The following are extracts from my upcoming book Awesome Piano Practise
"Well, that depends. Is there someone already playing in the family?"
"No".
"Can she already understand ABC, can she read a little bit?"
"Oh yes, she is quite clever and I am reading every day with her".
Nevertheless it was decided to wait a little bit until she approached 7 years. You see, a piano is very much an instrument built for an adult human being. There are no ¼ size pianos to start learning, like a violin and the hand should be developed accordingly.
It is all right usually when someone already plays in the family and the child really can't be stopped and then only in small time units, because of the small attention span.
Hence children of five years old having mastered Bach's Chiacone are really very rare. But now it was time for Myra and she had insisted on her first lesson. Ok!
What's got a Mum to do, to ensure that the weekly lesson fee is not waisted?
There are a few tips here:
Someone once said that he knew that Liam Gallagher would become a good guitar player, because he behaved like one right away from the start. There is nothing wrong with the idea 'Oh, I am going to be awfully good at this!'.
And there was little Myra now, sitting behind the large black grand piano. This being very much an 'adult' instrument, nevertheless she could with her right hand reach the lowest key on the piano and with her left hand the highest one.
'Ah, not that big after all!'
I ask little Myra to keep her right arm in the air in a straight line with the floor. Her hand should be in a straight line with her upper arm and she should not do anything at all with her fingers. They are then slightly curved.
I ask little Myra, whether this feels good, which it does.
'Can you now stretch your fingers and check how much effort it costs to keep them like that?' Admittedly, that costs quite some effort!
'Can you now bend your fingers a little bit as if you hold something in your hand?'
Admittedly, that doesn't feel quite so good either. A common misperception amongst piano teachers! They ask the child to keep the fingers 'as if they are holding an apple' and the fingers then play the keys as if they were little hammers. That is surely the way to go, if you want to wreck the child's piano playing right away from the start.
We will later see how this misperception came to exist amongst piano teachers.
The hands then are put on the piano just the way they are, when the fingers are not used at all and the wrist can best be flexible. Piano books starting on the black keys are indeed very practical, because the fingers not used can easily 'fall back' to the white keys and the handshape is natural.
The wrist can drop slightly with every keystroke. Because a child's fingers are really still very weak and specific finger exercises should not be attempted before reaching grade 4 level.
This helps developing a sense of rhythm when playing the first tunes and that is the most important thing to develop in the beginning. Later we will see how the child will learn how to feel rhythms and phrases, so essential in learning to play the piano with pleasure. And playing with a sense of rhythm surely is also a pleasure for those listening to it.
I get students in all shapes, age, gender and it is surprising how many people like to learn to play the piano in their twenties or thirties with the idea that they missed out on something when they were young.
And indeed it is true. There goes a lot of time into learning to play the piano, but it is an investment well worth making. You can loose friends, family, business and money in your life but you can never loose the music you once learned. It is an asset which will stay with you all your life.
Hence it is a good investment to make while you are still young, but there is no barrier to still do that while you are older. I know of a lady who started to learn the piano when she had become sixty and by the time she was sixty seven she had acquired her qualifications to teach the piano.
And so it was with Chris. He had a nice job working at a computer firm, but had repeatedly told his girlfriend about his love for music. And for this reason his girlfriend called me up with the question if I could give a 'voucher' for piano lessons.
She would give it to him for his birthday. And so she did. And Chris went on a learning curve, which went quite fast and worked out well.
All Chris needed was a regular slot in his day of about half an hour a day for the necessary practise.
His sense of rhythm was already developed well, which gives the advantage of paying attention to the technical side of things. One of the first barriers to overcome in the beginning is to learn scales and chords. That can be quite cumbersome and if you want to learn fast, this does not mean you can take short cuts, because there aren't any.
But a teacher's job is to remove obstacles, which make the learning curve harder and longer as is necessary.
Take the learning process of scales. The scale of 'C' really IS one of the hardest scales to learn over two octaves, because the student looses track of the fingers all the time. Also fingering in general can be a pain.
The most practical route I have experienced is the following. Chris first learned to play the scale of 'C' over one octave with hands apart. To play both hands over octave is good manageable. 'Right hand thumb after three, left hand finger three over and back left hand thumb after three and then right hand finger three over. Chris could quickly learn this and do the same on 'G' with one sharp (F#) at the end. Then 'D' with an added sharp (C#) at the end. And the logic continuous with 'A' (3#s), E (4#s) and B (5#s).
Chopin started teaching the scale of 'B' and the reason for this is that the fingers fall quite naturally in the right place.
Hence Chris could now play the scale of 'B' over two octaves. For both hands the rule applies that approaching a group of three black keys needs finger number 4 over and approaching a group of two black keys needs finger number 3 over. It is easy to see that the left hand starts with finger number 4.
