My 8 year old has been learning the piano for a little over a year. She is coming on nicely and I think she is quite musical as she often makes up tunes and they have a good musical structure.

I would like to encourage her to make up more tunes but as practice time is quite limited we have to focus on what has been set by our teacher. She practices in the morning, so it's always a bit of a rush anyway and she always starts making up tunes when she needs to focus on other things and I think it's a shame that she can't just mess around.

I have tried suggesting that she has a play around on the piano after school but this never seems to happen.

So I thought about suggesting to our teacher about integrating this into lessons. I wondered about having 1 lesson per month where for half an hour she makes up tunes and our teacher helps her to develop them. This may then encourage her to work on these tunes before the next session outside of her normal practice time.

Do any teachers do anything like this with their pupils? I would welcome any suggestions.

Thanks

Not on piano, but yes, I encourage pupils to write music. Sometimes, I'll give them some possible titles to base music on, as ideas, but generally, supervision at that age will be very gentle, with occasional suggestions as to possible thoughts.

I would say be more flexible with her practice time. If she is making up these tunes when she should be practicing other things then let her do it for a while - she's composing and improvising instead and this is hardly the usual way of avoiding practice! I often find that while teachers want pupils to learn certain pieces, they are usually keen to do something different if the pupil is particularly enthusiastic about it.

Interesting question.

Our son (15) loves improvising and composing short pieces, and could play some quite advanced music by listening to it carefully a few times - although he could barely sight read at the time.

However, since having formal lessons he seems to be losing this ability, and is less inventive.

Does formal tuition always have this effect, or is it possible to develop both skills simultaneously?

SB