Simpedia

Neil Moore

Accompaniments offer a considerable degree of flexibility whether done on a private or group basis. In a group setting, I would always have the group working on a designated piece. The reason for this being that, at any point in time, we are either learning some specific new information, or consolidating something recently learned.

Having said that, once we have some fundamentals in our fingers, and students get the ‘lego kit’ aspect of learning accompaniments (i.e. they clearly get how, in accompaniment, the same components can be continually re-assembled to learn piece after piece after piece etc.), then it is not uncommon for students to begin branching off and working on their own accompaniments. I encourage this; in fact, it is my goal.

The mistake that many teachers make is in the ‘quantity vs. quality’ arena. Many teachers believe that having their students continually doing little or no more than the simple 1:2 or 1:3 ratio is somewhat boring. In an attempt to address this, they focus on ‘quality’ and look for ways to add more and more interesting embellishments to their student’s accompaniments. What always get sacrificed is the foundation. Very often it is not even apparent to the teacher, and doesn’t become apparent for a year or two.

In contrast, my focus is generally a ‘quantity’ approach, where I aim to equip the students with the ability to play every major and minor chord including all the basic 7th chords – major, dominant and minor – in every key. My goal includes them having the ability to do that whilst playing a simple rhythm section, and thus allowing them to pick up any piece, at any time, and essentially ‘sight-read’ a confident, solid, simple accompaniment. Accordingly, I like to move from one accompaniment to the next, to the next etc., etc…

I would prefer this, 100 times out of 100, than to have a student play fewer accompaniments, but with more embellishments. Without exception, those students that I have seen who have spent more time on developing more interesting embellishments, do not have the ability to ‘sight-accompany’ any piece. They are never as strong with the basic triads and derivatives as they need to be in order to ‘pass through the eye of the needle’ when they progress to the inversion process, the jazz process and ultimately more complex embellishments.

Regarding different tastes in music, the students need to know that although they may have different ‘tastes’ in music, when it comes to the accompaniment arena (as with the entire SM program), we are learning a way of learning, and they are free to take what they are learning, and then apply this to pieces outside of the lesson and required practice time. They are also free to bring their own ‘relevant music’ into class and demonstrate their efforts. Some students will bring in pieces from school, from church, from music they found at home etc. In the accompaniment area, we have much flexibility to include this, provided it remains focused on developing strength in learning every basic chord, in every key, and these being played along with a simple rhythm section.