What Age Should My Child Start Piano Lessons

We have been addressing many of our Frequently Asked Questions lately through our blog. I have another good one for you today. This is a question we get a lot.

At what age should my child start piano lessons?

I am going to give you a short answer and then a little longer answer. If you want the short answer, here it is: 5 years old

Now, here is the longer answer. It really depends on your child. We have had 3 year old students who do really great. These kids have shown a lot of interest in music from day one. These are the kids who are always banging on the toy drums or going up to the piano and banging the keys. If your kid is one of these kids who does these things without provocation, then it might not be a bad idea to start piano lessons a little younger - say around 3 years old. I wouldn’t go any younger than that.

That being said, it is not a good idea to force your kid to take piano lesson at that young of an age. They are not quite mature enough to understand why they need to practice or do anything the teacher says, so really it is a waste of time and energy if they are not already seeking it out. If this is your child, I would wait until they are a little older.

5 years old is just about the perfect age.

At 5 years old, they are still young enough to learn things extremely quickly, but they are old enough to start to understand why they need to practice. Even though it doesn’t seem like much, 5-year-olds have a lot more patience than 3-year-olds. They are old enough to sit through a full lesson without getting too distracted.

At 5 years old, they are old enough to start to see the value of learning music. They are also old enough to be familiar with some music that they like and your teacher can use this interest to keep the child engaged.

Should you force your child to take lessons if they don’t want to?

This could be a whole other blog post, but since we are having this conversation now I think it’s a good time to address it. Again, I have a short answer and a long answer to this question. The short answer is yes.

The longer answer is still yes, but I want to tell you why. If you have kids, you know their interests change daily. They may be really excited about music one day, but I guarantee that won’t be every day. Piano practice can never compare to watching a movie on Netflix or playing video games. When you sign your kids up for piano lessons, you need to be prepared for some resistance.

A lot of kids won’t know they even like the piano until they have been in lessons for a few years. It takes time to learn the skills to be able to play a more complex song. If you let them quit right away, they will never get there. Plus, there is something that happens to us when we put time into something. We become more and more committed to it the more time we invest in it. This goes for adults and for kids.

I didn’t want to take piano lessons. I wanted to play outside with my friends. I hated having to go to my lessons. But my parents made me stick it out. They encouraged me to practice. And now I play and teach piano for a living. I love music and I can’t imagine my life without it.

I am very thankful to my parents for making me take piano lessons when I was 5. By the time I was 9 or 10 , I really started to love it. Whether your kid is a prodigy waiting to happen or is just exploring what he or she might be interested in, there is no time like the present to get them started.

For most kids, you want to start them around the age of 5 or 6, whether they want to do it or not. Try to explain how fun it will be to be able to play their favorite songs. Once you get them to their lesson and they bond with their teacher, they will start to like it.

When can I let them quit?

And if they just absolutely hate every day of it, give them two years. Make them stick it out for two years. If they still want to quit, then let them. But I need to tell you this first. Almost all of the adult students we teach were the kids whose parents let them quit right away. And they tell us they have regretted it ever since.

So encourage your kids to stick it out. They are learning so many life skills from piano lessons that will serve them for the rest of their lives. It is totally worth it.

And then maybe one day your kid will grow up and write a blog post like this and thank you for making them take piano lessons. How cool would that be?

P.S. Thank you mom and dad. You guys were right!

Love,
Chris

Why you are practicing the piano too long

We’ve all heard it a million times. To be good at something, you have to practice.

It’s true. There is no way around that.

Matter of fact, the truth is, to be good at something, you have to practice A LOT!

For most people, the piano is an extra-curricular activity. We all have jobs, school, friends, sports, Netflix shows to catch up on, and we’d like to get some sleep in there too if possible.

How are we supposed to fit in piano practice? Even more, how are we supposed to fit in A LOT of piano practice?

Here is the answer.

Stop practicing so long.

So many of us think that in order to get good at the piano, we have to sit there and practice for hours on end. In a perfect world, yes that would be great. But here is what happens in the real world.

You tell yourself that in order to get good at the piano you have to practice at least an hour a day. You start off strong, but then life gets busy. Next thing you know, you have one full day after another and you can’t find an hour anywhere to practice. So instead of practicing a little bit, you blow it all off saying something like “If I can’t get my full hour of practice in then what’s the point?”

After a few weeks of that, you stop trying. Eventually, you don’t even touch the piano anymore. You quit taking lessons because you are frustrated and not making the kind of progress you wanted to.

Sound familiar?

Here is the truth that most people won’t tell you.

You don’t have to practice for an hour for it to count.

You don’t even have to practice for 30 minutes for it to count. Little chunks of practice go a long way.

What if you could practice 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there? Do you think you could find that time? Of course you could.

And you know what else? You would probably enjoy yourself more because you feel way less pressure to sit there for an hour torturing yourself.

And guess what? 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there still adds up to the same amount of practice. Matter of fact, I guarantee you will actually get MORE practice in this way because you are not blowing the whole thing off because you can’t get a full hour of practice in.

So here is your permission to let yourself off the hook. Stop telling yourself you have to practice an hour every day. Stop telling yourself if you don’t, then it’s not even worth practicing at all. It’s not true.

You don’t have to practice as long as you think you do.

You don’t have to be a piano practice superhero. Try getting in 10 minutes before and after work or school. Those 10 minute practices will add up fast and by the time you are sitting at your next lesson, you will see some serious improvement.

