This article was written for Paducah Parenting magazine.
Movement as Readiness for Music Lessons
Years ago, as a college graduate with a degree in music education, I began a private piano studio with
about 20 students. Within the first year, I began to notice that not all beginning music students were
alike. It's not that I expected that they would be, for we are all individuals with our own separate
personalities and learning styles. But the differences in students really didn't have as much to do with the
students' personalities, intelligence, or their amount of practice time --- and that's where I was surprised.
The differences in the capabilities of my students to learn music had more to do with their rhythmic
readiness for piano lessons.
The students who could more easily and readily learn to play were the ones for whom music flowed.
They performed with a seemingly innate understanding of rhythm and a sense of the steady beat in
music. Where did this come from? Upon further investigation, I realized these students grew up in
families that loved music and shared that love through movement. For some, it had been a parent that
danced with them, and for others, it was a parent who put on a cassette and played along with pots and
pans. At any rate, this realization that the ability to rhythmically play begins many years before the start
of formal lessons "put me on a mission" to explore teaching preschool music classes. If I wanted all my
students to be successful, they would all need to have readiness.
Rhythm is one of two main aspects of music, the other being pitch or melody. The actual act of
producing a rhythm requires movement. Since children learn best by doing, they must be moving to
music at an early age to lay the groundwork for understanding rhythm. Research from The Center for
Music and Young Children has explored the idea of movement as a "vital developmental tool for
children."1 To paraphrase an article in their parent newsletter, it would be very unnatural for an infant to
sit quietly and still, never moving his legs, turning his head, or reaching with his tiny fingers. These
movements are part of the process by which a child learns to coordinate his mind and body. By moving,
an infant is stimulating both his muscles and the connection of neural pathways in his brain. When
music is added to this mix, and a child experiences the movement in response to the music rhythms,
there is an exchange of information between the body, mind, and emotions. In other words, the act of
moving provides the experiences a child needs for rhythm learning, and this movement becomes
imprinted in his muscles and neural pathways. A greater capacity for understanding and loving music is
being created"1.
So what should parents of preschoolers be doing? Sing to your infant and gently move his arms or legs
to the steady beat. Turn on your radio and dance with him. "On a very unconscious, brain-wiring level,
he will associate this tactile stimulation with the music he's hearing. Similarly, with a toddler who's
experimenting with an egg shaker or a drum, just patting the steady rhythm on her back can help her
internalize the beat and organize it in her body. Then, as she grows, you may see her own movements
become more steady and rhythmic in response to this tapping."1 Take a music class with your child.
When you become involved just like your child in a class filled with movement and song, you become
the best model he can have. In addition, a class will equip you with the materials, ideas, and tools for
moving and singing on a daily basis at home, and that's what readiness is all about. In later stages of
rhythmic development, your child may begin to move less. He is beginning to "replace concrete doing
with imagined activity and abstract thought."1 Older children are able to "audiate, that is, to hear and
understand music in their mind when it is not physically present."1 At this stage, a child is ready to
respond with accuracy to a steady beat of music, and to correctly perform a rhythm pattern. He is more
than ready for piano lessons!!
My "mission" to explore preschool music classes for prospective piano students has been a growing
process, resulting in the opening of the Harmony Road Music School. The aim to provide rhythmic
readiness activities for preschoolers has broadened to include tonal readiness as well. It has also
broadened to encompass teaching piano to groups of students, including age-appropriate movement
and tonal readiness activities in the curriculum that fits naturally with a group teaching approach.
You would never expect a child to talk who has not heard language or experienced it through
babbling. The babbling stage in learning the language of music should include experiences with
movement, responding both to rhythm and to pitch. This is readiness, and readiness will ensure
success.
1(All quotes are from articles or letters written by Susan Pujdak Hoffman and Kenneth
Guilmartin in "Play Along," a family newsletter from Music Together and The Center for
Music and Young Children. Many thanks for their information and inspiration.)