Simpedia

Cheryl G., Pennsylvania

I agree that in the SM program, when you focus on what to play and not how to play, that sometimes students will play unmusically. But in the traditional world, a lot of students also play unmusically no matter how hard you try.

You may have to delay the focus on playing expressively, compared to the way you taught traditionally, but you will be able to talk about it after awhile. After they know a few songs well, you can bring to their attention basic things like bringing out the melody, dynamics, or staccato.

I also manage to get some technique in without really talking about technique.

I also crave students who can play classical pieces well. Nice to have students who can play a Claire de Lune or a Haydn Sonata. When you start teaching SM, it seems like you never will. But in the traditional world, how many of your students got anywhere close to that level? I could count mine on one hand.

I have a student who’s had about 175 lessons who is learning Le Petit Negre and another who, after about 2-1/2 years is learning the first Bach Invention, and she loves it. Neither one of them is a fluent reader, but they’re both light years better than I was at their age (14-15) in being able to play by memory, in comfort level playing for others, and even in technique (my early training wasn’t too good 🙂 Eventually they will get better at sight reading if they keep working at it. I sometimes use church hymnals for sight reading practice, and they are hard! but having gone through the Accompaniment book is a big head start. I have other students playing intermediate level pieces by Wm. Gillock, Catherine Rollin or Martha Mier.

I also have students who started in the SM program who are not good at reading music, and I’ve had to go back and give them very simple pieces from outside the SM program. But I think to myself whether these students would still be taking music lessons at all if they were learning piano the traditional way. Some maybe, but many definitely not. And they never would have had the pleasure of playing pieces like Ballade or The Gaz.

When I started teaching SM, I didn’t switch over the students who already had several years of traditional levels unless they were burned out with traditional lessons.

Cindy B., Illinois

Shelly, there’s a great conversation between Neil and a bunch of teachers on the subject of reading, repertoire, and expression at the end of the reading rhythm teacher training video, that’ll help you see the issue from the Simply Music perspective. In my own experience, if the student isn’t connecting with his own musicality I can give hints, ask questions like “What is this song about?” or “If this music was the soundtrack of a movie, what scene would it accompany?”…but I can’t force a connection. I have seen that it’s quite possible to teach a student how to be expressive without them ever actually becoming expressive, without connecting to their own musicality that has always existed within them.

It’s kind of like joining weight watchers, or nutrisystem, or _____. As long as you go to the meetings and follow the rules and eat according to their food recommendations, you’ll lose weight, feel and look great etc etc yadayada. But unless you become a thin person – It’s kind of like, on the diet, I’m a fat person on a diet, and when I go off the diet, I’m still a fat person.

Days, weeks, months, and years of playing the piano, with pointers and suggestions and the example of the teacher’s own playing, will help a person connect within themselves and become an expressive, accomplished musician.

As for reading hymns – I took traditional lessons for 10 yrs and then auditioned for a scholarship to the music performance program during my senior yr in high school. One of the things they asked me to do in the audition was sight read from a hymnal. I made a huge mess of it. After 10 yrs of reading lessons!!! After another 4.5 yrs in college, I graduated with the ability to sight read hymns. I also quit playing the piano because I was so burnt out with following the traditional rules and always being ‘forced’ to play the piano “the right way”. In a real sense, I am still burnt out on playing – I’m revved up about teaching, and playing the curriculum songs well for my students, but I don’t play for my own enjoyment anymore. What I’m trying to say is that teachers and parents play a dangerous game when they focus on what isn’t important, like sight reading hymns, and sacrifice what is important – equipping students with a lifelong companion in their music, their expression.

Janita P., Nebraska

I don’t have a music degree, nor do I consider myself an advanced-level musician, but I am not the same musician I was 5.5 years ago before SM, and neither are my students.

I was a traditional teacher before I found SM, and the students we are producing now are light years ahead of the students I produced before SM. What we are producing are well-rounded musicians who can improv blues, read and understand jazz, play classical, read any accompaniment chords and transpose, compose, and arrange contemporary pieces in any setting, without music!

Before SM, even after playing piano for 30 years and 12 years of private piano lessons, I could play NOTHING if you took the page away from me. My students can play anything, anywhere. You want them to play in a grocery store? at the park? on the streets? at the nursing home? at a formal recital? in a mansion? in a bookstore? on a 80K Steinway at the Music Store’s showroom? NO problem!

The Chamber called and asked for background music for a fundraising dinner and instructed to stop playing when the governor arrived. I asked, “Do you want me or one of my students?” They called again and asked for music for a dinner for a former Olympian, and again I asked the same question. That NEVER happened when I was a traditional teacher—for myself or my students.

One Level 9 student plays for her church and has been for two years or more. When the Songleader needs the songs/hymns transposed, she obliges. One student got to Level 7 in SM and decided to become a SM teacher after 3 years of piano. One Level 9 student brought her Patsy Cline music in and said, “Look at this pattern, and listen to this blues order, etc.” One Level 9 student can arrange pieces like I never experienced before.

Yesterday I picked up my son from his guitar lesson and his teacher was singing his praises about how he was able to play John Coltrane’s “Moment’s Notice” for jazz guitar. I heard what he said, but what I didn’t understand was that piece was the one the 17 yo teacher had just played for his college audition which earned him a music scholarship to Belmont College in Nashville. My son is 12 yo. I don’t consider my son particularly gifted, it comes from his SM background where he has been playing chords for 5.5 years, studying jazz and REALLY listening to what he was playing.

