The Piano Guide Review

Piano Practice Battles and Piano Lessons and Guitar Lessons? by Georgia Zoe Schohl

Q. I’m having some battles with my son about practice time. He seems to think that ten minutes is enough, which it ISN’T as far as I’m concerned. Jake has been taking lessons for about three months and he is just finishing up the Piano Adventures Primer book.   I think he should practice at least 30 to 45 minutes because I had to practice at least those many minutes when I took piano as a child.
Are things different now in the 21st century?   I don’t want to argue too much with him because he’ll start to hate it---and he was the one to suggest the piano lessons in the first place!

R.R.    Email

A. My answer is this: first of all, did you discuss this issue with the piano instructor? Some teachers have different ideas about practice. Some suggest breaking up the time into two 15 minute segments---once in the morning before school, and once after school, before dinner, or before bedtime. Whatever the case may be, make you do not make it a shouting battle, because it makes piano practice look like an unpleasant chore !
Set aside some time where the student plays, and don’t schedule anything else during that time. This means no play dates, phone calls from friends, snack times, or television shows. How about a snack time after he is through playing while you watch them practice ? Many young students love to play for their parent’s approval—and if the parent shows interest in the practice they will do much better in the long run.
I think that if a parent does not show interest in the practice or is an ‘absentee’ parent during practice, the student has a much lower chance of succeeding or does not progress as quickly.   Before you know, the 20-30 minutes has gone by very quickly! You child will not be counting the minutes anymore.

Q. My daughter is 12 and is interested in taking guitar along with still continuing piano lessons since she started lessons at 6 years old.. She is doing quite well in piano as her teacher says that she is very talented—she seems to get the assigned material quickly.   But now she is a pre-teen and wants to play guitar because some of her friends are buying these acoustic guitars. A couple of them are taking lessons and others are learning off the Internet tutorials.   I don’t know what to do because I don’t want her to lose interest in the piano because she is doing so well. Guitar is a fun instrument for kids too, but I don’t know what to do at this point. She is a musical child and she might be good at both instruments.

T. Thomas, Los Angeles, CA

A. I understand your concern. Why not ask the piano teacher for an opinion on the situation with your daughter? If your daughter seems to like the piano as much as you say she does, there should be no threat to her quitting piano in favor of the guitar.   Very talented and musical people sometimes like to experiment with other instruments out of curiosity. And don’t forget her friends are trying to learn guitar too, either through lessons, self teaching, or Internet tutorials as you said.

Preteens and teenagers like to try out new things like learning another instrument and often enough they dabble a little bit in the new instrument and then lose interest because it is too time consuming. Kids this age are too busy with school, homework, sports, and other activities because I feel that most kids are over scheduled.   So I would not be too threatened by your daughter losing interest in piano because you already stated that she had been studying piano for a few years. She sounds fairly committed to it and never told you that she is thinking of quitting in favor of the guitar. So relax, let her try guitar on her own because as long as she is practicing and performing her piano, there should not be a problem.