Let children play musical instruments, their way

If your evening routine includes arguments, incentives and timers in order to cajole your children to practise an instrument, you might want to rethink your approach. While creating music should be a joyful lifelong experience, the path towards mastery of an instrument can be tempestuous if the motivation is wrong.

Music, like competitive sports, Advanced Placement (AP) classes and volunteering has become another near chimera in the desperate sprint towards collage acceptance. For some, music is a ticket to college. But for the vast majority, music practice ranks near the top of the list of topics that induce day-to-day stress in busy households. The path to musical literacy for the majority is strewn with abandoned instruments.

Despite having grown up with music teacher parents, I never learned to play an instrument. I was determined the same would not happen to my own children, so I signed them up for traditional music lessons from the time they were small. In my home I have two violins, a trombone and a piano; all abandoned by my children.

Perhaps it's my own lack of resolve in encouraging them to stick with it, but I could see their lack of enthusiasm and no amount of prodding from me would have changed that.

For my eldest I sought the advice of Dr Frank Abrahams, a prominent college music educator in the US. I expected he would share the latest practice techniques with me, but instead he simply said, "Get him an iPod. That way he can figure out what kind of music he likes. Once he knows what he likes, I can teach him how to play it."

I was shocked, and a little disappointed at first, but then I began to understand the approach.