Pages

Friday, December 2, 2016

Teaching Your Kids Piano? Which Books to Use (and How Piano Should Really Be Taught)

This is part of my piano teaching series. It's really important to read each post in order!

Intro: Discusses what the overall goals should be for music lessons
Part 1 (this post): Explains the principles of how piano should be taught to achieve those overall goals
Part 2: Draws upon those principles to list the specific skills that need to be emphasized from the start
Part 3: A compilation of additional insights to make their learning effective and fun
Part 4: Shows how it's all implemented by detailing my lesson structure

Before we had kids, we decided to make a rule that they all need to take piano lessons until they attain a certain level of proficiency. After that, they will continue to be required to take music lessons of some sort, but they can switch to whatever instrument they want. The problem is, piano lessons are crazy expensive! We can't afford them right now (thanks medical residency #indenturedservitude). But, I play the piano . . . and I like to teach . . . and that's how this whole teaching-my-kids-piano thing fell into my lap. [Update 4/1/2020: Looking back, I am so grateful for this, because I believe they're now getting better musical training than they could have gotten anywhere else, and I'm learning a ton as well!]

I soon realized, though, that I have no idea what books to use! Which ones will be the most effective and enjoyable for my lucky future students? Here's what I learned after way too many hours of study and research. May it save someone a little time one day when they have to go through this same process.

WHAT IS A PIANO METHOD?
First, for beginner students, you should probably get a "piano method," which is a collection of piano books all written by the same author(s) and designed to take a new piano student sequentially through all the basics of what they need to learn. You could instead use random books and make up your own method, but a formal method makes it easy because it organizes and sequences the lessons for you AND it gives your child an easy way to track their progress, which is critical for sustaining motivation ("I've finished the first of four levels! I'm actually accomplishing something!").

HOW TO CHOOSE A PIANO METHOD
So which of the tons of methods should you choose? When I read reviews or asked people myself, I was overwhelmed with information. The ocean of opinions basically boils down to this: piano teachers are pretty much pleased with any method that has fun music, is sequenced logically, and does a reasonably good job with how it goes about explaining things; they will rave about any method that additionally focuses on "comprehensive musicianship" (integrating other skills like ear training, improv, theory, composition, and so forth). When only considering those criteria, most of today's popular methods seem pretty equal, so just choose any of the popular method books that are catered to your child's age and Bob's your uncle, right?

Wrong. There's much more to it than that.

THE MOST IMPORTANT SKILL A PIANO METHOD SHOULD TEACH
When I started thinking harder about what I wanted my children to get out of lessons, I thought about all the people in the world who took thousands of dollars' worth of piano lessons as kids and now have nothing to show for it. Why? I explain why in my intro post to this series, and you should read that first if you haven't. Basically, they were not taught in a way that achieved any fluency in the language of music.

Fluency in the language of music involves a lot of skills that I won't rehash here, but I would argue that the most important one is the ability to read music fluently. That's the skill that will have the biggest impact on whether childhood piano lessons lead to lifelong piano playing or not. Think about it with me for a second. Without a really high music reading level, tackling any new intermediate to advanced song (i.e., pretty much every song they would want to play) requires way too much practice time and effort for them. They won't be able to sight read Christmas sing-alongs at a Christmas party, or accompany a congregation or soloist without way-in-advance notice. They won't be able to just sit down and play beautiful-sounding music for catharsis, or be a keyboardist for a band. Instead, the only songs they will play for the rest of their lives will be the few they memorized for recitals decades ago.

I want to emphasize this: A student's level of music reading is the number one thing that determines how much piano playing will become a part of their future life.

And even if your dream is for your child to become more than just a piano hobbyist (say, a professional pianist), music-reading-focused training will maximize their chances of ending up there as well. (But maybe you should fork out the dough to get a professional teacher . . . who teaches the stuff explained in this series, which is unfortunately a rare find.)

