Anyone have kids who play two instruments?

[mnemom]

I am thinking of starting dd with lessons for a second instrument. We already do Suzuki violin. She wants to learn harp, too. I love the Suzuki method but wonder if we should make the harp lessons a little less intense and go with traditional (not Suzuki) for harp.

 

What have your experiences been in doing lessons for two instruments? My dd is 7 and has been doing violin for 3+ years now.

[Lolly]

One of mine took violin and piano for a couple of years. (neither Suzuki) She is also a competitive swimmer who has been doing two a day practices for 4 years now. She found high school, swimming, and two instruments to be too much. Just not enough time to practice, so she dropped piano. She just dropped violin a month ago also. She may start back in the fall, but we will be temporarily relocating to where her lessons are 30 minutes from the house which just isn't worth it at this point.

 

For a younger child, if music is their thing and they are the ones requesting lessons, two instruments wouldn't be too much. I don't think manner of instruction would make that much difference. That said, I think less intense sounds great!

[swellmomma]

When the kids were still in music lessons dd12 was talking violin and piano. She would love to take harp but that is hard enough to find an instructor in teh city there is no one out in this little rural area that could teach her and the harps themselves cost so much, that is is out of our league. I am however hoping to get her back into violin and piano.

[AngieW in Texas]

My youngest started guitar 2.5 years ago, banjo right after Christmas, and voice in February. She doesn't want to start another totally new instrument for a while, although she does want to get a 12-string guitar. 12-string doesn't mean a totally new instrument, so she figures that will be easy to add on.

 

She actually has just one instrument lesson each week. Her teacher splits the time between guitar and banjo.

[Laura Corin]

His teacher is lovely and he's learning so much - traditional, not Suzuki. FWIW, he has started with the clarsach (Scottish harp). Most people start with that here, then they can stay with it or move to an orchestral harp later. It's a manageable size whilst being a real full-sized instrument.

 

Laura

[Carrie12345]

My son hasn't taken different lessons simultaniously, but he is taking bass lessons now while still playing piano, which he used to take lessons for.

[Plucky]

I have a child that plays 4 instruments. He tends to concentrate on one instrument at a time but plays his other instruments all the time. At 7, unless she is highly motivated I would definitely make her lessons less intense. I think harp is an excellent choice btw.

[chiguirre]

Trinqueta started playing percussion (the bells) in a homeschool band in August and then decided she wanted to learn the violin. She's been doing both this year, but the bells have taken a backseat to daily violin practice. Next year, she'll switch to the homeschool orchestra and drop the bells. Even though she won't continue with the bells, they were a great introduction to playing in a band and a good way to learn to read music quickly and accurately, so no regrets there.

[AuntieM]

We never did concurrent lessons, but we did switch lessons from piano to guitar and piano to voice and recorder. It was more a matter of available (ha, NON available!) funds than any other factor.

 

In choosing a second instrument, I just wanted them to have at least one that was "portable," kwim? You can't drag a piano everywhere you go, so it's nice if you can also play something you can carry. Of course you already have that with violin.

[SueinNC]

My dd, 11, does. She started out with piano lessons at 5. We added violin at 7 followed by guitar at 9. This spring she added mandolin and harp. Her lessons are traditional.

[SKL]

My kids (age 5) started piano last fall and guitar (in addition to piano) in January. They are fine with it, though it's that much more complicated to work practice into our evenings. I think the lessons complement each other.

[LibraryLover]

Three of mine play multiple instruments.

Edited October 25, 2013 by LibraryLover

[IsabelC]

bump

 

Interested in when/how you schedule practice time for a kid playing 2 or more instruments?

 

Is it better to do one in the morning and one in the afternoon? or swap around so they both get their 'fair share' of the freshest times?

Do longer on one some days and the other on different days?

 

Or not even try to even it out, but encourage kid to focus on a 'main' instrument and not so much on the second/subsequent?

[MinivanMom]

My daughter plays both piano and harp. She has been playing piano for 4 years and practices for about 1 1/2 hrs each day. She has been playing harp for a year, so she has only been needing to practice for 30 or so minutes each day. This past year we scheduled her practice so that she was doing piano in the morning and harp in the afternoon. She would do math and grammar immediately after breakfast and then sit down to the piano. That gave her 2 hrs of practice time before lunch, but she would usually finish in just an hour and a half. Then she could have some time to unwind before lunch. After lunch she practices her harp before joining me and the younger kids to finish her schoolwork. I personally find that it is best to have a consistent time and routine for practicing each instrument rather than alternating practice times and lengths.

