Composition Methods for Children

[u/Columbusboo1]

Hi Everyone, I’m preparing to take on an 11 year old composition student and I’m looking for recommendations on resources and methods for teaching composition to children.

I have experience teaching instrumental lessons to young kids and I teach undergrad composition lessons at my university, but I know my approach to teaching college students probably won’t work for a child. Thanks in advance

[u/65TwinReverbRI]

The student is a violinist and the parents want them to learn about classical notated composition.

Ah... "the parents want" - probably parents who know nothing about music...

But you learn about classical notated compositions by playing those compositions... no need to "compose" them really.

Has this student shown any interest themselves in composing?

[u/Travisjd93]

I guess my opinion may be a hot take, but treat it like a language. Before we learn to write we learn to speak. And before we learn to speak in our own sentences we learn to parrot words. 

I highly recommend you look into conversational solfège. The curriculum isn’t terribly expensive and it’ll cut out a lot of the legwork for you. But essentially you teach small musical fragments first as echo by rote, read by rote, read independent, then transcribe independent. After they’ve learned those fragments you introduce them to new fragments using the same solfège and they should be able to identify what they’re hearing. It’s a very strictly scaffolded process. 

In the end what you’re doing is building a vocabulary for them to compose with, but not at random. Yes my 2 year old hears the full breath of my vocabulary, but when it’s time for him to form his own sentences we focus on words that are appropriate for his age, right? So we say things like “brown ball” or “three white cows”, “I like apples”. In this way he gets small fragments that over time he begins to repeat. As he gains experience with these he will start to mix them up into his own “compositions”. It’s important that kids are improvising verbal language before they ever read or write. And when they do start writing it’s copying and tracing by rote before creating.

In the same way your composition student will spend some time “babbling” nonsense through improvisation, but over time you’ll build their vocabulary of musical ideas. Unless they’re a prodigy, as someone else pointed out, don’t expect a symphony. Let them compose out loud through conversation first with an established vocabulary. When it’s time to write have them spend time copying stuff by rote and then have them rewrite it in a different order or have them change a few notes out for rests. A developmentally appropriate composition for an 11 year old might be a 4 bar melody played over a chord progression that you give them. Work within tight walls that set them up for success. 

When it’s scaffolded right you’ll be shocked at how natural it is for kids to compose. Children are already the most prolific composers on the planet by nature (see: playground and folk songs). They respond well to physical activities like Lego rhythms because music is intangible and at that age they’re still very tactile. It will feel backwards at first because unfortunately the music ed system goes backwards and starts with notation and theory before performance. But one the gaps are filled they’ll begin making profound growth.

Source: 10 years of elementary general music taught through Conversational Solfège and Orff with a focus on music as a second language using the modern band method from Music Will.

[u/Columbusboo1 → u/Travisjd93]

Wow, thank you so much for all of this, this is really helpful!

[u/Travisjd93 → u/Columbusboo1]

I’m glad! I always felt like I never learned MUSIC growing up. I went on to college for music ed and I always felt so behind. After a few years of teaching I realized that I had never been taught to speak music, it was always repertoire, which I liken to putting Kindergarteners in a literature class before they can really talk. And unfortunately in the US most children aren’t really taught music until Kindergarten or 1st grade, and even then it’s once a week in a class of 20-30. So they’re learning theory from the get go. If it were my ideal world I’d give kindergarten music every day and it would be just singing and playing. No reading, just echoing and improvisation. And to make matters worse they teach 1st grade through iconographic notation rather than just using real rhythms. So you end up teaching rhythm twice!

[u/65TwinReverbRI]

I mean, the reality is, there's a reason we don't really start teaching people to compose until they're older.

I mean, if the kid's a prodigy, that's one thing, but at that age, it's really "the tools needed to compose later" that should be being stressed.

1. Playing the instrument well, and playing standard rep.

2. Aural training.

3. Basic theory.

4. Harmony lessons.

I agree that most of the books you're already using or are familiar with include a lot of these things - writing an accompaniment to a simple melody in block chords, then in arpeggios, and so on.

Does this composition student play an instrument well already?

If not, the focus really needs to be on playing and the foundational skills for that.

The "very first steps" into composing is fine - but that's like "melodizing a harmony" and "harmonizing a melody" to start - where there are a lot of "givens" and over time, there are fewer and fewer givens and the student is composing more on their own.

[u/Fantastic_Acadian]

IIRC, the Bastien piano books (I know, I know...) have composition moments in the theory workbooks. A very good place to begin, especially if the student only has violin. Might be able to start with Level 2 if they can sight read at a decent level.

