Most parents when considering piano lessons don’t envision their son or daughter thinking the lessons are so cool that they’ll choose to dress up like Mozart on Halloween. Not the case in Atlanta where students go nuts over music lessons. How is this possible? How can students think music is that cool? Read on.
A.J., aka Mozart (see picture) has been taking lessons for just under a year but knows he loves it. He has fun music lessons. Emily Wienand is his teacher, a Lessons In Your Home Atlanta favorite and well, she just rocks! Now, Emily officially calls him “Wolfe” after Mozart. Emily told him about her trip to Prague. Age doesn’t seam to be a factor either, just like his Classical Music Idol, A.J’s. pretty young to be this cool.
Music Lessons Should Be Fun
Piano, Guitar, Voice, Drums, or Violin, it doesn’t matter, private lessons should be fun. There are so much more then notes and rhythm to music. A.J. fell in love with learning about the composers, like his favorite Mozart. Emily says “you have to introduce them to the great composers early in their music lessons. The greats all have stories; the stories help make music interesting and gives students something to imagine when playing piano music.”
Beethoven Was Deaf, Bach Had 20 Children, and Chopin Was A Child Star
It’s up to great music teachers to know the facts. What’s going to gain a young students interest is genuine knowledge of ones craft. We as musicians and music teachers have all this information in us. Sometimes we forget to share it. At Lessons In Your Home, we are always working on reminding our teachers it’s never to early. Students don’t have to play Mozart to learn about him. What’s wrong with pretending the piece you’re playing is a piece Mozart, sounds like fun right?
Make An Impact
In Home Music Teachers can introduce so much to young students. It’s the job of a music teacher to inspire and make a difference in a student’s life. Recently, a few of us teachers got together and brainstormed on creating passion in our students. Here are some of the ideas we came up with:
– Teach students to make a lesson video and share it on YouTube.
– Locate Assisted Living facilities and ask the facility to play live music for the residents after dinner.
– Challenge students to teach their friends a simple duet part to a song they are playing so they can play music with their friends.
– Make a costume of a famous composer.
– Create a board game about music to play with family.
Guitar Teachers Have Rock and Roll
It’s easy to see that Guitar and Drum Teachers have easy characters to introduce to music students. In contrast to the classical names that we all know, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, etc, Pop and Rock stars that kids know are mostly still alive. There are videos, magazines, and TV shows where kids can see the personalities live (sometimes as parents we have to watch out for what they see). Voice teachers have the modern phenomena of Talent based sing off TV shows. There seam to be more famous singers for young people to be fans of then ever before.
Just Play It! There Is Nothing Stopping You
Nike introduced “Just Do It” and you know what, it’s true. So just play it. Get into music and you’ll be inspired by what comes out. A.J. did, and is really having a great time expressing what he’s learning. All this from discovering just one composer, I wonder what will happen when he learns about Bernstein! Next year he might dress up like a charter from West Side Story.
