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For a life filled with music

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Why do you want to play the piano and have lessons?

24/1/2019

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At the start of term I handed out a questionnaire (to students who have been with me for a while, new students your turn will come!) from The Curious Piano Teachers' January Curiosity Box which is on the subject of motivation.  It had the following questions:
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  • What's the best / worst thing about learning the piano?
  • What's the best / worst thing bout your piano lessons?
  • Why do you want to learn the piano?
  • Why do you want to have piano lessons? 
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I was excited to receive them back; even more so when I analysed the results.  Two themes stood out:

  1. 70% said they want to play for a hobby
  2. 100% mentioned building their skills / improving their playing

Because I didn't enjoy playing piano as a child I always find it hard to believe that children enjoy playing it, although less so as time has gone on. Now I hear they want to have it as a hobby!  The Cambridge Dictionary defines a hobby as 'an activity someone does for pleasure' and yes, I had to look it up because, as I've already mentioned, playing the piano for pleasure is something that I never experienced.  In case you are wondering why I teach piano it's so that children don't have the same experience of piano lessons that I had, but that's a blog post for another day.  ​
So 70% of children I teach want to play piano for a hobby and 100% want to develop their skills and know they are 'doing it right' without referring to YouTube.  The two go together because the more skilled you are the more you will enjoy playing the piano.  So what does this mean for my teaching?
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I need to remember that the goal of nearly all my students is to have a hobby, something they can do to relax in their spare time.  Pressure I put on them to make fast progress will detract from this, hurrying them through their lesson to 'get everything done' will also detract (see last week's blog post, What's the rush?).  
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I need to remember to stay in the moment and help each student achieve their goal, whether that be learning to play for a hobby or, in the case of one student achieve grade 8.  It is notable that only one person had this goal.  While 30% mentioned achievements those did not refer specifically to exams.  Achievement for others meant completing a piece and feeling the rush of satisfaction / happiness.  
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Practise was mentioned in 60% of answers, and not in a positive way.  Children struggle with the amount of time they need to spend playing at home, especially the older ones who have other homework.  Unfortunately it is impossible to become proficient at any instrument without practise.  I teach the children practise strategies and we make it fun in the lessons with 'cute animals' to help practise.  Of course it's different when they are going through the work at home without me to support them. 
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An area for me to look at, given how many children want to have piano as a hobby, is to think about how much work I am expecting them to do at home.  Perhaps those without goals of getting to Grade 8 can have less work to do at home and so feel less burdened at home and have time to enjoy it more....This may be a conversation to have with families.  Perhaps a follow-up parental questionnaire might be helpful, as well as an initial questionnaire to new families about why their child wants to take piano lessons.  
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The next immediate step is to go through 'My Piano Planner' with students who have completed the questionnaire, to set goals for the coming year.  After all, if piano lessons are meeting the child's goals then, as the tagline for this month's Curiosity Box says, motivation comes as standard!  
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We all have something to say: Inspiring creativity at the piano through improvisation

8/1/2019

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How do you feel when you create something? Be it a piece of art, a delicious meal, a website, a product, a piece of music, a blog post(!)…. How does it feel to create that thing?

We are all creative beings and being a creative being is not restricted to ‘creating’ in the way so many of us understand it. We don’t have to create masterpieces of art or music to be creative. We create our own lives by the choices we make, the friends we hang out with, the activities we pursue, the businesses or projects we build.
As well as focusing on creating a life and a business I love I also create art.  For me it feels so liberating to create something that came from inside me, not from anyone else, something that I explored, was curious about, thought about, discussed with myself and simply created. I love to look at it, touch it, share it with others and talk about it.  There’s a tiny place inside me where I feel joy and satisfaction.  Making art has also helped me work through some difficult emotions, more than making music.  Perhaps because I chose art whereas music was chosen for me.

Another creative love is to create music, that is to improvise.  Improvising is not playing music that someone else has written, but something I have created myself that has come from nowhere. I can’t share that so easily with others since it’s gone as soon as it arrived. Unlike art I find it harder to get myself to sit at the piano and create music, however when I do it’s such fun and I can get quite carried away, losing all track of time! This is a state of ‘flow’, which ‘is characterized by complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one's sense of space and time.’ (Wikipedia - see reference below)
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It is hard for many of us to shift from ‘doing’, with visible measurable results and fitting into today’s culture of ‘busyness’, towards ‘being’ with no visible, measurable outcome and results. The result however is a vitally important internal one of well being and in music lessons can lead to truly musical experiences where both teacher and student lose themselves in the music, communicating only through it without words. Improvising is an opportunity where students can express feelings that they quite likely cannot verbalise.
we all have something to say, let’s make sure the opportunity to say it is given through the gift of improvisation 
Leading piano pedagogues have written about the importance of improvising in piano lessons for The Curious Piano Teachers and I have taken a few quotes to share with you.  See the full Curious post here.  