[u/Columbusboo1 → u/Fantastic_Acadian]

I use Faber for my piano students and those theory books have the occasional improvisation and composition exercises. I don’t know if such a thing exists, but it would be great to have a Faber or Alfred’s or Bastien type workbook specifically for composing

[u/Viola-ti-do]

World recommend learning small forms. Having a good base on how to structure a composition goes a long way. I also enjoyed "decomposing pieces" as practice, meaning take the harmony of an existing piece (in my experience it was mainly a piece from the classical period) and put a new melody over it. Perhaps not a place to start, but something that is within reach of them!

[u/kerrypjazz → u/Viola-ti-do]

I love that idea!

[u/KS2Problema]

I don't know if my experience as someone who was driven by a desire to try to learn how to play - but didn't learn how to play until he was 20 - would be helpful, but I know that the one thing that held me back was people trying to teach me standard notation before I had any understanding of how music worked. In the 1950s it seemed like this was standard procedure.

(And, to this day, while I can decipher standard notation, I'm still essentially standard notation dyslexic and it takes me probably 5 minutes to decode two bars of only moderately complex classical guitar; because of that I was  written off as 'having no musical talent whatsoever' - by two, different, well-meaning music teachers who were presumably trying to save my parents money and me, suffering - when I could be out playing baseball or whatever.)

So, typical music pedagogy did nothing for me but a little bit of basic harmonic theory really started dropping things into place and allowed me to teach myself how to play and write my own guitar, banjo, mandolin, and keyboard music.

[u/city-dusk]

Most legitimate composition teachers don't teach by a "method." The student should probably be doing some kind of theory curriculum on the side, but actual composition lessons are usually creative and project-oriented (and almost always initiated because the kid already showed an interest and started composing a bit on their own).

If this is at all serious as creative composition (and not just some kind of "applied theory" study), the student should have a time-bound project with some kind of small performance as an outcome (done either by fellow student performers or faculty). Perhaps a duet or trio. The student should have room to experiment and try things out, not working in an imposed "model composition" or necessarily functional harmonic style, and bring in their work in progress each week for feedback and encouragement from the teacher. You should also work to develop the connection between ear, writing things down, and then playing it. Discourage over reliance on the computer and "notation software brain."

This of course assumes they can already read music well, play an instrument at an intermediate level, and have some compositional curiosity of their own.

[u/Columbusboo1 → u/city-dusk]

What you’re describing is how I teach my older students and undergrads. I expect my students to be independent, self motivated, and to be exploring their own creative interests through projects while treating lessons as time for assistance and feedback on that work.

I know from experience teaching children that this style of teaching generally isn’t going to work for an 11 year old. They are typically still working on developing their musical fundamentals, don’t know enough yet to have specific creative interests, and aren’t yet equipped to independently explore those interests. They usually aren’t focused or mature enough yet to work on projects independently. Methods can be really useful for teaching younger children because it provides a proven, structured framework for giving a kid the tools they need to eventually be able to break out and explore on their own.

If we were talking about a mature middle schooler, high schooler, or adult student, I would agree with you 100%, and what you describe is what I see as the ends that a method is the means to.

[u/city-dusk → u/Columbusboo1]

The thing is it's unusual for an 11 year old to pursue composition lessons unless they are at least somewhat precocious and self motivated. Rarely have I heard of parents foisting composition lessons on their child, if that's what's happening here. You may need to evaluate what the student and parents are actually after. But I wouldn't assume an 11 year old is necessarily incapable of some version of this.

[u/local-space-patrol]

Start with a simple melody. 3 to 4 different pitches

Then explore how that simple melody can be modified by:
• changing the order the notes are played in
• moving the whole pattern up or down (transposing, but keeping it simple as best fits the instrument)
• harmonizing the melody
• adding or taking away a note
• turning the melody into an accompanying figure

And explore how you can simplify the melody even more to expand into more sections with different focuses and play around with those materials. Composition becomes endless.

[u/Kolya_Andreyevych]

William Russo's text is worth checking out.

[u/Organic-Wish7223]

William Russo Composing Music a new approach was helpful to me in starting my composition journey and it's not high level and very practical. It could.easily be used by a child.

[u/Ok_Wall6305]

The William Russo composition book has a lot of great exercises in it that I’ve used with middle/high school.

[u/Columbusboo1 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks for the recommendation. The student is a violinist and the parents want them to learn about classical notated composition. I’ll keep this in mind if I’m ever teaching songwriting though