Simpedia

Sheri R., California

Student Home Materials Levels 10 through 18 consist simply of books of music (notation). There is no outside support via videos or audio recordings, etc. At this point students have learned reading-based skills from the Reading Rhythm, the Reading Notes, and the Time for More Music programs. They have learned playing-based skills from the Levels 1 through 9 foundation programs and furthered that learning with arrangements and composition.

In the developmental levels they are incorporating the distinct sets of skills they have learned, that is, developing the ability to marry the playing-based skills with the reading-based skills, to approach a page of music analytically by seeing patterns, shapes, sentences, etc. and apply these playing-based skills to the notation so that they can more readily read and, more importantly, more easily memorize the music.

Elaine F. South Carolina

I’m not in level 10 yet, and I often wonder if I myself have acquired the tools well enough — I do use them to play music outside SM but always wonder how other SM players would approach any given piece. So I would love it if at the symposium we could look at one of the SM pieces and go over it in great detail, sharing tools to decipher it. I know we did this once a few years go, but it was a very brief look at Bach prelude in C that was not challenging at all.

Perhaps a google group devoted to sharing the tools we use on the upper level songs?

Gordon Harvey, Australia

That sounds like a couple of great ideas, Elaine. In fact, you could use something like a Google group or a teacher meeting to do this with any piece from outside the program. In the meantime, it’s worth remembering a few things:

There are still TTM’s for the Development program. They are audio files, and are conducted by either Neil or one of a group of very experienced SM teachers. They discuss their personal approaches to each piece, and in many cases the piece is discussed by more than one person, which can provide multiple perspectives. You’ll see from this that the process of presenting pieces is much more open – there’s never only one way to present the piece. In fact, by design the program eschews specific strategies. The idea is to sit down with the student and discuss together how you’ll go about it, and to encourage the student to develop their own strategies in the spirit of self-generation. Having said that, there may still be particular perspectives and further tools that the student can benefit from. You’ll find lots of these in the TTM’s, but you’ll come up with your own as well. Your role is basically to gently steer the process, keeping the student on a productive path, and introducing approaches and tools as needed.

It’s nice to experience working together on a project like you are equals, even though you are still the method coach. If the student has fully grasped the basics of our approach to reading, you can’t really go wrong. I still have students pointing things out to me that I’d never noticed in pieces I’ve been teaching for years.