I think my topic title sums it up. How do you teach children to listen to a short musical phrase and then play it back on their instrument?

To give you a bit of context...
At my daughter's French music school she has an hour a week devoted to theory/aural/practical musicianship. There are five of them in the class, two pianists, one guitarist, one violinist and my daughter who plays cello. The problem is that the teacher seems to presuppose a lot of knowledge which my daughter just doesn't have (like for instance asking them to tap quite complicated written rhythms with triplets, semi-quavers and syncopation without explaining what semi-quavers and triplets are) or to do things which work with a pianist better than a cellist (for instance getting them to sight-read something in C major and A minor when my daughter hadn't learnt how to do extensions and so didn't know how to play a G #). My daughter comes out expecting me to help her with whatever they have been doing.

The latest thing is playing back a musical phrase. The teacher plays the phrase twice, tells them the starting note and then they have to play it back. My daughter is at a complete loss as to how to go about it and I don't know how to help her.

They haven't done any thoeretical work on intevals so she doesn't know terms like "second, third etc." Should I begin by teaching her to name and recognise the intervals between two notes by listening to them on the piano? Then she could identify the interval work out what the next note should be from the starting note and play it on her cello, or is this too laborious? Should I just play two notes on the piano and get her to copy those on the cello and then increase the number of notes and then add rhythm?

Please don't suggest I teach her sol-fa as in France they use fixed sol-fa instead of the letter names so it would be very confusing for her.

Any suggestions gratefully received.

Should I just play two notes on the piano and get her to copy those on the cello and then increase the number of notes and then add rhythm?

YES this is a good way to do it. Add notes at the beginning as well as at the end. Start with easy rhythms. Do patterns where the notes are the same but the rhythm is different. The emphasis should be on teaching rather than testing...that is, you try to make it easy for her to suceed rather than trying to catch her out (I'm sure you wouldn't!)

Should be lots of fun!

With my young piano students I start with very short things to copy... 2 or 3 notes and only over the range of a 3rd.

Perhaps you could start with getting her to sing back a phrase first. Even if it's only two or three notes, she needs to think about the distance between notes, even without any knowledge of intervals she should be able to tell if they're far or near. Once she can work out whether the notes are near / far she can then have a go at finding the sounds on her instrument.

Also anything she can play by ear will help her to think about distances. I know nothing about violin, but if she tries to pick out songs she can already sing (simple ones), for example frere jacques - even the first little bit, and then tries to play it on the violin she will begin to have an idea about intervals instinctively.

Good luck.

Yes, I agree with comments so far. You might try playing a group of, say, three notes, and asking her just to listen for the first few times, not play, and tell you whether they go up or down.

(ed - or get her to draw the direction in the air). When she can do this most of the time introduce a change of direction (did they go up in the middle, or down in the middle) etc and build from there.

I'd probably work on notes and rhythm separately at the start of a practice.

An exercise involves two (or more) people and is done as follows:

Choose a starting note which both people know

1st person plays that note then one other (may set some rules such as must be in a specified scale or range)
2nd person has to find the second note, this becomes new starting note and 2nd person adds another

The task of finding the new note is passed backwards and forwards between the people taking part.

As confidence in finding the second note grows you can add more notes in, make the scale/range more challenging etc

She is copying correctly in the general sense of going up when it goes up and down when it goes down (including changes in the middle of a five note pattern) but often getting the interval wrong. What makes it harder on the cello of course than on the piano is that the note she plays back may theoretically be the right one but doesn't sound right because her finger is not quite in the right place. Also she is most used to the finger pattern 1,3,4 (unlike violinists there is a tone between the first and third finger and she only started using the second finger late last year). This means that she tends to play F# and C# more naturally than just F and C. I have been getting her to start on the open D string (so that she is at least sure her first note is in tune) which means she is playing in D major, from what I gather her teacher was giving them phrases in C major. What I am labouriously trying to say is that she can (usually) copy correctly something like D, F# G, but if she hears C, E, F she plays C, E, F#. This is why I was wondering if I should try and work on intervals first but I'm not sure anyone has ever really explained to her the difference between a tone and a semi-tone and it just seemed to be getting very complicated.

