According to experts from Yamaha Music Foundation, four is the ideal age for children to start learning about music, as it marks the beginning of the stage at which their sense of hearing develops the most rapidly.

Hence the creation of the Junior Music Course (JMC). Designed especially for young beginners, this is a comprehensive music lesson for eight to 10 students that focuses not on playing instruments but on training the ear and developing a sense of the tunes.

The basis of education is learning the alphabet. It's the same with music, says Yamaha Music Academy director Phornthep Phornprapha. "You must start at an early age and from a very fundamental level."

"It's the only golden moment in life. After that, you'll miss it forever," explains Anant Lerpradit, a lecturer in music history at Silpakorn University.

"To develop good pitch awareness, you need to start learning about music at three or four years old," continues the self-taught guitarist, who signed up his daughter for the Yamaha class.

Rather than teach young children to read the notes, the course encourages students - with the help of their mothers who participate in the class - to recognise the melodies from the sound they hear and sing along to the electone, the electric keyboard invented by Yamaha. A score is handed out after class as confirmation.

The classes also encourage family ties and social abilities through parent participation and group lessons, which encourages children to share, says Siam Yamaha Music's vice president Yosuke Harima.

The original course was invented in Japan and has now been attended by more than five million students worldwide.

In Japan, young children are encouraged to learn about music. And even though basic music lessons are compulsory in schools, many parents send their children to music academy after school or on weekends. The foundation regularly holds recitals for the students to present their musical and performance skills onstage.

"Music is considered very important," says Harima.

So important that teach-yourself lessons now appear in comics with popular Japanese cartoon characters like Doraemon showing youngster how to play the recorder.

Here in Thailand, extra-curricular music lessons are too costly for many families. Aware of the problem, Siam Music Yamaha is trying to build the basics by cooperating with the Education Ministry and a pilot music course has been introduced in 900 primary and secondary schools nationwide to help children learn how to enjoy music.

Recording artist and studio musician Jessada Sookdhramorn agrees that starting young helps to build a strong foundation.

"Starting at four or five years old gives you better odds of being a musical genius by the age of 15 providing you stick to it and practise," he says.

"If you begin at 12 or 13, you won't make it by 20, unless you are a real genius like truck driver-turned-bassist Billy Sheehan."

Jessada started playing string and wind instruments as well as the drums when he was 12. The talented youngster was determined to make music his career and enrolled at Chulalongkorn University's music department.

"But how many true geniuses like Toh [young talented pianist Saksit Vejsupaporn], Vanessa Mae or Maksim do we have?" he asks.

He also questions how much four-year-olds really learn from music class, pointing out that most of them are enrolled because their parents want them to be disciplined by the music.

"Some drop out later in life simply because they have memories of being forced to attend."

Jessada comments that most music schools in Thailand teach students how to play music rather than to make it. While these students excel in technique and are able to play scores by classical masters like Mozart or Beethoven, they cannot improvise.

He cites as an example his girlfriend, who started learning piano as a young child at a music academy.

"She's an excellent classical musician but she really wishes she could play lively jazz."

Pianists Virunya Wongwiwat and Tidarat Israngkul Na Ayudhya also admit that while technique has carried them through high-level examinations, they have problems with improvisation.

Out of eight levels, Virunya passed Trinity College of London's fifth grade and Tidarat finished the Royal Academy of Music's sixth grade. Both started music academies as young children and quit at 17.

"I'm definitely the sight-reading, note playing type. I don't have the skills to improvise," says Virunya. A music student for 10 years, she was taught how to play rather than to create.

Although she will never be another Vanessa Mae or Maksim, Tidarat, who works as a part- time piano teacher, says that had she completed eighth grade, she would be able to create some scores of her own. She enjoys improvising but is certainly not as good as a talented self-taught musician.

Yet Yamaha Music Foundation's goal is to help people enjoy music in every way and not just to play a piece or create a score. Harima says it's not even necessary to play an instrument.

"Learning music with us is to learn how to enjoy music - whether by singing, listening or dancing along with it."

The message from Harima has at least reached Tidarat and Virunya - even though neither of them studied at the foundation. Both still play the piano at home.

Tidarat says that once her fingers are on the keyboard, "all the tension seems to slip away".

Sirinya Wattanasukchai

The Nation