Simpedia

Gordon Harvey, Australia

I think there can be a mentality among teachers, and especially those who have some music background outside Simply Music, that once you’ve mastered the basics of reading music, you’ve arrived in an entirely new musical world, like climbing a cloud-obscured mountain and suddenly breaking through the clouds and being greeted with a whole, wondrous new vista (or something a little less poetic than that).

While there’s no doubt some truth to that, and reading is one of the greatest musical tools you can have, the danger for teachers is that they can come from a place that assumes that only now have you arrived at “real” or “proper” music, or that now your focus changes in some fundamental way.

I can well imagine a teacher, with the best of intentions, and without necessarily even knowing it, leading students down paths that are their own focus. For example, a teacher with classical training having students focus on more advanced classical pieces, or on technique, or a teacher with a jazz background having students focus on improvisation or expression. Or delving into longer pieces and allowing the Playlist to fall by the wayside.

Although new areas of attention are nearly always valid and valuable, and without question as the student moves towards the Development Program they can work on more specialties of their own choosing, the thing that bothers me about the above examples is that the teacher, somewhere in their unconscious, has been thinking that Simply Music has been simply a way of getting to a particular level, and can from then on be set aside. A bit like the rocket that sends a space shuttle into the stratosphere and is then discarded.

All these dramatic analogies may be completely irrelevant to your question, Cinnamon, but it was my chance to have a bit of a rant, and it at least serves as a reminder for me that, at all times and all levels, SM is about having music as a lifetime companion. All the way from beginning to end, SM is leading students carefully to this aim, and although there are peaks, valleys and plateaus, at no time should there be an experience of dropping fundamental principles on which SM is founded.

Here’s how the Playlist works for me at the late Time for More Music level:

By then, the student would have built up to around the 60 song mark. They have needed the earliest songs for reverse engineering during the reading process. Once they reach Time for More Music, they can let go of some of those. I like to maintain around 50 songs, but I’ll tolerate dropping down to 40.

Usually, the ones to cull will be obvious: Dreams, Night Storm, Jackson Blues, Dog etc, although they’ll probably keep the Arrangements of these. Others that spring to mind are the simplified Für Elise and Walking with Billy.  Early Accompaniments would also be candidates, simply because by then students are pretty self-generating with Accompaniment and could pretty much recover those early ones and play them pretty effortlessly if they need them.

With other songs the students say they don’t like, I’d look carefully at why. Often, “I don’t like it” means, “I can’t play it well”. One that comes up more than most for me is Squidgies.  It could be they haven’t reached fluency with it, and thus can’t hear it for themselves in a satisfactory way. I’d be careful to avoid dropping pieces like these. Really the ones the students can play least well are the ones they most need to play. If they need to be a little more motivated by this piece, play them the Level 11 version of the Gaz with the Boogie LH (if you can – I can’t yet!), or try them on Neil’s boogie version of Sonata in C – it’s a hoot. You could even replace Squidgies with this one, since it’s at a similar level of difficulty.

Beyond this, I don’t have a problem with the odd later song being dropped, although mostly students are so used to maintaining the play list that it doesn’t happen all that often.

Jenny S., Australia

Great post, Gordon.  As a traditionally trained teacher it is easy to fall back to what I know. To assume that reading is somehow the pinnacle.

I have a very clever (academic) student – male 12 year old – who has made it his aim to read. He is in level 9 and has completed all TFMM pieces. He feels in control when he is reading and to a certain extent I understand that feeling, however…… His greatest problem is that spontaneity and flexibility falls by the wayside when reading becomes his focus. His pieces sound woody and stilted – even though he is quite proud of his reading achievement.

My challenge is to stretch his boundaries and broaden his horizons and allow the SM process to become part of his subconscious being.

Thanks for the reminder Gordon!!

Claire L., Western Australia

One of my adult students who had traditional lessons as a child has been with me for a year now. When she first started with me she was anxious about being able to play WITHOUT music, and now she really, really gets how the sheet music can interfere with the EXPERIENCE of playing the piano.

Whilst it is a great thing to be able to translate a score onto the piano and learn it, I think remembering that actual mastery comes with feeling free and emotionally present whilst we play is a helpful thing as we explain to our students why the SM methodology continues to serve us beyond the learning to read process.

This student would not see herself as a creative player (hence her initial anxiety about being without sheet music) and yet now I can send her away with creative tasks and she rises easily and quickly to the challenge. For example, I might ask her to come up with a new tune to go along with the LH of Tears for a Friend, feeling free to adapt the LH as well, if she wishes. Only one year ago she would have not really understood this process, no matter thought she could do it herself. The other day she said “I know you think we are brilliant” as a joking reference to how they are challenged each week: what a joy to hear students say this about the whole experience. If she thinks she is then haven’t we all succeeded?

Hilary C., Perth, Western Australia

I had a really great example recently of why reading can be a bug-bear. I asked one of my mature-aged students to play Amazing Grace – easy she’s in Level 3, but she stumbled and said the usual “I play that so well at home”. Turns out that despite being asked what seems to me to be a gazillion times to play it without the book up, she had been using it and couldn’t remember without it. However it was a great lesson for her – she now BELIEVES how the stuff going straight through the eye and into the fingers bypasses so much of our brain. So all in all I’m glad it happened.