I think it is hard for pianists to understand the constraints that beginners on string instruments have in terms of keys and positions. Many might be surprised to find that c major scale is not even part of grade 1 violin but comes in at grade 2. Perhaps the teacher could pitch c major things lower so they could be played in the octave starting on the open c string, or ask her to stick to D major. Could the musicianship teacher perhaps speak with your daughter's cello teacher to find out what is a reasonable expectation?

I taught my daughter to play back simple melodies on the cello last summer for an audition which we thought might contain musicianship tests

She is more experienced and, I am sure, older than your daughter but, for what it is worth, I started with basic intervals from the tonic. I asked her not to try to work out what the interval was but just to shoot for what it "felt" like. I don't know if this was a good thing but I thought that if she worked out intervals it would all be too slow. It took a long time to do straight intervals reliably when I was changing keys but then we moved on to 3 and then 4 note sequences fairly easily. I completely ignored rhythm at first as I thought that as long as whe could find the right pitch quickly enough rhythm would not be a problem. In the end I used some abrsm specimen aural tests (the sing back from memory ones).

I entirely agree that it is best to keep it simple and progress slowly with a high success rate because it is partly a confidence thing.

I assumed they would talk to each other but apparently they don't. When my daughter came out with the sight-reading which included G# I told her to show it to her cello teacher. Her cello teacher then said to me that she had intended to introduce extensions to my daughter only towards the end of the year as at the moment she is teaching her 4th position and it was too much in one go. That said, she did show my daughter how to do it and told her not to worry if she couldn't get it right straight away in the musicianship class.

It is not possible for me to talk to the musicianship teacher as she has one class after another with no break in betweeen. I suggested to my daughter that she say when she doesn't understand/has no idea how to do something but the teacher just told her it was because she wasn't trying hard enough.


That was what I thought but I wasn't sure.


I'm convinced it is a confidence thing and this is why I felt it was important to help my daughter as she is generally lacking in self-confidence.

say when she doesn't understand/has no idea how to do something but the teacher just told her it was because she wasn't trying hard enough.
that's terrible - just a cop-out by the teacher !

It IS a terrible cop-out isn't it?

I was SO pleased to see a new sign in the staff room at school this week which read:

"If he cannot learn how I teach, then I must teach how he learns"

Unfortunately I forgot who it was attributed to....

I use simple copy-me warmups with my violin pupils from an early stage, starting with simple 4 beat open string sequences for beginners. The aim right from the start is to keep a steady pulse going over several sequences and as pupils progress the warmups become gradually longer and more varied, including fingered notes and different rhythms/bowings/dynamics as appropriate to the group. As soon as possible I sneak in scale and arpeggio patterns so that pupils get a chance to recognise and use these aurally.

Perhaps you could do some similar activities with your daughter? I don't know what age she is but I am guessing that she will probably pick up the idea of playing replies on her cello most easily if she is having fun doing it. Start with some really simple sequences to build up her confidence and just build on it gradually in small steps.

Good luck, let us know how you get on.

My daughter's nine and has been learning for three years but she has always played from music and has never been asked to copy people playing before. I would have thought it was probably easier for the child to copy from the same instrument as you do with your pupils but I have no choice but to use the piano.

Today I experminted with just two notes to try and see what she could and couldn't do. She could copy all the ascending intervals except for a seventh (she confused major and minor sevenths) but she found descending ones really hard. The only two she got right were a major second and a perfect fifth.

I thought tomorrow I might try playing bits of descending scales and getting her to copy those.

Today I experminted with just two notes to try and see what she could and couldn't do. She could copy all the ascending intervals except for a seventh (she confused major and minor sevenths) but she found descending ones really hard. The only two she got right were a major second and a perfect fifth.

Would it help to give her some intellectual understanding to hang this on as well as just trying it as an aural experience?

Say you'll do intervals in D major. Play the scale and sing the note names up and down.

Play a D and ask her to sing (the note names!) up the scale to the note which is...say, the perfect 4th above, then play it. Same with descending intervals. When you've done this 100 times, the next step is that she sings the note names inside her head and then plays.

Teaching.....rather than testing I think works most happily.

PS And do the same on the stairs. Sing up a scale and climb a stair for each note! DON"T try to play the cello at the same time