Kids and Music Lessons

As you may have read in my previous blogs,  my daughter Angel is 11 years old and started violin lessons last summer. She still enjoys learning her instrument, so I thought I would give you an update on how it’s going.

I would love to know if your kids have taken lessons, how it went, and if you have any tips on how to keep them inspired.

Please email me lynn@tulsa-rocks.com.

Rocking Out on the Violin

When I was 10 years old, I wanted to be a rockstar, so I, of course, decided to take guitar lessons. My older brother, Roy, was already taking drum lessons, and he very much enjoyed it and was great at it. I loved watching him practice. I also loved watching him let loose and go nuts on a drum solo. His drums were set up in our basement with bare cement walls so yeah, it echoed and was really loud.

Once in a while when he would leave the house, I would sneak downstairs and play his drums, even though I was forbidden. It was really exciting and I loved it, until that one day when he came home early and caught me.

FYI: Drumsticks hurt really bad when your older brother whacks you on the back with them.

About a month afterwards, I decided to take guitar lessons. I picked up the basics pretty quickly. I was dedicated and practiced every day. Playing with E, F and G was the first lesson, and it flowed through me so easily that I thought I was going to be the next Jimi Hendrix. But then, as most things do, as my lessons progressed, so did the severity of the material. It started getting harder, and I became more frustrated; so after only about three months, I gave it up. Although now I can air guitar like Eddie Van Halen with extreme accuracy!

My son, Atticus, thought playing the guitar would be cool, but, much like his dad, shortly after he started he became perturbed on how hard it was to learn. Plus, it took away from very precious Fortnite and Call of Duty screen time, so he lost interest.

Then he stopped practicing. I told him if he was not going to practice, I was not going to pay for lessons anymore, so he quit.

I know that learning a musical instrument can also help unlock a part of your brain that can translate to learning other things, like schoolwork. So when my daughter started taking an interest in learning the violin, I immediately began looking into where to go for lessons, how much it would cost, etc.

I bought a violin at a pawn shop, but it had damage that was beyond repair, so I decided to rent one instead. I went to that place downtown next to The Vanguard, but it was closed, so I went to the only other place I knew of, Tulsa Strings. I had never been in there, but I’m glad I went because I met the nicest person I had met in a long time. She showed me a nice violin to rent-to-own. I figured that would be the way to go in case Angel wanted to stick with it, so we would eventually own the violin.

Luckily, this person (Miss Allison) also taught lessons, and she had an opening for a new student, so it was serendipity! She and Angel seemed to hit it off, so we signed up for 6 weeks of lessons and violin rentals.

Niccoló Paganini, here we come!

It is so wondrous as a parent to hear your child progress from screeching sounds to actually playing notes simultaneously with their teacher.

Romeo and Juliet

Thanks to TulsaPAC, my kids and I were able to see a production with the Tulsa Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet.

It was very cool!! My kids both enjoyed it, and we had fun getting dressed up! I thought it would be a great way to inspire Angel to keep up with her practicing.