With encouragement, some children will take the tentative steps necessary to create a song. Younger children who have never taken lessons happily poke at keys, creating an atonal, arrhythmic stream that, by Western standards, would not be considered musically pleasing. Older children take a different tact. After looking rather uncomfortable and somewhat helpless, they play a song that they have been taught by a friend or sibling (such as “Chopsticks” or “100 bottles of beer on the wall”). When I ask for something more “creative,” they most often deny my request, stating that the very reason they have come for lessons is to be taught how to play and what did I expect?

The same task, the same setting, but the younger children are more likely to attack the creative challenge fearlessly. Unaware of harmonic rules, these children seem oblivious to tonality, allowing their creations to include atonal combinations. The older children give a safe, constrained response or ask for direction. Following instruction, the results are no more encouraging. Once taught that a C chord safely goes with a group of notes in C major and then asked to create music, children will play only what they think fits within the C chord structure.