Last night a piano dad commented again on how well his 10 yo son plays, and how he is far beyond where he was at that age, etc. and asked, “Can you show me the NS ACC1 arrangement again because I didn’t get it.” The dad is their church musician who studied traditionally for years as a child.

It is much easier for me to teach expression immediately with SM because we can think about dreams we have, we can hear the night storms, we can think about the old sleepy hound dog lying on the porch when we teach Lt. Blue, etc. When I was using John Thompson, Faber and Faber, Music Tree, etc. (We won’t even touch Bastien or Alfred’s!) I couldn’t get them to relate to a rowboat or seashells by the seashore or the silly clown…

One week when I was teaching Sit by My Side to Celeste, she started crying. Her mom rushed over and asked, “What’s wrong Celeste? Why are you crying?” Well after much questioning, (Celeste is autistic and doesn’t communicate well) we discovered she was so touched by the song that it brought her to tears. I never experienced that when I was teaching traditionally. In fact, I never was able to teach an autistic student back in the old days.

I may have had students in tears back in the old days, but it was only because they were sick of playing the same song for months to memorize and polish it for competition and recital.

When I listen to my four children play piano, who were my guinea pigs from the beginning, I probably never will be able to transpose like they do, play by ear like they can, compose music and lyrics like they can and definitely can’t play guitar like my son. (When I took guitar lessons all I could play was “Hickory, Dickory, Dock” out of the Mel Bay book. I never got beyond that!)

I could go on and on with more examples from my SM experiences, but I would encourage you to just wait and see where your SM students are five years from now. You’ll be a SM convert for life! 😉

Claire C., Pennsylvania

I’m not sure if there has been an answer to your situation that applies directly to hymn playing. I have been in this position-being asked to play hymns with very little notice. Fortunately, I am able to read four parts from a regular hymn book but that is all I can do. If I had to transpose on the spot, I would flounder and have to slow down.

With Simply Music even a level 1 student can accompany a hymn. Amazing Grace is in level 1. There are many hymns that can be accompanied with only 3 chords and I think even a level 1 SM student would be able to accompany a group singing many different hymns. There are books that have hymns with only 3 chords. The techniques learned from Amazing Grace could be applied to them as well.

It would surprise me if the family you mentioned wanted specifically to learn to play 4 parts from a hymn book, That is a very advanced reading technique and I know university students who cannot do that. My guess is that most students just want to be able to accompany the congregation and that doesn’t require having to play four parts in a hymn book. I think the skills learned in Simply Music will carry a student quite far as a church musician.

Dorene D., Idaho

I find this thread very interesting and hope to hear from more teachers. I, too, am classically trained and have a degree in piano performance. I have taught “traditionally” off and on for the past 16 years. With every student I had, we hit a wall with traditional methods, and I had no idea how to get beyond it. Now with Simply Music, I am thoroughly enjoying teaching again!!! I guess my goals as a teacher have totally changed– I can remember thinking “oh, if only I could get students that seriously wanted to learn classical music”, but I really just wanted them to enjoy music and piano and didn’t quite know how to get there with traditional methods. And truly, my students didn’t really wish to learn only classical as well.

I understand your questions and have wondered about them myself- matters of playing musically and so on. I am a fairly new teacher, so can’t really draw on much experience teaching SM and how students play compared to traditional lessons. I do have a married couple taking lessons from me. The wife has studied some music even in college days… and they both LOVE Simply Music!! They get so excited every time I introduce another arrangement to them, we are going to start the accompaniment program…. and both of them play musically. They are having so much fun getting to PLAY the piano, which I really think is what the majority of students wish to do- just PLAY and express themselves through music. Not learn high level technique, all classical pieces, etc. My students have been thrilled to be at the end of 13 lessons and have this great list of pieces they can still play!!

As for the sight reading.. I am a firm believer to this point that strength in sight reading will come from lots and lots of practice. I have had an interesting discovery as I study Simply Music materials. I am a very good sight reader.. but I realized that I read music in patterns.. I don’t read every note! In high school, my teacher had me get piles of piano music and read through them, taking notes which ones I liked or didn’t like… tremendous practice for just reading. I am sure this would work well for SM students- I wonder if the combination of how SM teaches reading music (which I have not yet come to) along with just immersing oneself in the practice of sight reading would actually produce better sight readers than traditional methods…???

I look forward to more input on this! Simply Music has been quite an enjoyable adventure!

Elaine F., South Carolina

I too place a high value on students being very musical. I sometimes create problems for myself in my studio when I create the expectation that students will get a new song every lesson. This is a delicate area especially in the very beginning. I know that in week 2 and 3 many students just don’t have the neurology developed to play beautifully. Their hands are still sometimes very awkward and yet spending more weeks on the 2 songs is frustrating for all.

I have had success in letting them to on to JB . By the time they get to JB many need 2 or even 3 weeks with this. This is when I give them something new: which is working to make Dreams and NS more beautiful.

I have always found that the parents like it when I have high expectations in this regard. It’s usually me having to manage my own mistaken idea that making progress means more songs.