When I last talked about teaching the children piano, I mentioned how I kept hitting walls teaching Yanni to play. The walls continue to this day.

I have started insisting that all the children practice piano daily. When it’s Yanni’s turn, she plays the same section of the music that she knows several times, then trails off into musical debris. She starts playing fragments of video game music (usually Mario, but sometimes Banjo Kazooie or something). Yanni also has her own songs that she’s working through whenever she gets a chance. She will play these on the keyboard in my office without being prompted. I taught her how to record her own music, but I haven’t taught her how to write them out herself.

I feel out of my league, despite the fact that I have a degree in composition. I know, it’s not in teaching composition–how does one do that?

With Imani, I have started videotaping her playing her original compositions and coming back to it later to transcribe the music. I want to teach her to write her own music.

Maybe another call to my composition professor would be in order.