Effects of Piano Lessons on Child Development

Rockaway Music offers private piano lessons in Morris Plains, NJ. We teach all levels - from beginner to advanced. For your convenience, our piano school operates every day of the week except Sunday. 

       Playing the piano is a wonderful activity for children because it not only provides hours of fun for kids, it utilizes all human creative processes. These include Seeing (visualization), Observing, Forming Analogies, Inverting, and Simplification. Effective piano lessons apply teaching strategies that utilize these processes to exercise students' creative abilities and expand their potential. Below are some examples of how this process occurs.

       Visualization - "What would it look like if I could do it?"

       Visualization is probably the most difficult creative skill to develop. Having a keyboard in the imagination, however, gives a powerful boost to students' playing ability. So, it's worth it to work on developing this creative application. Here's a way a young piano student can begin to literally draw on their mind's "eye".

       The piano has groups of two and three black keys. There are three white keys around each group of two black keys. Students close their eyes and pretend to draw, for example, two very large black keys in the air. Asking questions like the following helps kids begin to see the keyboard in their mind.

     

       Can you see the white key on the left of the two black keys? It's a C.

       Can you see the one on the right? It's an E.

       Can you see the white key in the middle of the two black keys? It's a D.

       Over time visualization techniques help students develop a keyboard in their imaginations and begin to read notes as locations on the piano, interpreting the Grand Staff as a Map of the keyboard. In addition to this, hearing visualization is an important part of learning scales, chords, and playing and interpreting music.

       Once students begin to develop their visualization muscles they can apply this creative skill to see the possibilities and imagine solutions in other areas of their life and education by asking:

       

      What would a solution to this challenge look like?

      Observation - "Eureka! I've never noticed that before!"

       Observation is about carefully noticing the little things to find similarities and differences. For example, the difference between staccato and legato marks, or accents and tenuto’s, and listening to and observing the differences. Piano students use their observational skills when they ask questions like these.

       Piano students use the creative process of observation just as scientists do to find surprises in nature that were always there, waiting to be discovered, and by experimenting with different techniques and expressive ideas to find what works best in different styles of music.

For more information about our piano lesson in Morris Plain, NJ or for scheduling information give us a call at 973-984-8800. You can also email us at lessons@rockawaymusic.com.