Teaching our son to play the keyboard

 I had been waiting to teach my son to play the keyboard. Until he was about 3, it was almost impossible - his fingers were too small, and his attention span even smaller :) He was almost always in a playful mood. 

But once he turned about 3 and half, I thought it was time to try giving it a shot. I started teaching my son on my 'big' keyboard, as that was the only one we had at home then. He was moderately enthusiastic, but seemed more interested in turning all the knobs and buttons on the keyboard than he was in learning to play. This was frustrating for me - I wanted him to play a song himself ; not press the buttons that played pre-recorded songs on the keyboard. 

But all this changed because of something unexpected. My wife's nephew had recently outgrown his small keyboard, and had given it to my wife for our son to use. My son was thrilled to have his own keyboard. He said to me, with pride ' Appa, you are big, and you have a big keyboard. I am small and I have a small keyboard'.  

I keep learning new things about how a child's mind works...

With him having his own 'small' keyboard, he was a lot more motivated to learn. And there began the  story of two boys and two keyboards :D 

Now, I was in no hurry to have him to learn to play songs. I wanted him to first develop a love for music. As always, I had to define the balance between discipline and freedom in this context..So, I set up some rules as I started teaching him. 

1) A class would last no longer than 5 minutes - That is about the attention span he had. And I didn't want to push him and have him hate music , or have him treat playing the keyboard as a chore he had to complete 

2) I was okay with him making mistakes while playing but he had to try and be attentive 

3) He had to treat the instrument with respect and good attitude. No smashing the keyboard, for instance ;p. And needed to have good body language while playing the keyboard. If I had to spend most of the 5 minutes just fixing his body language and posture, I was fine with that. Right attitude first. Music later. 

4) I would teach him rhymes that he enjoyed listening to. Many times, he would choose the next song he wanted to learn, unless it was too hard for him at that stage. 

5) After we were done with the 5 minute class, he could goof off with the keyboard in any way he liked. 

I first started by having him identify the 'C' note. This was important as he had to know where to start playing any given song ( and most nursery rhymes start with C ) . 

The real challenge was having him follow me as I played. I started with me playing one note, and him following me. Then two notes. Then a combination of one note and two notes. And then songs where the same note was played twice in succession. When I saw him getting confused with that, we came up with a simple solution -  Small colourful stickers. 

When he had tendency to play the wrong note while playing a line, I stuck a sticker on the 'right' note. And would tell him to 'play on the sticker'.  When he had to play a certain key twice, and tended to get confused, I stuck two stickers on that key. When he had skip a key while playing a phrase, I would place stickers on either sides of the key he had to skip, and tell him a small story about a rabbit hopping over from one colour to the other. That particular class ended up becoming a rabbit-hopping-story, but that's okay :D 

At the end of each class, I would play the song for my son to listen to for him to understand how it would sound like when he learnt to play the song properly. He invariably found this very motivating. 

Most music teachers start with music theory. I am sure they have their reasons. In my case, I want our son to learn to play some songs that he likes, first. I want him to have the pleasure of being able to reproduce some of his favourite songs. I want him love music. He can learn the theory later. I never learnt music theory ( or music, for that matter), and still got by :D

Today, he plays six songs. We are making progress. I am disappointed with myself for not reminding him to practice regularly. I get caught up with work and other responsibilities, and I tend to forget to ask him to practice regularly. Nevertheless, I am overall happy with the progress we have made so far. 

This is how is keyboard looks like :)