Music Education #8 What Parents Can Do for Beginners

When students are beginning, what can parents do to maximize their success?

Help them by setting a schedule, a plan to work at the keys everyday, and set learning goals for every day, every week in order to complete the assignment. The teacher should be setting realistic assignments, and hopefully giving good practice outlines. Give cheer and direction to each practice, show love by giving full attention to young beginners. Remark on and praise progress!

In Practice: "What does the assignment book say about that? Learn page one? OK let's shock the teacher. Probably she just thinks you'd barely get hands alone or whatever. What do you say we try to memorize the whole first page hands together?! That means you could do line one today, then you have three days for the rest, then a day or so for review..."

What specific things can I teach my beginning child so that the teacher can move forward unhindered with my child?

Total knowledge of the keyboard note names: ABCDFG.

In practice: "OK! play all the Cs! Great! How fast can you play all the Gs high to low? Play all the DEFs with the left hand, all the ACEs with the right hand. Name your finger numbers! Play a low F with the left hand 4th finger! Play a high B with the right hand second finger! That was faster than yesterday! Wow." Fast paced and cheerful is best, not lingering too long on any one exercise.

Knowledge of Staff lines and spaces: Treble and Bass Clefs

In Practice: Make a grand staff on your floor, [see previous Music Education posts] use flash cards introducing two or three new notes a day, ask questions about the notes in the music. Memorize with your child the names of the treble clef lines and spaces (EGBDF and FACE respectively) as well as bass clef lines and spaces (GBDFA and ACEG respectively)

Tip: help the student focus on the assignment given and if the student hears or sees new pieces to try, keep a running "wish list" for your child to look forward to. Teachers like to hear about student favorites!

Hats off to moms and dads! Parental integration in practice is so incredibly important to most young beginners and can really add a sweet dimension to a relationship when children see their parents really proud of them and excited about their success and potential. I had no idea about what this was all about until I had my own kids. Wow. As my brother said, initially the child's success depends probably more about what parents a child has than the innate musicality of a child. I didn't think of putting it so bluntly, but am starting to see things his way....

Music Education #7 Making Paths Through the Jungle

This is not a travel blog, but anyway...

...Fourteen years ago we were tromping through the jungle in South America wearing tall rubber boots to not get bitten by tarantulas (I saw 'em!). Our front guy was whacking the thickly growing crazy vines with his machete and we were trying to follow. We crossed streams by foot, sometimes finding the easiest way was just to wade through the stream because there were not so many plants there! We had a destination, but my point lies in the fact that we were all of us tromping over some faintly traced path that appeared (at least at first) to only exist in the mind of our guide.

That's like looking at a new page of music. Just a jungle. The mind has no aural or tactile experience with the new notes.

He slashed at vines effortlessly with a long sharp, very effective tool that made us think about putting our hands around out own necks, a blade probably illegal in most places.

That's like the first step of sight-reading. It's the first impression. It's very important to try to get this one right. (Kind of like a job interview, too. You only have one chance for a perfect first impression.)

Then we all followed, our feet making the path, one after another of us. When we were done, you could see a path behind us. You wouldn't have wanted to follow it barefoot or anything, but you would know where we has been.

That's like repeating the music until you start remembering it. Because the brain looking at a new piece of music is like an untraced jungle of potential: you have to beat down a path to follow. Actually, in music, the path has already been laid, so our job is to learn where it is. This is a good explanation to kids who have play something right again and again.

"But I got it! I played it perfectly." (I had that shot- I'm vaccinated!)

"Once! Yes! good job! But hey- how many times did it take you not so perfectly to get it there?"

"Um... seventeen?"

"OK! Yes! So in performance, you're going to do it the way you practiced it the most. Do you think you'll play it the way you really want to if your first time perfectly was your only time? Maybe not. So we do this bit lots of times, today and tomorrow" [that's important] "to make sure it stays."

Our trail in the jungle- it's probably completely grown over, invisible, unless people kept travelling it. The Oregon trail- in some places you can still see it over a hundred years later.

The paths music leaves in the mind are some of the most permanent, staying with many Alzheimer's patients long after they cease to recognize their loved ones.

This is all about the nerves making paths in our brain. Connections! I really like seeing kids learn. I really like handing them a mental machete and watching the trailblazing begin.

Interpreting Beethoven the Silly Way

Pianism is technical artistry or skill at the piano.

Interpretation is bringing out the meaning of the composition.

You sometimes unfortunately see Pianism without Interpretation. I mean, people have the fingers flying and a great piano but the music doesn't say a lot. That's not good, especially when it is great music that could have had a lot to say. Sure, the player has technique, but the music isn't meaning anything to him, and consequently nothing of beauty or import gets across to the listener.

You sometimes see Interpretation without a lot of Pianism, too- People who really do have something to say with their music, but something is preventing them from pulling it off, usually slips in their accuracy or technique or nerves, or unfamiliarity with the piano, or whatever.

It is important to practice for accuracy and skill so your fingers convey the message instead of cloud the message of the music.

It is also important to know to get know your music away from just the keys, too: knowing that the music has something to say. It is good to listen to it in your head, hearing how interesting/beautiful/exciting it can be apart from however you are currently playing it. But I haven't thought of Interpretation without Pianism in quite the same way since I saw this:

The Piano Player

Rowan Atkinson studied very carefully to pull off this comedy stunt: he mimes parts of two Beethoven Sonatas- starting with the Grave (pronounce that "Gra'-vay") section of the Pathetique Sonata in C minor Opus 13 and interrupting it (after looking at his watch!) with the third movement of the "Moonlight Sonata" (Op. 27 No. 2 in C sharp minor). He is utterly silly, but you also see that he gets the music! He understands the "conversations" in music and the times where the music feels exhausted, or heats up into a frenzy.

Doesn't that make you think more about what music can say? It's fun to pull up other Beethoven Sonatas and listen for the dramas to unfold... without the mime- just: Beethoven.

Favorite Music #1

The Happiest Piece I know: Gavotte from the French Suite No. 5 in G major

You have to begin at minute 5:48 to get the Gavotte.

Know one happier? Then I've got to hear it!

Here is a childhood favorite of mine: David Popper's Gavotte.

Here is probably my favorite ever single work of music. You've never heard it before. I think. You have to listen to it fifty times. I love the way the melodies layer over layer over layer...

Music to Relax by #2

Venetian Gondola Song

This Song Without Words by Felix Mendelssohn is one of the most haunting, romantic pieces for piano! ...You can hear the dark shiny water reflected in the bass, and the lights flickering all around its gently rippled surface. Then the song begins, wistful and soft, as calm and romantic as the handsome boatman poling you along. There are candles along the waterway glowing like starts in the night, and flowers on the gondola. The night is warm...

The funny thing is, this fine and gentle performance is done by a guy who looks awfully sweaty- he must have been performing for a long time previously in that concert, or maybe it was a hot summer night. Or maybe he just sweats when he performs. It's hard to perform! My big problem is my nose runs. Let's say I've got my piece well under control, well no matter; I get adrenaline anyway and it all comes out my nose. You can't stop in the middle of a long fugue to blow it all out. That puts a big, undignified break in the work of art. Even if I do memorize all my music I still ought to have a page turner even if only for intermittently holding a hanky to my nose. Still I am thankful: I don't get sweaty hands. I'd rather suffer a wet upper lip than to have to play Fugues on a Slip'n'slide.