Simpedia

Cindy B., Illinois

This is along the same lines as a recent issue that’s come up between a mom and her daughter – the girl plays everything fast, no matter what the song is, and the tension between the mom and her daughter over speed, was becoming what can be called civilized battles. It really came to my attention when they turned in their recent teacher evaluation where the mom inserted a rather negative/discouraged comment about speed. I emailed her before their next lesson, telling her…

…”I appreciate your comments on the teacher evaluation. I’ve noticed that you are bothered by Julia’s tendency to play too fast and would like to make a few recommendations/comments.

1st, when Julia is learning something new, and her fast tempo is obstructing the learning process, then physically join her at the piano and work together to slow down for the purpose of learning the song – what I’ve found to work best is to physically reinforce the slower tempo that’s necessary to learn something by laying my hands lightly on the students’, not allowing her hands to ‘run away’. This assumes that the student WANTS to learn whatever it is she’s working on. Try not to be frustrated – in the minds of some children, fast means good, and they absolutely will not believe you or me if we just tell them that it’s not true. They have to come to that knowledge on their own, and they always do, after having the freedom to play “their” way.

2nd, I like to let students have free reign to play at whatever speed they prefer once a song is learned – eventually, they will decide on their own to change their playing when they are free to make that decision on their own. If I insist that every song is to be played “the correct way” it’s too restrictive and stifles self expression. In my experience, when a student is being directed that closely, they cease to WANT to learn and the whole process degrades into just another chore my folks are making me do.

The summary would be that playing slow is for the learning process – it’s a requirement to learn something new, well. Once it’s learned, let Julia play as fast or slow as she wants. I welcome any reply – I believe that this kind of conversation between parent and teacher can only help the student….”

Mom’s reply…
Thanks for the feedback on playing speed. I admit it is frustrating for me to hear her constantly ripping thru songs on her play list that are so beautiful when played more slowly. Then for a performance, she claims she can’t play a piece more slowly, because she’s forgotten how and her fingers get mixed up. However, I agree that if she can play a song correctly, fast is fine. The trouble for Julia is that she usually can’t play it correctly fast, and will give it 2 or 3 tries, then move on to a new song. If I make her go back and play it correctly, we can get a pretty good stubborn streak going between the 2 of us. 

I will do my best to encourage her to learn slowly using the hands-on technique when necessary, and I promise to lighten up some and be less directive in the learning process. I think it will take some pressure off both of us.”

At the very next lesson, when it was Julia’s turn to play something, she did it slowly, correctly, and expressively. The tension was gone. hurrayyyyy!

As far as the specifics of your situation, concerning phrasing, I might get into a conversation with him about what he believes is important about phrasing – I’d address his concerns and reassure him that as a student matures and plays bigger pieces, most phrasing skills develop naturally, and as the teacher, I gradually introduce suggestions and/or comments (and absolutely NO assignments that imply that my way is the correct way) to encourage the student to listen to what they’re playing and think about how it might be improved. I discourage parents from making demands, just as I really limit my own demands, because we want a natural, self generating to develop within the student, and not an artificially and externally imposed “correctness”.

Cheryl G., USA

You could tell him that we start teaching phrasing with the first song Dreams because when we talk about sentences we are really talking about phrases, and we express the phrasing in the songs with words through singing, which is the best way to really understand it. In songs without words like Fur Elise the sentences are the phrases. At some point after we go into the reading part of the program and are looking at the music, it might be helpful to more formally discuss phrasing and to draw some of the phrase marks into the music to become more aware of phrasing and to help play the songs more musically.

Sheri R. USA

I’m wondering how long his child has been taking lessons. Is he expecting phrasing at the earliest stages? I don’t have a formal background so wouldn’t know exactly how to answer this either, but off the cuff I might say something like I did to the classically trained dad who recently asked me (at his son’s first lesson) when I teach proper finger placement/technique.

I told him something along the lines of how it will most likely naturally emerge just as a toddler naturally stops tottering around and just as a child eventually stops saying pasghetti. I also told him that if a child has obvious contortions with shoulders up to his ears, I would gently bring that to his attention but not make it a focus while he is trying to learn a pattern (remembering single thought process always). (I grew up playing with long finger nails and now keep them short and my fingers didn’t take long to gain more of a curve–perhaps others experience is quite different than this and preventing a bad habit from the beginning would have prevented lots of subsequent hard work.) Would love to hear discussion on this subject!

It seems phrasing will also, to some degree, naturally emerge, especially with maturity and experience in listening to music. Is this something we want to emphasize at the early stages, no matter what the age of the student?  Seems once the patterns in the songs are known well they can start playing around with phrasing but I wonder if we should be forcing and emphasizing this with young kids who might not “hear” it yet. Would love to hear how ex-traditional teachers approach this and if it’s compatible with the Simply Music approach.