How to make your child not succeed at music

[rubydubyr]

Also known as how to make your child no longer love the music they once loved...

1. Buy them a "crap" instrument that is either hard to play or won't stay in tune (better yet, use both criteria) And if it's a piano, have the thing moved several times and never get it professionally tuned.

2. Specify they must do an ungodly amount of practice time each day (and if they miss some time, they must write down the missed time and make it up on another day, even if the circumstances were beyond their control. At some point in the future, if they are really lucky, they can look forward to doing 8 hours of practice in one day to get "caught up".)

3. Every time they make a mistake, groan loudly from the other room.

4. Every time there is silence in the "practice room" yell loudly enough so the neighbors down the street can also hear you saying "I can't hear youuuuuuuuuuu!".

5. Tell the child that even ONE mistake ruins a piece of music, and you can hear every mistake the <name a city> Symphony makes when you go and it just totally RUINS the evening and you wonder why you spend the money to listen to imposters who are SUPPOSED to be professionals.

6. Trot the child out like a trained monkey and have them play for company whether they want to or not. Be sure to listen CRITICALLY for the least mistake and if the company doesn't appear to notice, be sure to draw everyone's attention to it by asking the child why they intentionally embarrass you by playing something they don't know very well????

7. Tell the child over and over it is your dream to see them in Carnegie Hall one day as the featured performer even if they started lessons so late that unless they were a genius about the most they can hope for from the instrument is personal enjoyment.

8. Point out every child prodigy of music that you can find to them and wonder loudly why THEY aren't making money, you've spent enough on lessons for them after all....

9. Last but not least, wonder what is wrong with the UNGRATEFUL child when they reach 17 years old and suddenly realize no one can MAKE them do this anymore!!!!

[jshane]

Good Lord--- did that happen to YOU?

[rubydubyr]

my brother and I...... we both let our own children do it if they wanted, and never monitored practice time. My daughter now has a master's in music

[tkdboyd]

i am sorry for you both. i have mother who sounds like yours but fortunately a father who just "praised the lord". if that doesn't compute he played a Harmony and then a Gibson A-12.

enjoy your mandolin, no matter what the voices in your head tell you!

[rubydubyr]

Awww, how sweet! Thank you very much! I am having a lot of fun with the mandolin, and I try to remember this isn't a race to see how fast I can learn a song, but to enjoy it even if I don't play it as well as the "voices" say I should by a certain point.

[Dan Cohen]

If only my parents had not sent me for piano lessons with Mrs. Lafollette (name changed) when I was a child. She taught me to hate playing. Luckily I picked up a guitar later on and then the mandolin which has become my passion.

[rubydubyr]

I have a feeling the mandolin will become a passion of mine also. It helps that my daughter is a musician and actually wants to play simple songs with me. Plus, it gives me something to do at night other than watch hulu and Netflix, and for cold winter days when I can't go for a bicycle ride which is also a passion of mine.

[mandroid]

10 .. cut the school budget keep football but Axe Music and Art.

[rubydubyr]

Yup, that too. Texas schools used to have choir and violin and band lessons starting in the 3rd grade, for those who wished to come to school 30 minutes early for the lessons. Now....... the kids get a 45 minute singing lesson 1 or 2 times a week, and lessons on the recorder in 4th grade...... And the states wonder why academics is going down and kids aren't learning math...... guess they never heard of the studies that show a link between learning to PLAY music and being better mathematically......

[jaycat]

Here is another, different way . . .

When the child is very young (1st grade or so) ask them to sing a measure or two. If they sing 'out of tune,' tell them "You Can't Sing, so just mouth the words while the rest of the class sings."

I do not know if this practice continues but it happened to my brother in the 1950s and my girlfriend in the 1960s. Meanwhile, guess what -- they CAN sing! Maybe not like Caruso (or Sam Cooke) but well enough to enjoy themselves. When I met my GF she had not sung in 30+ years but a bottle of scotch and a Clancy Bros record cured that! Now she sings all the time and even in tune! (sometimes).

[rubydubyr]

oh yes, I have a BIG fear of singing where anyone can hear me. I can HEAR the music in my head, it never comes out of my voice correctly cause I was always told I couldn't sing. And guess what? As my daughter says, a voice needs practice like any other instrument. I deeply empathize with your girl friend and applaud her for singing anyway now! Well done for her!!!!!!