Once Chris could do that I gave him the scale of 'E' to do over two octaves. The fingering is now strictly:
And on the way down:
In short: 3-3-4-4-3-3 ; 3-3-4-4-3-3
Amazing when this falls into place how easy it is to learn the scale of 'A' over two octaves, the scale of 'D' then 'G' and finally back to 'C'.
The same approach works with the scales with flats also. That means: start with 'Db' first then 'Ab', 'Eb', 'Bb', 'F'.
And see, all my students can play ALL major scales within their first year of having piano lessons.
Hamis likes to play fast. Very fast. I am not sure what the fuss is about, but Hamis likes it fast.
I had given him an arrangement of 'the Entertainer' to play and the faster he could do it the more entertainment it was for him. And my refusal to follow in his footsteps gave him even more satisfaction, because he was convinced that I didn't play it that fast, because I couldn't do it as fast as he could.
And so I heard him say to his Dad after I closed the door on him: 'He can't play fast!'
So of course the week after I had no choice but to play it twice as fast as he did. May Scott Joplin forgive me.
What then is the art of playing fast?
In fact I believe there is no fast music! That may solve the problem all right then you may think. But no, there is a philosophy of 'playing fast': All music is performed at heart beat speed I believe, unless the music is meant to rouse the emotion. But in fast music much more is happening during the same basic pulse.
You can apply the same thoughts to learning your scales. It is not the issue of playing the same scale the same way but faster.
When a horse goes slow it walks. When it goes faster the horse trots and then it gallops. Why would it do that? It does that to regulate its energy better.
So likewise you can play a scale at slow speed, each note at heart-beat speed: Ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-etc.
When you want to go faster you maintain the heart-beat pulse, but you play two notes in one beat: Tadi-tadi-tadi-tadi-etc. If you want to go faster again you still maintain the heart-beat pulse, but you play four notes in one beat: Tadititi-Tadititi-Tadititi-Tadititi-etc.
You can continue this process: 8 notes in one beat or 16 notes. That's advanced stuff but once the student gets the hang of it many will try that and they will manage.
In his book about teaching guitar 'not pulling strings' Joseph O'Connor makes an interesting observation:
'The less you play for your students, the better they think you are'.
So, some students observe: 'My teacher NEVER plays for me. She must be very good.' I say she, because male piano teachers are in a frightful minority. Moreover I play for my students all the time, which means there are no secrets there for sure. When after the lesson they ask me to play something, I never refuse.
Of course students will want to know their teacher can do what he is preaching. And so during the first half year John - an adult student - brought every week a little task for me to complete. Sight reading, play this or that by Beethoven or Chopin.
'Hmm, you have never played Transcedental Studies by F. Liszt?'
That was a major disappointment, but when I played a large part from Liszt's B-minor Sonata the nightmare of the previous week was put to rest and finally he stopped bringing tasks after I gave him a task to do for every job he brought for me.
Another little student, Peter, after one year's piano lessons asked with some worry: 'When will I be able to play the piano?'
That is indeed an interesting observation. He obviously had expected after some time to be able to play the piano and not having to practise anymore. Also he probably would have expected that it would gradually become easier instead of harder.
That is an obstacle the teacher has to avoid. Which means that the student must gradually become convinced that his skills are indeed increasing and many things he can now do easily.
The student will want to learn 'to play' the piano and 'playing' must therefore be an import factor of the piano lesson.
Many piano teachers assume that means playing 'duets', which sounds something like: playing solo is boring, but playing with two persons at one piano is 'fun'.
Playing the piano involves a great deal of being able to play without any music at hand. Which is in fact improvising. For this reason from the first lesson there is always some time reserved for playing without music. Which is in fact putting the scales and chord to practice.
'Practice' NOT 'Practise!
Playing a four bar phrase in one of the keys which the student has mastered is something each of my piano students can do easily. The small beginners of 7 years old can do it after their third lesson or so on any white key using five notes.
It involves 'feeling' how long a rhythmic structure of four bars is. Playing little variations on a rhythmic structure and putting a left hand below it. First only one chord; the tonic chord. But then gradually the sub- dominant and the dominant. It is a skill which the student HAS to develop to be able to continue to play written music with understanding and ease.
For this reason I don't want to teach with only one piano. With two pianos the student and the teacher have an equal basis and we improvise a lot together. The student can't stop, but has to keep the music going whilst I am accompanying the student using the same chords.
Once a written piece is mastered it is also good practice to ask the student to change a few things, a different rhythm, some different notes, but basically the same meaning of the music.
