Basic Beats for Children's Piano Lessons

Video Transcript

"Alright, so we just learned the very first part is to get the child to repeat to four twice or three times. Repetition is the stuff that all of music is made from. So now that you can do that see if you can get him or her to stop on one of the beats and still make the beat go. What you are teaching them is how to rest, but they just don't know it yet. You are doing all sorts of mad things but they don't know it yet, so it's really cool. See if you can get them to count to four but not play on one, so it sounds like this. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. It takes a little bit especially if you start on one. Sometimes it's easier to miss four so that they play the first three and then pause. It takes a little bit but they'll get it. The cool thing to do there is play Hannah Montana or something equally bubbly and have them play what they just did to you to the music. So now they have a beat going and they can pause and do all sorts of things. Any time you can get a real beat it's going fantastic. What you are teaching most importantly at this very early stage is that rhythm keeps going. You have lots of kids and you'll even have adults, who want to stop who say "Ugh, I didn't get that" and they want to stop. You can't stop in music. More importantly than singing the right note, or playing the right note, or plucking the right note is making it keep going. Is making it go in time. If you can put up with the music you're cool. What you do then or what I suggest you do then is pull out the Alfred's music for little Mozart's. This series is wonderful for young children, wonderful, wonderful. In fact, I just recently met Mr. Morton Mantis the publisher of Alfred Publishing he's wonderful I will tell you. Pull out this card and tell the child this means play. All it means is play. So if you see to of these play twice, if you see one of them play. And they'll be like oh ok play. Cool. If you flip it still means play it doesn't matter here, here, it means play. They will totally get it. So if you can, pull out a card that looks something like this, have them play how many times, three times. Very cool. Once you have play down you need the opposite of play, which is of course rest. So you had three in a row that was no problem. Now you have seven in a row, plus a rest. The rest is confusing because it's a squiggly line. But if you say to the child, "whenever you see the squiggly line don't play it means rest like take a rest. They totally get it. So you have here is the first time they get to try it. They have play, play, play, play, play, play, play, rest. They love it. You can whisper on the rest you can do whatever you need to do on the rest, like oh it's a secret we rest. So cool, we love it. This can be obviously played with their drum sticks with their whatever. Play, play, play, play, play, rest. Once this happens see if you can then bring them to the piano. This is the first time in fact in the lesson that they've touched the piano. See if they can do this thing on any key. They'll probably use one finger and it will sound like this, which is totally fine. That's wonderful that's what you want. The next thing is this. This means hold down. It sounds to people who know what you're talking it sounds like a half note, but that's not what you mean, what you mean is hold down. So they'll take their drum stick and they'll go, hold down. And that's how it sounds. If it's on the piano they'll have to say hold down and that's how it sounds. It's different than the regular play note because when you have a play note you just play and let it go. But when you have a hold down note, you just keep it there and then you let it go. And that is what you'll be able to get through in the second lesson."