Sunday, February 17, 2013

Music for the soul (and brain development)..

I can't remember where and when, but i had read somewhere that music can help the brain development of young children. 

Therefore, I enrolled our firstborn into a music class when she was 4 years old. The only class i knew back then was Yamaha. :) I didn't actually have a plan on the direction of her musical encounter. For me, i just wanted her to learn music to ensure more connections of neurons in her brain. I could be wrong.. but it's something that i believed in. 

Anyways, so we enrolled her into this Junior Music Course (JMC) for children aged 4 to 6. The course is delivered in a classroom environment, where there's a teacher who'll teach the kids to sing, play and move to the music. One parent have to be present during classes to help their kids out. The instrument at this stage is the electone as the keys are "softer" thus easier to respond to little fingers. 

We were quite clueless about the course initially. We didn't know that it's actually a two-year course. At the end of the course, there will be an assessment, named the Fundamental Skills Survey, in which students will be assessed in their singing (pitching/tone, i think?), instrument playing (the students need to play 2 ensembles from any of their 4 books), play one song in which they had partially composed, sing solfege by listening, identifying chords (at this stage 4 chords - C, G, F major and D minor) by listening and identifying musical notes. Given that most kids at this stage are 6 years old, that's quite an achievement in itself, don't you think?

That's what my kiddo will go through next month. She's almost completed her JMC course and i can really see her progress. Her teacher is giving her a trial exam next week. 

Some might question the need to make little kids go through such pressure, right? Well.. in our case, we didn't pressure her into doing it. She wanted to do it. She wants to practice everyday. Even when selecting the songs to play for the assessment, she picked quite challenging pieces. We're just following her lead and give her as much support as we can.

Now.. since we didn't have a plan, again, I was quite dumbstruck when the teacher asked on what's our plan after the JMC. Hubby was really hoping to get her a personal tutor at home. Teacher at yamaha suggested continuing with Yamaha music course... Gasp!! Confused!

So, i did some googling and asking around. Just to share with you parents who are also in the same boat as i am. 

Basically, three things pop up while i googled on piano lesson in Malaysia. JMC/JXC (yamaha courses), ABRSM and Trinity Guildhall. ABRSM and Trinity Guildhall are examination boards and are accredited to graded exams in music. On the other hand, yamaha music courses is actually a music education structure with its own exams (not governed under neither ABRSM nor Trinity). The yamaha system is age sensitive in which each key stages correspond to a particular age group, starting at age 3, and finishing off at age 12 (Yamaha grade 5).

From my research, yamaha focuses more on music appreciation in the sense that it not only focuses on score reading, but teaches children to listen as well as compose songs. A lot of people are saying that yamaha students tend to be able to play by ear and are not restricted to having a score to play a musical piece. ABRSM and Trinity on the other hand has a more technical approach and teaches more on classical pieces.

Yamaha courses are run in classroom environment (for JMC and JXC, not sure for other levels), whilst ABRSM and Trinity are based on one on one interaction between the student and the teacher. Meaning, parents have to be more hands-on for the yamaha courses, whilst for the ABRSM and Trinity, parents can take a back seat. 

So, taken all that into consideration, we are going to continue with the Yamaha system for now. We've asked her what she wanted to do, and she said she wanted to continue with classes, so that's what we're gonna do, for now. The yamaha teacher said that many parents take both classes, yamaha and ABRSM so that their children will learn both, but for us since our aim is not really to go for the paper qualification, that approach might be a little too much for us. But we'll see as time goes.