1. Introduction
Colourstrings was established in Finland over thirty years ago, and spread to the rest of the world in the early 1990s. Colourstrings is a child-friendly system that was created by Hungarian Géza Szilvay, and aims to teach a child not only to eventually play an instrument, but also to improve his or her musical audio-perception and mental capacity.
Colourstrings introduces children to music in an enjoyable way through inner ear training, developing musical sense, social skills and co-ordination. Szilvay uses the rhythm, melody, movement and improvisational experiences of Kodály for his methodology. Although Colourstrings is not the first Kodály-inspired music education methodology, it is unique in that it is intended for very young beginners with no prior formal music training required. Kodaly was an Hungarian music education philosopher who created a child friendly methodology that utilized all the children’s senses in order to teach musical concepts.
2. The Colourstrings philosophy
Colourstrings is a music education programme that ideally starts with children of eighteen months and is a continuous developmental process. Although Szilvay divides his methodology into separate teaching phases, he did not want the process to be felt by children as separate but rather as one continuous process. He envisaged a programme where instrumental tuition would be a follow on from the kindergarten programme. After the kindergarten programme, once the child starts school, s/he would go to a Colourstrings instrumental teacher and start an instrument from the beginning but have an enhanced level of understanding of the basics and elements of music. Also, the children should know 50 to 70 children’s songs by the time they start instrumental tuition and some of the songs they would learn to play on their chosen instruments. This he called subconscious education. He believed that instrumental music would be made easier, and the teacher would go through the process so much more quickly, if the kindergarten teachers did their job well. Szilvay went as far as to say that kindergarten teachers could change the life of instrumental teachers if they did their job well.
Secondly, Szilvay wanted to develop a philosophy that was for the average child and not only the talented child. He felt that most instrumental teaching philosophies were written for the talented and musical child. The average child fell by the musical wayside.
Finally, Szilvay’s approach is one that develops not only the fingers, but the ear, the intellect and the emotions. He does not see the methodology as a quick fix method with fast results, but rather a slow step-by-step approach where a deep foundation is built in a child-friendly, stimulating way.
By Zelda Martin
