Simpedia

Barbara G., Massachusetts

Sheri emailed me about how I develop musicality with my students. She said, “I haven’t worked much formally with my students in expressing the musicality of pieces. I wonder if you could share with me some of what you do to formally train the musicality. I have talked about loud and soft and stretching the rhythm out in places and playing smoothly, etc. But I know there is more I can do.”

I thought others might have ideas on this subject so I am answering it on Simpedia. I would love to hear others’ responses as well.

First off, I do not think of myself as teaching musicality “formally”.  I think my students “catch it” from my playing or when asked to interpret a piece themselves it is part of the natural musicality everyone has. Like in “Tear for a Friend”, the students that really think about the title and the emotions involved play this lovely. Not everyone wants to “go there” with their own emotions, however. The bounce and play of the faster blues pieces just comes out once the technicalities are mastered and they are given permission to “fool with it” to “dress it up”.

Most of what I do starts when I play each new piece for the student. I think about what I think the piece is about: happy, bouncy, sad, thoughtful, lovely, etc. And I play it that way. Neil once told me to play each piece as lovely as possible. This way they get to hear my interpretation of the piece, which may be the same or slightly different from the audio files. Meaning same notes technically, but mine may be faster or slower, louder or softer, bouncy or smooth, or varied in some other way.

Then they learn the piece. After they have the mechanics down, if I sense they don’t really have the emotional flavor of the piece, I’ll play it again for them. Talk about what I did different from them and/or ask them to tell me what is different from what they played. They may answer with something they saw, or heard or felt. They may only be able to say that mine sounded different from theirs. Then I will break down what I did into single thought process events for them to try.

If a piece can be “fancied up” with variations or improvisations. I’ll play it that way and then ask/say: “What did I do different?” “How do you do what I did?” “Can you think of other things to add?”

Like a lot of things in SM, the multisensory approach works best. There are things I can play to show how to express the emotion of the piece that the student can catch right away with their ears and inner sense of musicality, but need verbal description to know how to do it and/or visual showing of the pattern, fingering, etc.

One of the specific things I talk about with many of my students is how to make notes louder or softer on a strung piano. There are 2 things that combine to change the dynamics (meaning loud or soft sounds) of each note.

These are 1 – how strongly I press the key down and 2 – how quickly I press the key down. You can press the key really strongly but slowly and get little or no sound. You can press the key quickly but lightly and get a small sound. You can press the key quickly and strongly and get a bigger sound than if you just pressed it strongly. I demonstrate the different sounds and have them try a few.

Once I have this conversation I leave it and let them experiment on their own. With electric keyboards the differences may not be a dramatic, but the pianos I use for lessons are strung pianos and show the variations well.