Musicians with No Training

Tali spent years begrudgingly taking lessons for violin and cello. He loved his teachers - he loved his time with them - but he didn't love being taught. Rhiannon learns very analytically, so has taken guitar lessons and joined a children's choir, but she never felt impassioned about either. Then Tali got a concertina, and we decided to just let him play with it. No lessons; no advice. Just play. After all, that is what music is about, right?

So he did play. Everything from sound-effects to classical and Irish music, to his own invented French and Balkan-sounding music that seems to just spawn out of his bellows. And eventually Rhiannon became so infatuated with pop music that she now wants voice and guitar lessons to aid her planned audition for the Voice. As she waits a few months for those lessons, she has begun teaching herself using guitar sheets for the songs written by her favourite singer. I think it helps that I don't like the music very much. There's no pressure on either of them to do anything for me, and both of them fill our house with music most days - purely of their own hearts and ingenuity. And it totally delights me!!

This is one of those beautiful life-learning successes I hope to remember.