of music. Your child's piece likely already has some dynamics written in, but why not encourage them to take ownership and create a new narrative for the music? Sudden dramatic changes in volume can be great fun and create real opportunities for enjoying the practice session together.

Be Imaginative!

Creating and setting a mood is a vital musical skill — and also a great opportunity for creativity and improvisation. Discuss your child's piece with them. What mood does it set? Does it bring a particular image, idea, scene or feeling to mind? Encourage them to describe this in detail and then imagine it as an accompaniment to the music. Ask them to play the piece while picturing the scene they have created, and enjoy the difference it makes to the quality and expressiveness of their playing.

How Do You Feel When You Practise?

The main aim of practising is to improve — which can happen directly or indirectly. When we practise we are essentially establishing habits: patterns of movement and behaviour that become familiar over time. What we often forget is that how we feel during practice also becomes internalised and habitual. It's therefore vital that your child practises with a sense of excitement, happiness and self-expression — and avoids feelings of boredom, frustration or resentment. The emotional habits formed during practice are just as important as the technical ones.