Therefore, regardless of the goals you have for your child's piano lessons, if you understand what goes into high-level music reading, you can start to separate out the best methods from the rest because you know which playing habits they should be fostering from the start. Here are the core skills (in no particular order) that determine someone's music reading ability and, therefore, are the most important skills for a young pianist to learn:

1. Intervallic note reading: Finding their next note based on its distance from the last one

This is faster than individual note identification, and they should be able to rely on this skill for reading most notes in a song--not that this means they shouldn't be lightning fast at individual note identification as well! But a good piano method will provide lots of practice--often in the form of transposition activities--targeted at helping them recognize all different kinds of intervals so they will effortlessly read notes this way.

2. Chunking: Recognizing groups/configurations of notes rather than just seeing individual notes (this is akin to reading word by word rather than letter by letter)

This requires a firm grasp of theory so they can understand music (i.e., see the chords in the music rather than just seeing a bunch of random notes). The theory taught should directly relate to the songs they will be playing that week so they can see it in action, otherwise they'll probably get in the habit of thinking of theory as a separate thing and will never see it in the songs they are playing.

Additionally (and this may be a shock to you), they also need experience playing in all the key signatures pretty early on (a "multi-key" method), which will help them start to recognize how different key signatures' note groups/configurations look on the staff and feel in their hands. If they get used to seeing the note groups/configurations in the music for only a select number of key signatures, they will only be able to chunk well in those key signatures, so the number of songs they'll eventually be able to sight read fluently will be limited significantly. Playing in every key from the start like this will help them to "be" in a key when they're playing in that key; the chords, the white and black notes used, and everything will feel natural to them. Piano methods that start out almost exclusively in C major, plus an occasional G major or F major, perpetuate the myth that songs with more sharps or flats are harder, when really it's just that they don't have experience being/thinking in different keys like that.

Improvisation activities are also super helpful to get them to start seeing the chords in the music they're playing. For example, giving them songs that don't have all the notes written in and requiring them to add those notes in themselves. This gets them to start chunking because it forces them to recognize the chords the song is using so they can know which notes will fit.

3. Predictive fingering: Basing their fingering on the notes they're playing now and the notes they'll be playing next

Predictive fingering is mostly developed via technique activities that help their fingers automatically know the right places to go; but, again, they need to be doing technique activities in all key signatures, or else playing in that unpracticed key will feel foreign to their fingers. The idea is to have their level of technique always be a little ahead of their playing ability so they can focus on all the other challenges inherent in reading music without also having to worry about the technical challenges.

The other aspect of predictive fingering is seeing beforehand the upcoming fingering challenges and adjusting their fingering accordingly. This happens when they're looking ahead in the music, which they can only do well when they keep their eyes on the music rather than looking down at the keyboard all the time (explained next). It also comes from them doing a pre-read routine before they read any song (discussed more in Part 2).

4. Location awareness: Always knowing exactly where their hands are on the keyboard and being able to find the next notes without EVER looking down

The only way to develop this location awareness is to play with their fingers amongst the black keys; the pattern of black key groupings will always tell them exactly where they are. Without this skill, they are left relying solely on their memory of where their hand was last placed, which is ineffective because everyone forgets so quickly on account of thinking about so many other things while they're trying to read music! And, even in those times when they do happen to remember where their hands are, they still have no means of jumping to semi-distant keys without looking down.

Piano methods that start out only in the key of C (plus an occasional song in F or G) facilitate the bad habit of playing on the ends of the keys because they're not requiring students to use any black keys, and teachers aren't always around during practice time to correct this, so this is another reason to choose a multi-key method. When location awareness is trained into a beginner pianist from the start, they will be feeling where their hands are automatically from pretty early on. You know they're doing well at this skill when you can tell them to stop playing and name the key a certain finger is on, and they'll be able to do it immediately without looking.

Location awareness facilitates much more fluent sight reading because they can keep their eyes focused on absorbing all the musical symbols on the page and looking ahead in the music rather than constantly interrupting that focus by glancing (even peripherally) at the keyboard.

Sidenote: I want to mention "position playing" here as well because it's a hotly debated teaching strategy, and it's used by many piano methods. Position playing is when the student plants their hands in one place on the keyboard and never has to move them from that base position for the whole song. I understand why methods use this technique. They're trying to get students to be able to play nice-sounding songs right from the get-go so they enjoy playing piano right from the start. They're also trying to implement the super-important principle of teaching one skill at a time (first learn to play notes you see written on a staff, then move on to more complex skills like moving your hands to different places on the keyboard). It also helps build intervallic note-reading skills early on. But the downside is that they really aren't truly reading music yet. You can tell because if they get even one note wrong, the rest of the song will be wrong because they're basing their intervals off the wrong note. All in all, position playing does seem to have its place very early on for the reasons mentioned above, but it should be transitioned away from pretty soon after they've gotten those initial skills down.

5. Music reading practice: No matter how good they are at those other skills, this is what will make the biggest difference in sight-reading skill level

This one is super important! All those other things I've talked about up to this point are pre-requisites, but this is the one that mostly determines their eventual reading skill level (assuming they're doing the other ones right).

And here is the greatest tragedy of modern piano teaching: Almost every piano method out there is designed in a way that the student gets assigned a few songs, and then they are required to play those songs over and over, day after day, week after week, until they can play them well. Only then do they get to try reading new songs.

An effective piano method should have new reading material (new songs to read/play) in every practice session. That is what the student needs to help pull all the other sight-reading skills together and hone them.

I will explain this further.

Any time a pianist plays a song, they could be playing it at one of four levels.

Category 0 - noise:  It's so bad that it doesn't even count as music.
Category 1 - passable: Not great, but at least you can tell what the song should sound like.
Category 2 - proficient: Sounding pretty great, but there will still be a fair number of mistakes.
Category 3 - performance level: They're owning it.

The first couple times you ever play a song, it is new reading material. And if you come back to it at least a day later and play it another couple times, it probably remains unfamiliar enough that it could still be considered new reading material. Any more play-throughs above that, and it's too familiar to be considered new reading material.

If a student is playing new reading material at a Category 0, it's just way too difficult, and they're not learning anything. If they're playing new reading material at a Category 1 or 2, it's in the sweet spot, and they are pushing their reading skills forward. And if they're playing new reading material at a Category 3, it's too easy for their reading skills to be improving, but hopefully they are focusing on playing it ultra musically, so they're instead improving their ability to play musically.

And what's happening when a song has been played through enough times that it can no longer be considered new reading material? Any time spent playing that song is improving your skill at playing that specific song. It's a song-specific benefit, not transferable to any other songs (essentially memorizing the tricky parts and how it feels in your fingers).

Spending time improving your ability to play a specific song isn't just wasted time. There are many reasons we would spend extra time on a song to push it up to a Category 2 or 3:
  • To gain experience with the most effective methods of learning a song by rote
  • It's a song that you really love and just want to be able to play really well
  • The song uses a specific style or technique that you want to get better at playing
  • You're going to perform it somewhere
  • It's one of those "standard repertoire" songs that every pianist should know
Now let me summarize and make the point I've been leading up to with all that explanation in this section. An effective piano method should have a large majority of a student's practice time be dedicated to playing new reading material that is the right difficulty level for them (Category 1 or 2). Every minute spent pushing their reading skills forward like this is saving future hours trying to learn songs by rote (the sharpening the saw analogy applies here). It's also good for them to spend a little time regularly playing songs that are easy for them so they can improve their ability to play musically. And it's even ok for them to occasionally spend extra time on a song pushing it up to a Category 2 or 3, but only if there is a very specific reason for doing so (see those reasons listed above).

One thing that will allow a student to effectively play new reading material at a Category 1 or 2 is if they have already learned all the underlying theory, rhythms, harmonic patterns, fingering, chords, etc. that are used in the song. If that has been done, instead of being distracted trying to figure out completely new musical challenges at the same time they're trying to practice their music reading, they will be able to focus specifically on putting together all the skills they've learned to read music fluently. Again, it's that principle of teaching one skill at a time as much as possible. Adding simple skill to simple skill eventually culminates into masterful playing.

One last point. You probably don't remember learning to read English, but it's initially exhausting; so much effort is required for every word. It's the same with music reading--every bar requires a great deal of effort. For this reason, a good piano method will keep its new reading material short. This not only minimizes fatigue, but it also enables students to read a greater variety of songs.