This way when the students reaches grade 4 level and can start playing some Clementi or so, he/she has already a basic concept of the chords used there and can even use them himself in a similar situation. Moreover the written music becomes much more meaning full, because it is not a sequence of scales and arpeggios to learn (sigh), but music in a form the student as already tried to apply himself.
I still remember when I was a student and went to a piano lesson my teacher used to scratch all sorts of remarks over the music and it annoyed me beyond end, because I had arrived at the level, where after a year or so I would come back to the piece I had worked on and had diffulty seeing the threes through the wood. Soon I developed a habit of borrowing my music teacher's book for the pieces I was working on. She would then write all over her own pages and when finished I still had my own clean copy!
Some people find the written marks very important and I was once sitting in a music centre after working on a Scriabin Sonata. A highly respect musician came in and wanted to know what I was working on and I give him my book. He looked at the pages of a Dover Edition, which I like because they do not offer fingering, and arrived at the conclusion that I obviously was not studying seriously, because I had written nothing over the pages.
Hence with me as a teacher my students keep their pages clean, because only very very rarely will I write over their pages. It should go in their heads and not in their books. And with most of my students that seems to work out Ok.
Ronald is a older student who is coming on very very well. At school he was regarded not very intelligent, to avoid too negative a desciption. In fact he was made to think that he was quite stupid. And still with writing and math he had big problems. But listening to a recording of piano music had turned over his life and he was passionate about Liszt. He was a bit annoyed in the beginning that Liszt didn't make such an impression on me and I managed to make some politically incorrect remarks regarding the composer's tendency to try to impress people. But nevertheless you are not going to discourage a young man and I didn't tell him his left hand trying all sorts of difficult things was quite awful, let alone the damage he could do to it!
I only sell lessons and not time. If someone works hard and deserves it he/she gets more time.
So Ronald started to come twice a week for two hours. That was of course not two hours playing, but talking, drinking coffee, listening to music etc. etc. And teasing of course!
Ronald is now very articulate about music. Understands style. Is able to write down his thoughts and express himself. He tells me what he thinks. It is my job to let him do the discovering and steer him in a certain direction. Correct him when I think he is wrong, but showing him why he might be wrong. It is not my job to tell him what to do, but how to do it, if he runs into diffulties. I still remember how when he wanted to play baroque music for a competition, and chose an Allemande written my Mozart that the jury out there might be not as open minded as I was. The music written by Mozart was of the purest baroque style and probably meant and intended to improve on Handel.
Indeed, although his performance was the best, he was refused the prize by a lady, where you could mob the feeling of supremacy behind her on the floor where she walked. But Ronald no longer cared about such trivialties. Ronald you see, loves music! And loves to talk to me about it....
And admittedly is waiting for the day he plays better than me. Now there is some problem there. It is he who all the time gives me music to play he hears on records and unwittingly keeps on expanding my boundaries... Because indeed I have to practise too. And my students inspire me to it...
Exams are not everybody's piece of cake. And the number of people with a 'grade 8' in their pocket and still have the feeling not to be able to 'play' the piano admittedly is large.
So the use of exams, although parents love them, is a bit limited. But they do offer the children (and adults) a means of aspiring to something. But here in the 'North' there is only one practical exam opportunity a year, which makes it unpractical for me too.
For this reason most of my students sit their grade 5 and grade 8 exams, although they can sit any exam if they so wish.
To fill up the gaps I have designed a way to assess my students myself and every year at an official show evening the students receive their grade award. What I want to say with these certificates is:
'If you want to you can sit and pass this and this grade, you are at that level'
It also gave me the opportunity to redesign my route for technical scales and improvising, and this has worked out well.
My students have left an impressive record in their exams with ABRSM and Trinity College, but here in the North in practise there is only one exam opportunity per year. For this reason I have been looking at other means to give an indication for my students how they are achieving. Any student can do any exam at ABRSM or Trinity College at any grade level he/wishes to do, but as a teacher I will promote especially the performance exams at grade 5 and grade 8 level. Twice a year I will assess my students and if successful give them an award.
I have grade 'X' under my belt…
You can compare these awards with the coloured belts for Asian Sports and I will be using a likewise colour scheme. The grades are equal in level of difficulty as the grades an ABRSM or Trinity College and the grade is an indication that a student awarded at a certain grade level can sit and pass the same grade level of an external exam board.
| Grade level criteria |
| Grade 1 colour: white |
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| Grade 2 colour: yellow |
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| Grade 3 colour: orange |
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| Grade 4 colour: green |
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| Grade 5 colour: blue |
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| Grade 6 colour: brown |
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| Grade 7 colour: brown/black border |
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| Grade 8 colour: black |
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The colours on the belts represent the level of 'dirt' on the belt, showing the level of experience:
'How dirty are YOUR piano keys?'
to be continued...