The summer is coming to an end, and for many musicians, this means that there's about to be a surge in prospective students. For many reasons, this is the greatest time of the year for private music instructors, as a new generation of students enter the band room for the first time and fall in love with music like we all did, their parents (at least the ones with the money for it) will search tirelessly for private instruction.
One frustrating element for this, especially as a percussion teacher, is that this is the time of the year where some parents may not realize that it is not yet the time for their child to be taking lessons. One common question that arises with this is: "How young is too young to play percussion?"
The answer is a tricky one, because percussion is a tricky beast. As a private percussion teacher, the bulk of my lessons come through teaching drumset. A considerable amount of these lessons are to children that are too young for the instrument.
One of the most educating experiences of my developing career was also one of the most frustrating, and it surrounds a 6 year old student I taught for a span of 3 months in the fall of 2014. His parents were dead-set on him playing drumset, and neither of them were percussionists themselves. I usually advise to parents when their child might not be developed enough for their goals, but at the end of the day they pay me and I don't like to bite the hand that feeds me. These parents were absolutely set on it, no matter how many lessons we struggled through.
Our first few lessons were tough. Teaching a child that young is as much an exercise in socialization as it is in musicianship. He had a solid sense of rhythm, and what he was able to play he did well, and after weeks of repetition, we were able to solidify small basic concepts. What immediately stood out to me, however, was the fact that his body wasn't necessarily prepared for this type of coordination and motion. Even on a smaller drumset, his bass drum motions came naturally from the abdomen, causing his entire body to change balance with every stroke, and his small fingers couldn't properly grasp the stick. The muscle groups in his wrists and arms were not developed enough to even begin to talk about how to properly hold a stick. I believe the child was beginning to become frustrated as well with his inability to grow at the rate his parents pressured him to. There were many days where I would calm him down after he would break down in tears behind the drumset.
Now this is where some would just say that's just the age of the child, which is true. However, with music being something that we must constantly build on throughout our lives, what is the cost of letting a child's body literally grow into bad technique to keep him playing? Why put him through repetitive failures when the measure of success is unrealistic to his physical abilities?
The week after I made these observations and attempted to adress technical issues, to no avail, I changed up the gameplan. When he walked in the next week, I had a track ready for him: "Guerilla Radio" by Rage Against the Machine, a song he mentioned loving and wanting to learn how to play (his father's influence, it seemed, by the parents' reaction). Rather than even begin to learn how to play the drumset part for this song, we sat and listened to it, and talked about it. We clapped to the beat, and then listened in to isolate specific drums. We clapped along with the snare drum, we stomped on the floor with the bass drum. By the end of it, we were basically dancing.
After this, I had two djembes out and ready to go. We sat down and practiced playing quarter notes, taking turns improvising over each other. As I listened to him, I began to hear his musical voice through his improvisation. Every time I would hear him repeat a rhythmic idea, we would stop and talk about it. Why did we repeat this rhythm? Why was it pleasing? How do we count it? After two weeks of this, he began to become excited for his lessons. His lessons, however, had become general music lessons. We discussed rhythm, feel, time, groove, and he left a better percussionist than he would have been had we spent that entire time trying to force him behind a drumset.
I recently turned down a job offer to a parent wanting her 7 year old daughter to play drums. When I told the mother that her daughter was too young to be playing drumset, and I could offer general percussion and music lessons to her, the response I received was disheartening. The mother asked me about these videos of child prodigies behind the drumset, and if these kids could do it, why couldn't her daughter?
Professional musicians spend a lot of their lives fearing child prodigies, but they're not as real as you may think. They exist, absolutely, but even watching these 4 year old drumset prodigies, the experienced percussionist notices that their hands aren't quite proficient. The technique isn't there. The prodigal talent comes from an innate sense of rhythm as well as coordination. These traits are also evident probably far earlier than a parent would be thinking about seeking musical lessons for their children.
How young is too young to play percussion? That's a tough question. A 6 year old child can't really function well behind a drumset, and definitely isn't tall enough to reach a marimba, but can absolutely excel and develop consistently given small percussion instruments, an Orff diatonic xylophone, or even a toy drumset. When teaching very young musicians, we must be patient in the goal that we are trying to instill deep musical sensitivity and training within them, not just the ability to shred Neil Peart drum solos.