And remember, the whole reason you got into this piano thing was to have fun. Let those 10 minute practices be a break from your busy day. A little mini-musical meditation.

I’ll take 10 minutes of peace over 60 minutes of torture any day.

How to trick your brain into thinking you have practiced something longer than you have

Learning to play piano is not just about showing up to your piano lesson and playing some scales. Most of the learning actually happens at home when you practice. And really, the majority of your learning happens in your brain when you are sleeping.

Let me explain.

Have you ever had the experience where you are trying to learn something really hard on the piano. You figure if you just practice long enough, you will be able to do it, right? After an hour or so, you start to hit the wall. You start actually making more mistakes than when you started?

How can you actually be worse at something after practicing it for an hour?

When you practice, you can only practice for so long straight until your brain starts to shut off. We’ve all experienced it. We start getting sloppy, making more mistakes.

It’s because your brain has not had time to process everything you just practiced. Our brains are busy keeping us a live during the day. Telling our lungs to breathe, our heart to pump blood, taking in information, telling our hands and feet to move.

When our brains shut down for the night, that is when they finally have a chance to process all the other information, like all the practicing you did.

Most of our real learning happens in our sleep. Your brain needs some peace and quiet to connect all the dots. To create new nuero-transmitter connections and to solidify into your body and soul all that you practiced.

That is why when you come back to something the next day, you feel refreshed and you can play what you practiced just a little better than the day before.

Yes it does take a lot of repetition to get good at something. But it also takes a lot of downtime. There is no way to rush that process. Well, there is one way.

What is “Spaced Repetition?”

The answer is Spaced Repetition. All this means is having multiple shorter practices spread out over time instead of one long practice. It means doing 10-15 minute practices followed by breaks. These breaks can be minutes, hours or days, but the breaks are crucial. The breaks allow your brain to process all the information and in doing so, they actually speed up your progress.

You could compare this to a HIIT workout. These are all the rage in the fitness world right now because they work great and take a fraction of the time of a “normal” workout.

In a HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) workout, you do short bursts of high-intensity training followed by short bursts of recovery time. Each burst lasts 30 seconds to a minute. You do this cycle 4 or 5 times and your workout is done in 15-20 minutes.

And here is the best part - these workouts work! They have been proven to do just as much for your fitness if not more than a lower intensity, longer workout.

Practicing piano works the exact same way.

When you do hard cardio for shorter intervals, you are tricking your body into thinking you have worked out longer than you have. When you practice piano in short bursts more often, you are tricking your brain into thinking you have practiced more than you have.

Here is what to do…

Instead of practicing for hours and hours on end, try practicing something for 15 minutes. Then walk away for 15 minutes. Come back and practice it again for 15 minutes. Break. Repeat.

This process over a few days will trick your brain into thinking that more time has gone by than actually has. It will make the connections quicker. And suddenly you will be able to play that thing like you have been playing it for weeks or months. You basically sped up the process by getting your brain to process more in smaller chunks.

Say you are getting ready to play a recital and you only have a few days to get a very hard passage down. Is that even possible?

If you beat your head against the wall with super long practices, you will just get frustrated and you won’t be able to play it that well. But if you practice smart, and give your brain the rest it needs, you can absolutely learn something hard in only a few days.

It totally works.

Give yourself a break.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of hours of practice sometimes. But you just need to know when to walk away and give yourself a break. This is especially true if you are just practicing one little part of a piece or a riff over and over. If you practice for hours, that is fine, just make sure you mix up what you are practicing. Take breaks. And get some sleep.

I am giving you permission to practice less. I am giving you permission to take more breaks. Now it’s up to you to try it and see if it works. I think you are going to like the results.

And your brain will thank you for it.

Piano Lessons Near Me

Have you heard of this new thing called “the internet?” It’s all the rage in Europe. ;)

One of the best things about the internet, is finding products and services we need so quickly. I don’t even remember how we did that before the world wide web, but it is pretty amazing.

All you have to do is type in the thing you need with the words “near me” and you will get hundreds if not thousands of suggestions.

Need a new lawn mower, it’s there. Need a pizza STAT, it’s there. Need piano lessons for your kids, it’s there!

Before I start sounding too much like an old man and start asking you to help me program my VCR, let me get to the point. If you type into a search engine the words “piano lessons near me” you are going to get a lot of great options. In any city, you will find so many great teachers. And I know this is no exception in St. Louis.

St. Louis is a vibrant music town. It’s one of my favorite things about this city. The musical history alone is so full and robust, let the alone the current scene we have today. There are a lot of amazing musicians in this town, and what do most musicians do during the day?

They teach.

We are blessed with so many great music teachers and STL Piano Lessons is proud to be amongst them! And while some schools offer many different types of instrument instruction, we focus solely on piano because we want to be the best. It’s important for us to have the best teachers in town. And it’s important for us to value you as a student and to do all we can to help you reach your musical goals!

So the next time you type in “piano lessons near me,” know that we are proud to be a part of those search results. It can be an overwhelming process finding the right teacher, so we hope you will reach out to us with any questions you may have. We are more than happy to help you find the perfect teacher, whoever that may be.

Be sure to take full advantage of this whole internet thing. I think it may just be a fad like fax machines and cell phones, so who knows when they will take it away. Better enjoy it while you can!