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Bradley Sowash
Bradley Sowash says improvisation leads to:
  • Appreciating music as a means of self expression rather than only as a domain for right or wrong notes
  • Utilizing the whole brain by improvising on the one hand and in other parts of the lesson reading – so using left and right brain.
  • Becoming better interpreters of written music. That’s because rather than merely reproducing the notes on the page, creative students can better understand how they came to be there in the first place.
Forrest Kinney says:

  • For so many musicians (including me), creating music spontaneously is the most joyous musical act.
  • Creativity is a natural human desire, and many students will quit if they are not encouraged to create something unscripted. Don’t we all wish to be able to speak words freely without relying on a script? In the same way, I believe all musicians secretly wish to have the same kind of ability at their instrument! To improvise is to be able to “speak” music freely without such a musical script.
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Forrest Kinney
  • It is a wonderful way to introduce musical materials such as scales and chords, and teach music theory in a lively way.
  • Improvisation allows us to play spontaneously from our own feelings, to play in an intuitive and personal way whenever we choose. Improvisation encourages us to listen deeply to tones from the beginning, and RESPOND to them. That is the essence of musical artistry: listening and responding.
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Joy Morin
Joy Morin sums it up for me:

Neglecting music improvisation is a bit like being able to write, read aloud, and recite from memory in a language, but not being able to verbally communicate using that language.
Conclusion
So much of what we hear in the world of piano exams, piano competitions and yes, piano lessons, could be more musical. Could the way thorough this be by encouraging more improvisation in our lessons, to allow students the opportunity to connect to music on their own terms, expressing their own feelings and really developing their understanding of what music means to them. Would this lead to more enjoyable musical experiences for students and their families alike, would students be more motivated to play the piano because it’s ok to just sit down and improvise their own piece?

It is a tragedy if the opportunity to deeply enjoy and connect with music is lost through lessons that require students to simply play what others have written – we all have something to say, let’s make sure the opportunity to say it is given in the gift of improvisation.

Visit the improvisation page, play some tracks and experience it for yourself. 

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
https://www.thecuriouspianoteachers.org/why-should-you-include-improvisation-in-piano-lessons
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Piano lessons in the age of instant gratification

3/11/2017

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Over the last few weeks we've looked at the benefits of learning music; what good music teaching looks like; and how it is possible to measure progress without relying solely on exams.  Today we're considering the needs of today's children and how a novel approach to piano lessons incorporating all aspects of musicianship meets those needs.  Please do share if you think your friends will find this interesting. 

As renowned music educator Paul Harris says, today's children have a wealth of choice in terms of activities they can choose to fill their time and many of these give instant gratification.  Learning an instrument does not always give instant gratification and so, if taught by a teacher who doesn't understand music education thoroughly, it is not something children are going to choose to fill their time. 

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Lessons with Surrey Music School offer children activities they can do well, 'now' - they learn to sing a song, they move to the beat, they spend all week singing the song and they play games together while singing the song - often they can't get it out of their heads!  When they know the song really well they work out the pitches (the sounds that go higher and lower) and work out how to play it by ear on the piano.  Because their ear is being developed through all this singing and playing they begin to work out how to play it. 

So a task that could be difficult - playing a song and reading it from notation - becomes easy because they have had lots of fun learning it thoroughly and when it is time to play it they know it really well. 


Children are then curious to know work out how the song can be notated (written down), so they are given resources to help achieve this and again, what could be difficult becomes easy. 

Children happily and independently working out rhythms to songs
The piano is a pretty exciting instrument to play and explore, so not only do children get to play songs they have learned to sing, but those taking our group programme at St Johns in Merrow also spend half the lesson exploring the whole piano through improvisation.

Using the Arabian motif to play the 'Egypt' story from Surrey Music School on Vimeo.

They listen to enthralling stories from Inner Musician and are then taught motifs (musical ideas) to make the story their own, using the piano to tell stories about thunderstorms, butterflies, the ocean and other countries. 

This is available for existing 1:1 students too, so if you'd like your child to experience the joy of improvisation just let me know and I can sign you up to Inner Musician.

Children learning in this way not only get a really great musical foundation for the future but also get to play real music 'now'!  Of course we do not advocate having everything now, but this approach has the dual benefit of enabling children to make real music while developing all the skills necessary to become confident rounded musicians. 

Of course they will have to apply themselves, it will not always be easy, but it will be much easier than going the route of 'traditional' piano lessons which involve setting a tutor book in front of a child and expecting them to read and play without any musical foundation at all.  In these instances the eye takes over from the ear in the effort to decipher the notation and all thoughts of music making are absent in the struggle. 

Over the next few weeks we'll be looking at everyone's roles in the learning process - the parent's, child's and teacher's. 


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    Caroline Blount

    Director of Surrey Music School.  

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  • Home
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  • Resources
    • Student resources >
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  • e-book - "learning the piano"