Today I want to talk about different ways that we can keep children interested in music. Lets face it, nowadays there is a lot of things to compete with for children's attention. I once had someone say to me that one of their children rarely looked away from a screen. If they weren’t looking at the Ipad then it was the laptop, if it wasn’t the laptop it would be the TV. So given that in todays society there are so many distractions for children, how can we keep them focused?
1. Have music playing in the house regularly
By having music regularly playing it creates much more of an inspirational environment overall. One of my earliest musical memories was actually with my Dads music collection. He had R.E.M’s ‘Out Of Time’ on tape and would regularly play it. It’s quite a famous album and I became a massive fan of the single ‘Loosing My Religion’ and whenever I hear it I think back to school runs in the car with that tape playing. I would ask questions about who was singing, what the names of the songs were. Having music constantly around me made me think about music a lot more even before I started playing any instruments. My Dad being quite a big fan of music back in the day would often tell me about the bands that he liked when he was young. This leads me to point two.
2. Share Music Related Stories.
This can be something as simple as ‘me and my friends loved this song when we were younger’. I personally loved hearing about concerts. I’d seen these massive auditoriums filled with people on the TV but to hear about one from someone that was actually there was massive to me. I find myself using my Dad in a lot of examples here but I’ve noticed he was a source of inspiration in this area. He would often tell me about concerts he’d been to see whilst at university, he’d seen The Smiths and other giant names back when they were starting out playing Lancaster University. These stories of crazy rock show’s automatically made me think as a child ‘wow!! What would that have looked like?!?’ I could also remember him telling me about how he used to hide his Punk LP’s from my Grandparents in his teens. This was something I really connected with as like most teens, I was going through a bit of a rebellious faze music wise and was often bringing home new Hard Rock albums with edgy covers on them. So think, what was your favourite album when you were younger? What concerts have you seen? What music drove you crazy when you were younger? These are all great sources of inspiration for children. Most children have very visual minds so by feeding them stories and thoughts relating to music, it gives music a whole new identity outside of just ‘sound from the radio’.
3. Buy Your Children Music
The only good thing I can think of regarding the collapse of the music industry is people are paying a lot less for singles tracks. With things like Apple Music which only cost’s £10 per month people have unlimited access to endless amounts of music. I often encourage parents to buy tracks whenever they say that their child is obsessed with the new hit radio number. Think about it, if a child is that obsessed with the new number one hit by Ed Sheeran and you buy it for them or sign them up to Spotify or Apple Music and they listen to it on repeat, that’s got to be better then hours of endless Ipad games? My first memory of buying music is buying my first album at the age of 7. It was Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’ (I personally think I could have picked much worse). I saw a video of him on the TV when I was younger and thought it was really cool. I didn’t know what an album was but I convinced my Grandma to buy me one from Woolworths one day. I thought it was great, it had my favourite song on there plus a lot more I hadn’t heard. The average App based game costs around 79p and yes the cost of a CD is considerably more, but the positive impact it has on children is huge and last far longer than ‘Angry Birds’.
Here at ‘Inspire Music School’ we teach many children in St Albans how to play the Guitar and we understand that half the battle of keeping children interested in music is constantly providing new ways to inspire them. To find out about how your child can become a massive fan of music whilst playing the guitar, contact us about guitar lessons in St Albans today!
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