[Bill Snyder]

Ruby, all of the districts around here still have band and choir (starts in 6th grade) and several have strings (starts in 4th grade). They all meet during the school day and the students receive credit for them.
FWIW, I live in central Texas.

[rubydubyr]

yes, but when I was in grade school, they had strings, band, and choir starting in the 3rd grade. The schools around here have band and choir starting the the 6th grade, some have strings. I know of no elem schools that have strings, unless it is offered as an extra curricular activity, after school.

[Randi Gormley]

So sorry Ruby -- despite all that, though, you've come back to music and that's a good thing. One of my kids ran afoul of a bad music teacher and it took him years to recover even enough to listen to music on an mp3 player (thank heavens for movie and videogame soundtracks). I still hope he'll pick up his violin again after putting it down in humiliation when he was 14 (he's 26 now).

[rubydubyr]

Oh, that is sad, Randy! Perhaps someday he will.

[Bertram Henze]

I have three more:

10. Tell your child that every master player practises at least 12 hours a day.

11. Make sure that the instrument your child is being taught to play was chosen by you, not by your child.

12. Make sure that your child is being taught on classical music only - make harsh comments whenever possible about the crap your child is caught listening to on other occasions.

It is good that you have come round to play music again, after application of rules 1 thru 9, though. My own silent period was 8 years approx.

I have let my daughter choose her instrument (tenor sax, something my parents wouldn't even have recognized as being an actual instrument) and let her build up the pressure to make me buy her one (a cheapo beginner instrument at first, a much better one later). She went on to play solo in the school orchestra and was member of a Ska band for some time; she still plays it today, experimenting with different mouthpieces and reeds.

[Austin Bob]

Or you could take the opposite approach, like my parents did. Buy a Silvertone archtop acoustic with mile high action. Give him a chord book, and say "have at it."

[rubydubyr]

Ahh yes Bertram, your 3 new rules fit right in....... so glad you have found your way back to music also after being subjected to rules 1-9

[Astro]

13. Buy them an Xbox or Play Station with lots of games and plug them into an addicting virtual reality with strangers from all over the world.

[rubydubyr]

13. Buy them an Xbox or Play Station with lots of games and plug them into an addicting virtual reality with strangers from all over the world.

OMG, OMG...... DON'T get me started on THAT subject.......

[Freddyfingers]

I hear what you guys are saying, and I agree that I could easily be a turn off for most, to have that approach taken by ones parents. Me, on the other hand, begged my parents or years to just have an instrument. They always said no. I didn't even ask for lessons, just an instrument. I didnt care which one. I got my hands on a Montgomery Wards broken guitar at 17. I have not put down any instruments since then, and now play a multitude. So perhaps the theories are reversable. Also, I wanted my children to have access to whatever Instrument they ever wanted to try. My house had Instruments scattered about. Guitars, saxophones , trumpets, drums of all types, harmonicas , mandolins, violins etc. they just don't see them. To them they are part if the household. Where as for me growin up , I would have been rather content. So I guess it's hard to tell which approach works best.

[BBarton]

Dan Cohen's experience above reflect my own. I imagine there are more than a few guitar/mandolin/banjo players out there who made the switch to something else because of a less-than-joyful experience with piano lessons as a child!!

[jaycat]

. . . I got my hands on a Montgomery Wards broken guitar at 17. . . .

Hey, I had that guitar too!

Here is yet another slightly different take: When I was about 8 yrs old, my parents asked me if I wanted to take clarinet lessons, like many of the other kids were doing. The difference was, those other kids' parents told them to take lessons, my parents asked me if I wanted to. Well, at that time I would much rather play ball so that was that.

Much later in life, I wish they had made me take them. I would have learned how to read music, which is so much easier at that age, and who knows how many other instruments I might have gone on to play.

I'm not saying act like a dictator, but if I had kids, I think I would at least strongly encourage them to study an instrument. In a nurturing way, of course.

[rubydubyr]

I really think its up to the person and their particular interest(s), Freddy. Can you take a child and force them to become really good? Yes, it happens. The child might even parrot their parent's aspirations for them if asked. But how good MIGHT they have been if not subjected to the dictatorial style, or what else MIGHT they have achieved if allowed to also explore other interests? Of course, we will never know that unless we find a way to explore alternate realities.

[Marc Ferry]

As a mandolinist on the younger side, it's incredible how many kids I know who play hours a day of violin or piano -- and they don't enjoy it one bit.

Many people don't recognize that music isn't about being good or making money. It's about expressing yourself creatively and enjoying it.