Inspiring Musicality – revisited

Some of you who have been reading EveryChusDay since the early days might remember my old post “Inspiring Musicality” in which I was seriously struggling to motivate Miss Chu to practice the piano and wondering whether it was worth persevering. That was over 3 years ago, so I thought it might be worth an update! 

At the time, I remember getting some encouragement to keep going from various FB friends. And we did. Miss Chu has stuck with the piano lessons and progressed through an eclectic variety of music so far, and I’m happy to report that she has become a lot more independent and self-driven on the practice front! Not that she practices daily, but there’s no more whining and a lot less hand-holding required. So in hindsight, the issues with self-discipline and attention span were probably just down to age and thankfully have improved with maturity. In short, if you can battle through the younger years, there’s probably some light at the end of the tunnel. Nowadays I hardly have to remind her to practice and when I do, there are generally no complaints. It’s a far cry from the tears and meltdowns of the distant past!

Exam-wise, we decided to try out the Rockschool syllabus, which seems similar to ABRSM in terms of content (3 pieces, scales and arpeggios, aural and sight reading skills etc.) but is stylistically very different. The exam pieces are mainly arrangements of contemporary pop songs, which must be played alongside the supplied backing tracks. Miss Chu has really enjoyed the Rockschool repertoire. She hasn’t taken exams every year, but has learned pieces from the graded books to structure her progress. The Rockschool syllabus also offers scope to emphasize improvisation skills, which can really give a piano player more freedom to play what they like.

Next month Miss Chu is taking a Rockschool Grade 4 Piano exam, so we’ve recorded one of favourite pieces – Ellie Goulding’s version of Your Song – for practice. She doesn’t have to sing for the exam, but since we recently got a mic and stand… she decided to give it a go!

Now that she’s reached a higher level of fluency and mastery, I’m actually pretty confident that she’ll keep going on her own steam, and I’m happy for exam-taking to take a backseat as long as she is continuing to gain insight and pleasure from the creative process of music making. 

Meanwhile…I’m re-living the painful past with Little Miss, who does still need a lot of attention at the piano bench! But at least I now have some hope that a little patience and encouragement now will eventually pay off.