There is one curious fact about all but the most musical children when
they begin to _write down_ tunes of their own composition. They make
mistakes which they have never made when _extemporizing_ the same type
of tune. This seems to arise from the fact that they suddenly feel
self-conscious--they have more time to think when writing than when
singing or playing, and are inclined to compose one bar at a time
instead of phrase by phrase. They will produce a tune of seven
bars--they will end on a weak beat--they will come to a full stop in the
middle of an eight-bar tune on the tonic chord, root at the top--the
last half of the tune will have nothing to do with the first half. We
could write a page of their possible mistakes!
The cure for these lapses is to insist on the tunes being sung before
being written. The old unconscious habit will then assert itself, and
the little tunes will fall into shape.
It is a useful lesson to get a class to criticize all original tunes
when played by the young composer.
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