 

As we have planned our daily routine, it was just natural to space out the practice sessions to give dd a change of pace during the day. This schedule has worked well, but we will be switching it up a bit in the fall. She will continue doing math, grammar, and piano in the morning, but we are going to move her harp practice time to later in the afternoon once she has finished all her schoolwork. She is at a point where she is needing to practice her harp for longer than just 30 min after lunch, and she doesn't like all her schoolwork being pushed back to later in the afternoon. This will also give her the chance to spend as long as she wants practicing harp instead of feeling like she needs to finish up and move onto schoolwork in order to meet a schedule.

 

As far as balance is concerned, dd doesn't really prioritize one instrument over the other for practicing at this point. She practices longer on the piano, because she has been studying it much longer and is learning more difficult pieces. She hasn't needed quite as long on harp, because she was just beginning. I can feel that starting to shift already. She has expressed (very strongly) that harp is her instrument. She loves piano and wants to continue both instruments, so I think she is going to need some help with finding that balance over the next year or two. As long as she strongly prefers harp, I will be encouraging her to move towards spending more time practicing harp each day.

[Chris in VA]

I see this is a really old thread, but since a PP asked a question, I'll answer--

 

Dd takes piano and viola--she takes piano with lessons, and has viola in orchestra class in public school.

 

It meant learning two staffs, and that was good for her. She gets strong theory with piano and can apply it to viola, also.

 

But she does not practice viola at all at home, so IDK how long she'll be playing--Viola can be lucrative for college, as many places will give scholarships to play part time in a college orchestra, according to dd's teacher. She'll have to play better than 3rd chair, though. 

[Alessandra]

Some kids in the local school orchestra are doublers, but they play related instruments, say violin and viola. Quite a few do violin and piano, but not a string and a wind. Btw, we are in an area with a great many Asian students, many of whom practice many hours per day and are superb musicians.

[IsabelC]

So dd has just finished her first term of violin and is starting on piano.

 

Her current daily music looks like this:

Violin: 30-45 minutes (scales, arps, exercises, pieces)

Theory: 5 minutes or so (either workbook or music flashcards)

Piano : 5-10 minutes of actual practice, followed by time for her to muck around on the piano (I usually limit this but she'll stay there for ages when I let her)

 

So right now she rarely does more than an hour of music per day, but I'm just thinking that as she gets older and practices longer, it might not work doing everything together. 

Because I'm the Anti-Tiger-Mom, I actually don't let her practice for long periods (if she's still picking more violin pieces after 45 minutes I just tell her that time is up), because she is 5 and I don't think many hours a day is good for K age kids. But that will change over time if she maintains her interest in music.

[AK_Mom4]

Dd12 started piano at six, saxophone at 10 and added another (bigger) saxophone this year. Practice is 45 minutes in the morning for piano and 45 minutes in the afternoon for the saxophones, with lots of messing around on the piano during the day for fun. Music practice makes a great break between her academic subjects.

[Targhee]

We were doing violin and piano, guitar and piano, and flute for my three oldest. Practicing was an issue - 2.5-3 hours a day for me to oversee (!). My kids started to wear down from the practice time. We are down to one instrument each, and when they have greater drive and want to do all that practicing again I will let them. Until then we will focus, on a single daily practice session, and have time to play and be kids.

[MinivanMom]

So dd has just finished her first term of violin and is starting on piano.

 

Her current daily music looks like this:

Violin: 30-45 minutes (scales, arps, exercises, pieces)

Theory: 5 minutes or so (either workbook or music flashcards)

Piano : 5-10 minutes of actual practice, followed by time for her to muck around on the piano (I usually limit this but she'll stay there for ages when I let her)

 

So right now she rarely does more than an hour of music per day, but I'm just thinking that as she gets older and practices longer, it might not work doing everything together. 

Because I'm the Anti-Tiger-Mom, I actually don't let her practice for long periods (if she's still picking more violin pieces after 45 minutes I just tell her that time is up), because she is 5 and I don't think many hours a day is good for K age kids. But that will change over time if she maintains her interest in music.

 

This sounds exactly right for a 5-yr-old. I think you will eventually want to separate the violin and piano into 2 separate practice sessions. Having 2 separate sessions helps *me* to deal with the length of time that my oldest practices (at 10 yrs).

 

I am in an affluent area with a large percentage of Asian parents, so there is a lot of parental peer pressure to really excel musically at a young age. I admire the dedication of many of my daughter's peers, but I'm not sure that's the right path for her. I always watch to be sure that she's happy and enjoying her practice times. I also watch to make sure that she has downtime, time for non-music activities, and time for friends. Even at 10, I sometimes have to tell her to stop practicing and go outside. I think musically inclined kids often need support and guidance to maintain that balance between music and other activities.

[mamakelly]

Two of my kids play multiple instruments, but it was by their own choosing when they were older teens. I think one instrument is hard enough, LOL.