Does your toddler take piano lessons or does your piano student stop at every bar line of music? Would you like to see them play through your music without these unnecessary interruptions? This is an easy way to help your child overcome the habit of stopping or pausing on the bar lines.
Here is a demonstration that you can give your child, even if they don’t play the piano, that will explain how music should be played. Remember that when your child watches this demonstration, they will stop pausing at the lines on the bar. So don’t worry or scold your child, or criticize his play. Just take this demo and they’ll get it.
You will need a large pitcher of water, several small Dixie glasses, and a sink. Pour the water from the pitcher into a Dixie cup. Then stop, put the cup down and fill another Dixie cup. Then stop, have another Dixie cup and fill it up. Do this four or five more times. Then ask your child in piano lessons to imagine that the water in the jug is a musical song that you are playing. To pour the entire song into the Dixie cups, you would have to stop pouring the water when each cup is full and leave it and have another cup to carve, etc., until the entire pitcher is empty or the song is finished. If you imagine that each bar line and new bar is another Dixie cup to pour your song into, you will have to stop at each bar to fill another cup. But we don’t want music in Dixie cups, do we? So we don’t need to stop at the bar lines.
Now pour all the Dixie cups of water back into the pitcher and teach your student how to spill the music when he plays. Lift the carafe up high and gently to squeeze out all the water until it is empty. Take your child home back to the piano to listen to his song, and while your child plays, explain that you don’t have to pause on bar lines or every measure like Dixie cups. Just let the music you’re playing past the bar lines until it reaches the end of the song and all the music on the page has spilled out.
Try this at home and I guarantee your child will flow through your music and remember the lesson of how to pour the musical water jug so the music flows beyond the lines of the beat.
