Woman's Hour - Parenting: How do you inspire your child to take up a musical instrument or learn to sing?

Episode Date: September 25, 2019

How do you inspire your child to take up a musical instrument or learn to sing? Is there a 'best' instrument to learn on and how do you help keep their interest should practice become a chore? Jenni speaks to Molly Newton, a music teacher based in York and Yolanda Brown, a saxophonist.

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to this week's podcast for parents. How do you inspire your child to take up music when not every school provides tuition and a private teacher can be expensive? How do you encourage a reluctant child to learn an instrument or have singing lessons? Well, I spoke to Molly Newton, head of the York Music Hub, and Yolanda Brown, who plays the saxophone. What brought her into music? I think just being surrounded by hearing great music. My dad has a fantastic vinyl collection.

So at home, growing up, you'd always hear different genres of music from classical, opera to soul. And I think I just wanted to be a part of that. You know, it's wonderful to be able to listen to music and dance and sing. But there's something else that to be able to actually create it yourself from yourself. So from the age of six, I started to ask my parents if I could have lessons. And what did you start on? The piano. Piano was my first. We had a piano, electric piano at home. And I loved just going up to it and just playing, making a sound and creating a feeling, if you like. And I wanted to learn it a bit deeper. And so went into a sort of traditional way of being taught the instrument. And why the sax? So I found the sax

around age 13. So a bit later on, I played the drums. I wanted to play a wind instrument, sort of going through that traditional teaching. It's great, you know, but being forced to practice for exams and things like that wasn't quite how I flourished. And listening to music, I loved horns. I loved hearing, you know, the horns in orchestras through to Latin music. And the saxophone called to me and it really felt like my voice, but actually became self-taught on that instrument because I wanted to express myself in the way that I wanted to, not just for the examiner. Now Molly, I know the national curriculum includes music up to the end of primary school. What are children supposed to know by the time they leave primary school? Well, according to the national curriculum curriculum by the end of year six children should have had opportunities to play music, to experience music, to improvise, to compose, to kind of appreciate and understand what music is about, to have a knowledge of music history but also by the end of year six the national curriculum expectation in england

anyway is that children should be able to read notation including staff notation which i think is is possibly a bit of a big ask uh in some primary school settings now you said in england i know you think scotland has a different system why do you think it's better um i don't necessarily think it's better actually in in't necessarily think it's better actually in in scotland i think they've got a different approach to music education and actually it works well in some places and less well in others but i'm i'm no expert on scotland um i think a national curriculum does give people some guidelines to work from which are helpful um but i think there is certainly a little bit of a crisis in music

education particularly in primary settings where the provision is patchy and for some teachers that the curriculum is off-putting because it feels unattainable I think. Yolanda you know people will sometimes say oh the arts you know that's on the side that's not so important whether it's drama or music or whatever what did studying music do for you besides just learning to play what did it add to your wider education absolutely it gave me a creative output it gave me ownership of something I could I could create I could perform if I wanted to or I could play for myself it was a very therapeutic experience for me, especially when I found the saxophone and sort of stopped my lessons

and started to just improvise and play for myself. And I think that there is something in music that needs to be taught in school as well. And I'm glad that you said improvising there in terms of the national curriculum, because that's the element of creativity. And it is an art. It should be something that young people should be able to create and feel proud of and actually affect their audience or affect their peers, work together. And I think that's the wonderful part of music that sometimes gets lost when we're focusing on sort of getting a grade or being able to assess how people have learned music. We must remember that it's an art form. And actually, when we go to concerts, you know,

and see other people expressing their art, that's the part of music that we enjoy as consumers. That's what we should be getting young people to experience. But at the same time, Molly, you do have to know the basics, don't you? Where do you get the basics for a child who wants to play the piano wants to play the violin wants to play the saxophone and then go on to do her own work on it or his own work it's um it's it's a very very interesting question because it's it comes back to what's the right age to start how do you introduce children into music um there are

different schools of thought about how that works. I think there's no such thing as too young. You know, we expose ourselves to music all the time and children. In fact, just what Yolanda was saying, those opportunities for inspirational events. You know, there was a CBeebies prom series recently. I know Yolanda was involved in that. And yeah, it was a brilliant chance for young people to go and experience music, very, very young people.

And it's those things, Jenny, that spark, that inspiration, that moment. I was a child. I was one of those children who went to a concert. My parents gave me that opportunity and I came away thinking, I want to do that. And now, how do you start that? You ask questions. So in most cases, you approach your music hub or your school preschool early years. That is a bit of a gap in provision for sure.

And hubs should be signposting things that are available for parents. It's finding a way to make children feel like music opportunities are for them and make families feel that they're for them. They're not they're not exclusive you know if you can make a child feel engaged um in in music then then the next step is that they want to get get involved like leon said listening and performing and creating that's all part of the same pie really we all want a part of that uh ilanda you did say at one point that you got a little bit sick of practicing and doing exams and all of those kind of things. But clearly at some point you have to do that kind of stuff. If you're a parent and a child is saying, no, I'm not going to practice my piano or whatever.

How do you persuade them that it matters? I think that you need to allow that child to take ownership of the music. And I find that a lot of the times when children don't want to practice, it's because they're being told to sit down and basically do homework. You know, sit down and practice what your teacher has told you. The moment they hear their child going off on a tangent, they say, oh, no, no, get back to what you're doing. Allow your child to have some free time with the instrument as well.

You know, oh, this is a song I made up, Mum. Can I perform it at Christmas? You know, all of that sort of energy and excitement about music still needs to be instilled. And then the actual practice that you want the child to do will come naturally. Briefly, Molly, which is the cheapest way of actually getting tuition on which instrument? Well, the absolute cheapest way for children in primary school is to be accessing the whole class ensemble teaching that goes on in many schools across the country that music hubs support.

I spoke to a child yesterday in a whole class setting and asked why they think it's a good idea to do music like that if they do. And they said, everybody gets a chance to do it here, to try before you buy you get have a taste um you don't have to go anywhere and everything's here so the instruments are provided for free and the setting is school so nobody has to get anywhere and it is a brilliant opportunity nobody knows what they're good at until they have a go at it you don't like you

don't know what you like until you get you know until you try it and i think that's a brilliant starting point but just really quickly about the practice it is it it is a wonderful thing to do if you can support as parents to know that it is difficult but it is worth persevering 68 of parents don't think there's enough music education happening for our young people and parents can support them at home it is a brilliant thing if you can do it i was talking to molly newton and yolanda brown and if you have a topic that you'd like to discuss in the Woman's Hour podcast for parents do get in touch. Usual ways either tweet or email through the website. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been

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