Sheri R., California

That was a great illustration from Hilary of the “brain bypass” that happens when we read music and something that might be valuable to create on purpose so students really “get it,” get how fabulous it is to be able to know what you’re doing when playing the piano! Novel concept for us teachers who only previously read, no?!

However, and I’m not sure if I’m right here, when I teach Amazing Grace for the first time, I tell students that they are learning how to read chords and that they will soon be able to develop the ability to play fluently, on the first try, any piece of music where they are playing chords accompaniment style. So I tell them this is one of the few pieces they won’t need to memorize. I want them to develop the ability to play from the page and if the chords are rearranged into another order they would have a brand new piece that they could play fluently on the first try, given that they have learned where the chords are.

As an aside, when I first introduce an accompaniment piece when they are first learning the 12 major triads, I have them describe the positions of the chords in relation to the black notes, I have them play the three right hand transitions back and forth – ie., C to F, C to G, F to G – about 10 times, saying the chords aloud as they do this, alternating sometimes with saying the shapes. On the left hand, after we practice looking back and forth from their hand to the page, I have them see that because their left hand is not moving, they can easily memorize what finger is playing what note and I both call out random notes while their eyes are closed and have them read the page without looking down at their hand at all. I tell them they only need look from the page to their right hand, making it a lot easier. Then they get to play the piece!

If they happen to memorize Amazing Grace in the process of learning it that’s fine, but it’s not my intention. In fact, I often say to students when they say “I need the book,” “how about trying to play it without the book – you might surprise yourself.”  If they don’t know it without the book I tell them that’s just fine but I also encourage them to try one of the 3 chords until it sounds right for the melody. In this way they start to learn they can learn how to trust their ear as far as when there is a chord change as well as what the chord might be. At the beginning of the accompaniment program, when there are only three chords in a song, they can develop the ability to anticipate what the change is and when the change occurs.

This sounds a little contradictory but I think we can teach them the two concepts at once – still maintaining the single thought process of course – without them having to memorize the piece (the two concepts being the reading of chords and the hearing of chords. Obviously, I have them learn the reading part first before I introduce trying to play without the page and generally my focus thus far has been on the reading. Having written this though I’m wondering if I should incorporate on purpose more of the “hearing” dynamic. I don’t make it a habit actually, just kind of when it comes up. It seems it would be a great addition for every one of my students to have this experience.

I’d love to hear feedback and others’ experiences of how they handle the Accompaniment Program.

Sheri R., California

To me, the simple answer to this question is something like, “when your child has learned the rudiments of the playing-based methodology and when he/she has at least thirty songs that can be played effortlessly.” I’m kind of assuming that this mom is wanting more information than that, not so much “when”, but more likely, “why are we waiting so long?” And it definitely is a big part of our mission as Simply Music teachers to be able to convince those that are more entrenched in the “old” ways. And you thought all we had to do was teach people how to play piano!!

I might throw the question back at her to see where she is coming from – since she keeps bringing it up there must be a lot on her mind surrounding this. You could have a conversation that involves all the little conversations/analogies that we all know about this program, as many, I suppose, as you need to communicate the benefits of waiting until she is convinced.  I mean, I bring up how Neil and many accomplished famous musicians were very accomplished players, composers, arrangers, improvisors and recording artists /before/ learning to read, some never even bothering with reading at all. (Makes me think we should try to compile a list of professional musicians who don’t read
music.) The talking before reading analogy is always effective. You can probably think of a lot more conversations to have that are part of the intro session and even analogies that you come up with.

I’m wondering if this mom started lessons without hearing from you all the conversations or without having watched the first 10 minutes of Level 1.  For some reason she sounds like an exception to the rule of most people being on board about the benefits of postponing the reading for as long as possible.  Even though someone seems on board as they start lessons, sometimes they are in a big hurry to arrive at reading and maybe teasing out the reasons with her would help her to see her misguided anxiety about it.  Or maybe she is unconvincable. But I never give up until they give up on me and the method first (which sadly does happen sometimes).  But mostly I have found that people who start, and see the amazing results, even with their old tapes playing that say learning how to read means that they’ve somehow “arrived,” are open to being convinced that this is erroneous thinking. There are probably dozens of ideas that you could present to argue your case and if you are in need of any more than the few ideas I gave feel free to ask.

By the way I just heard an hour lecture at a homeschooling conference by John Taylor Gatto, a brilliant man who taught very unconventionally in the New York City public schools for 30 years. One of the many things he brought up is that schools, by logistical necessity, focus on teaching kids to read.  Yet in “real” life, writing skills and speaking skills are arguably much more important to a successful life.

It is very misguided to think reading music is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It is one aspect of the rainbow and not the most brilliant color there either (and I LOVE to read).  The pot of gold contains all the different aspects of musicianship, and our intention is to produce well-rounded musicians – not just those who can read. It is true that many people do need to be convinced of the very thing that for the rest of us just seems so logical. : )

It’s all about talking genuinely from the heart, what you know to be true, without worrying about how it all comes out sounding, that will ultimately come through most of the time.  I find that because I am convinced, it’s easy to convince others too – I know I’m not selling a false elixir.

Goodness, this was wordy. Maybe I need some lessons in editing (writing)! (And I still have so much left to say!) Think I’ll go read a book!  Well, the government schools definitely succeeded with turning me into a reader, and it wasn’t until I had to start talking to people about Simply Music that I really started coming out of my school-imposed shell – what a long time in coming! So, more power to the Simply Music piano PLAYERS!!!