More on the Colourstrings' Philosophy

Colourstrings is a music education programme that starts from pregnancy 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. If children felt it to be split into phases, the new phase would be difficult to start and would have to be related back to the previous phase, but if continuous, the child would just grow into the new phase seamlessly. He envisaged a programme where instrumental tuition would be a follow-on from the kindergarten programme. The kindergarten programme directly connects to instrumental teaching.


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 them they would learn to play on their 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. This is because the same ideas and material should be followed throughout: that is that the material initially introduced to the child is also used as the introduction to each successive phase and because of its familiarity, it can be easily assimilated by the child.

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. ‘The Colourstrings approach acknowledges that there are born talents or natural abilities but also takes into consideration the extreme importance of the environment or surroundings for the development of the child. Colourstrings creates an environment for the child where toys, fairy tales, singing and instruments live side by side serving the happiness of the child. Such a music land which is an integral part of the child’s play world should be available to everyone’ (Vainio 196:50).

By Zelda Martin (extract from a Master's thesis - University of Pretoria)

Certified Organic Music

While all around us we see a drive to the natural and the organic, in the area of musical culture we see a trend to the artificial. Lullabyes and nursery rhymes are a fundmental part of our muscical culture, however what we see today is that electronic toys and their synthesised sounds are literally driving out the parent’s voice.

Ironically these toys are being promoted as educational. The value of training the young ear with good quality sounds can never be overestimated. A baby’s ear is at its most sensitive stage while it is developing speech and learning to recognise different sounds. This is the time that they should be exposed to good quality, well played, in tune music. In fact, this exposure should take place during pregnancy.  Sadly this is the time that babies are most exposed to artifically produced sounds. The synthetic sounds from a toy, synthetic nursery rhyme tunes and sometimes even synthetically produced human voices.

Flat batteries and the inevitable wet and wild use that babies subject these toys to result in even the best quality toys quickly being reduced to out of tune horrors.

Other sources of poor ear training are synthetic instrumental sounds and badly recorded or played music.  The prevalent idea appears to be that if music is recorded for children, quality is not an issue. Recorded music for childen should be of the highest quality, as this is the music that is forming their ear. Just as poor quality food affects the development of the child more than the adult, poor quality music affects the intellectual and aesthetic development of the child more than it affects the adult. If you can’t stand a noisy toy it is a good sign that your child shouldn’t be listening to it. It is a fallacy that children enjoy noise.

One of the greatest gifts you can give your baby is to sing to him/her regularly, play good quality music on real instruments, or well recorded, well played classical music, whether live or on compact discs, as opposed to out of tune synthetic sounds. This will assist the child in developing a good musical ear. 

Naxos have recently released a series of “My First” albums. These include "My First Lullaby Album", "My First Classical Music Album" and "My First Mozart Album". 


"My First Piano Album" and "My First Violin Album" may be of interest for children learning these instruments.


These are all available for download from Classics On-line.  Tracks can be purchased individually to allow you to make your own compilation.


By Colourstrings South Africa