Motivation & A Musical Environment: An Interview with Barbie Wong

This week on the Time to Practice Podcast we’re speaking with music educator Barbie Wong. We talk about her research into the lives of musicians, how we can create an environment that supports young musicians’ growth, and some great tips for motivation and music practice.

More about Barbie: Barbie Wong is a music educator who helps parents raise joyful, musical kids. With music degrees from Stanford University and Smith College, Barbie believes that everyone has the capacity to learn music. She teaches parents how to raise musical children through her classes, workshops, and videos. Over the course of two decades, Barbie has taught over 200 music students spanning various ages and backgrounds. Through her extensive research into the lives of musicians, Barbie has discovered simple, practical ways for parents to raise kids who love music. When she is not teaching or making music, Barbie loves to do parkour and hang out with her teenage kids.

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Highlights Include:

“You know, getting kids to practice, it’s not a black and white issue. There’s so many nuances and it depends on so many different things. And I think all so a lot of times parents and I had this idea too that “oh, I really want practicing to just be fun. I want everything to go smoothly.” And the reality is that sometimes practicing is hard. Some days I know even adults, I have musician friends who say, “yeah, I don’t want to practice,” but this that’s just part of the whole package. And if you can see the big picture and most kids can’t, you know, we adults have to help them either see it for them and then guide them along or eventually help them see the big picture.”

“I think a lot of times too, children build that muscle by seeing parents build that muscle. As parents, we have to build the perseverance muscle of constant reminders, and saying it daily, and being okay with feeling like, “I don’t want to remind them again, but I know this will help.” And then persevering through that.”

On what we can learn from the lives of musicians: “And so when I thought about it, I thought, “well, what if I looked into the lives of adult musicians, both professional and amateur to see if there was anything that happened in their childhoods, you know, were there any commonalities, were they doing things?”

 Were the parents doing anything or were these people just naturally gifted and naturally drawn to music? And what I found essentially was that these adult musicians grew up in musically rich households and you know, yes, a lot of them did have musical parents, but a lot of them didn’t, like Elton John and you know, Lin Manuel Miranda who created Hamilton, a lot of people love his music. His parents were not musicians, but guess what? They loved music and they loved music so much that they played it all the time. And if you can guess what kind of music they played, then you can then start to realize, “oh, this is the kind of, this is what happens when you inundate a child’s environment with a lot of music.” So, you know, his parents loved musicals and lo and behold, that’s why he became a person who wrote musicals.”

“A lot of people like to focus on the motivation, but I say, don’t focus on motivation, focus on the daily practice, getting your child to the piano or whatever instrument they’re at, every day. And even if it’s as minuscule as five minutes, and that’s the practice- that might be the practice, getting your child to their instrument. Then if you do that for a whole month, just getting your child to the instrument, eventually then the practice will get easier and the momentum will build. And eventually, you’ll have someone who then practices more easily.”

Links in this Episode:

Find Barbie’s Facebook Group:https://www.facebook.com/groups/musicalnest

Barbie’s website:https://www.barbiewong.com/

Barbie Wong’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/barbiewong

Find Barbie Wong on Instagram: www.instagram.com/barbiewongmusic

Support the podcast by attending our next Live, online event all about practice personalities: https://bit.ly/3fS71Aa

Find Christine on Instagram: www.Instagram.com/SuzukiTriangle

Transcript: