Do you have a thorough understanding of the language of music?
I find increasingly that I inherit students who do not, and I can see how frustrated they are as they cannot understand why they are not able to play written music with any degree of fluency and why learning a new piece takes them so long.
One question I ask them, is quite simply, if you don’t know French for example, but you try to read a novel in French, would this be possible, and how long would it take to look up the meaning of every word if you were to attempt it? The same applies to one’s own language, if you are just learning to speak and to spell in English, you just would not be ready to read Dickens for example. It is glaringly obvious and yet students and sometimes teachers, do not seem to see that.
How do students know when they are ready to progress to pieces of increasing difficulty level? How fluent do we need to be in the language of music and why do students often rush and skip through developing the necessary skills.
In order to read music and then transfer what we are reading onto the keyboard fluently, we must be able to read pitch and rhythm, have a good sense of keyboard geography, a solid technique, and a sense of pulse at the very least.
I find that many students either have or want to rush the initial stages of learning and this just will not work, learning to read and play fluently is a process, developing a sense of keyboard geography, pulse, pitch, rhythm, metre, technique and being able to make a beautiful sound, these things all take time to develop. As we progress, we need to understand the writing in more depth, we need to know about harmony, melody, balance between the hands, balance within the hand, voicing, texture, form, performance directions, a greater sense of key and tonal colour needs to be developed, an understanding of what the piece means, its context, developing a sense of style, and so very much more.
Why do students try to rush their musical development? Why do students want to play music way above their current capabilities and then become frustrated when they cannot?
I think it often stems from not learning enough variety of repertoire in the early stages of playing, as early perhaps as the very first stages when students begin working through tutor books, we need lots of supplementary repertoire at the same level, students need chance to absorb and develop each skill before moving onto the next.
It also stems from the obsession with doing exam after exam and using the exam syllabus as a curriculum, this is such a terrible way to teach/learn and unless you are a very rare type of musician, you will come unstuck at some point with this approach.
If students take the time to learn and develop carefully and thoroughly at every stage, everything you learn will be transferred to the next piece, if you don’t however, each piece is like starting from scratch as a novice, not recognising notes, rhythms, patterns, not having a sense of key or pulse, these are all things which will hold students back if they do not take, or are not given the time, to develop them.
There is an absolute wealth of pedagogical materials for pianists from beginner to advanced, there is a huge variety of repertoire, we are spoilt for choice but the beauty of this is that as teachers we are in a position to design an individual curriculum for each and every student according to their own needs, not to do so seems negligent to me.
I believe that we must help our students to enjoy the process of learning, practising, developing skills and a really solid understanding of the language of music at each and every step of their musical development so that they are then able to scaffold their learning, apply their knowledge and skills to each step and enjoy the journey rather than obsessing about how quickly they can get to the destination. The joy of it really is that we never really arrive at the destination, we continue to build, to learn, to enjoy, to progress and to develop as musicians throughout our life, what a gift this is!
