Throughout my teaching, I’ve always admired the way Art is taught.  Students create and learn their skills through first-hand exploration of the media.  In music, though, we tend to postpone creativity until the medium is first learned.  Our logic is simple - how can one possibly compose music on a piano or guitar if one doesn’t know what all the notes are?  Yet that logic is flawed, because in music education we often presume an ordering of the learning of musical attributes - rhythm first, then notes, then harmony, then texture.  Once understanding of all of those elements is in place, then we are ready to begin creativity - we are safe in the knowledge that the child has got enough information to start composing. 

But......have we already raised the walls of the creative garden by teaching them the “right” notes and the “correct” chord progressions?

What if Art teachers thought the same way?  What if they presumed that one had to learn all about color, light, texture, and perspective before allowing the student to create?  Would much get done in Art class?  Probably not.

When I was a child I loved finger painting - it was the highlight of my week in elementary school.  I loved being able to get my fingers and hands covered in paint and create huge abstract shapes of bright colors.  I loved to touch the paper itself, and I thrilled with the feel of the paint as it pushed into the grain of the page.  After my paintings dried, I would take them home, and my parents would display the work proudly and, more importantly, listen to me as I told them all about what was on the page and what it all meant.

Unfortunately finger paints were put away as I moved to secondary school and I never truly found the same joy in working with brushes or with pencil.  I did however very much enjoy working with clay - again it was a tactile experience.  The experience of creation, though, far outweighed my technical skill at the subject, and I’m forever grateful to those Art teachers who let me create, and I’m in awe of the Art teachers I have been lucky enough to work with in my teaching career.  In all the years I have been a teacher, I have never seen an Art class in which Art instruction was given without the students creating - therefore every student experienced the learning through tactile involvement with the media.

As I child I also did what I now call finger composing.  I would sit at the piano, long before I had started piano lessons, and I would find new sonorities and chords, things I hadn’t heard before in music, things which only came from my tactile exploration of the instrument.  I would improvise great toccatas and inventions, in new keys and modalities, long before anybody taught me the right way to play scales, or the use of a V-I cadence.  I was improvising, composing, and creating, and it was exhilarating for me to feel this musical freedom.  I played for hours and hours, and I loved it.

Today I see much the same thing when young children sit with an instrument and experiment.  They are freed from the constraints of musical theory, and they are happy to create spontaneously.  The sounds and colors they are coaxing from the instrument sound good to them, and they are fascinated by what an instrument does.  To me, it’s a beautiful thing to watch.  Yet often a parent or another adult comes along and pulls the child away from the instrument.  “Be careful, you might break the piano”, they might say; to which I say “be careful, you might break your child”.  It’s easier to replace a broken instrument than it is to restore an inhibition of creativity brought on by sanctioning a child’s natural desire to make sound. 

Children are naturally creative - they take to finger composing as easily as finger painting.  Next time you see a child experimenting with composing, ask them questions about what they’re doing, what sounds they like, what images come to their minds as they put notes and sonorities together, how their imagination is taking them to new places in the music.  Maybe even record them on your iPhone or iPad, and listen to the music later with them.  Above all, applaud creation for the joy that it brings to the child’s life, and it will bring joy to yours too.