BAD PIANO METHODS ARE CAUSING KIDS TO QUIT
It should be clear by now that most methods get a lot of things wrong, particularly in their extreme over-emphasis of learning songs by rote. This wastes so much time, and it also takes the fun out of playing music.

My experience taking piano lessons growing up was that by the time I was finally playing a song well enough to sound good, I had already played it through so many times that I didn't even enjoy hearing it anymore. The satisfaction of making beautiful music was mostly lacking in my early piano lesson days. And when I did pass a song off, each new song assignment felt like the beginning of yet another long uphill slog to learn the darn thing. It's no wonder so many kids get tired of piano after a year or two and quit! I'm sure most kids would give up on learning to read English too if we taught it that way.

THE PERFECT PIANO METHOD
Of all the things explained above, many of them can be integrated into any piano method, so they shouldn't impact much the selection of a method. But there are a few things that would be hard for any teacher to add in if they're not built into the method already:
  • Experience (in the form of songs and other practice activities) with all the key signatures right from the start (i.e., a "multi-key" piano method)
  • A specific focus on providing new reading material for every practice session
  • Preparation for playing each week's new reading material by teaching all the requisite things (theory, rhythms, chords, technique, etc.) separately first, which will allow them to focus on reading the music
  • Improvisation opportunities that use only the material they have learned up to that point
  • Early transition away from position playing
At a minimum, a method I choose needs all of those. And it would be even better if it has other desirables integrated as well, such as composition activities, aural skill-developing activities, explanations of music history, and training on how different styles should be played.

CONCLUSION
Think how easy it is to plant a student's hands on the white keys of a piano, "teach" them to play a bunch of kitschy tunes (all in the key of C, of course), and then declare that they're making great progress. That's not what I want for my children. I want deliberate, sound, permanent piano training. I want them to become fluent in the language of music so they can have the playing of music be an important part of their entire lives.

If a student is taught using the principles described above, their apparent progress will be slower because they initially won't be learning (wasting time on) as many difficult songs to impress their friends and extended family members. Going back to the sharpening-the-saw analogy, teaching piano in this way means they'll be spending the majority of their time sharpening their saw, so the number of trees they are cutting down will intially be few. But once that saw is crazy super sharp, they'll be able to cut down a tree so fast and easily any time, anywhere, their whole life.

You may be wondering if I found any piano methods that look good. The only one I found (although I haven't looked at all of them!) that meets all those core requirements plus many of the optional ones is the Robert Pace Piano Method. Never heard of it, right? I hadn't either. It's not widely used. It certainly has a cult following among teachers who use it (and former students who have been trained in it), but I think it's not "popular" because (1) it's not heavily marketed, (2) it's seen as dated (not new and flashy (Robert Pace believed the music should speak for itself without trying to draw kids in with pictures), (3) teachers believe it requires special training to use (there are Robert Pace teacher training workshops--a byproduct of having a cult following), and (4) some teachers think they'd have to teach it in groups (Robert Pace also wrote a lot about the benefits of teaching in various-sized groups).

So, we'll see how it goes. Let me know if any other good methods are out there. And check out Part 2 for the summary list of skills I have been focusing on with my kids to apply all this stuff.

[Addition 10/18/2020: When you get them through all the basic levels of a piano method, I see that as completing their grade school musical education. They can now be a lifelong functioning member of the music community! And now they have the option of adding more instruments to their skillset, the learning of which should go fairly quickly, and/or they can continue on with their initial instrument into the undergraduate level of musical education. The goals of undergraduate-level musical education are (1) pushing their fluency in music ever higher, (2) improving their instrument-specific technique, (3) acquiring their instrument's standard repertoire. and (4) beginning to shift from being an undifferentiated musician to a differentiated/specialized musician in whatever area of music is most interesting to them by starting to further develop the skills most needed in that area. This would be a good time for them to find a music teacher specialized in that area, and at this point the teaching methods are not quite so paramount because they already have the foundational musical framework into which they will be able to fit the new things that they learn.]

1 comment:

  1. You make perfect sense. I have played music most of my life, but I am not confident sight reading, because o the reasons you have sighted. Very interested in your further insights

    ReplyDelete