Category Archives: Pedagogy

Changing Teachers

During the first couple weeks with a new transfer student, they will often exclaim when I say or demonstrate something, “Wow – I didn’t know that! My old teacher never told me about this.” Or they will say things like,”I have learned more from you in just one month than from my old teacher in a year!”

When I first started teaching, I naturally assumed this happened because I was such a better teacher than their old one. Then one day, a colleague conducted a small masterclass for some of my students and in the process asked my student in what key his piece was. He gave her a blank look and said, ” – I don’t know?”

I almost fell off my chair. Mouth agape, stunned look on my face, I could not believe he did not remember how we had figured out not only in what key his piece was, but also the key relationships from one section to the next. Whenever I quizzed him at his lessons, he knew all of that. And now – suddenly he doesn’t know in what key his piece is??  I was embarrassed and made sure to tell my colleague afterward, privately, that this student DID in fact know the answer. She just chuckled and said, “I know you well enough to know that you wouldn’t teach this piece without going over the key relationships.”

Nice of her, but very eye-opening for me. Now when I get a transfer student who doesn’t “know” something I don’t automatically assume that the previous teacher didn’t teach it.

It also puts in a different light when transfer students gush at how much more they are learning from me than their old teacher: so often it is simply a matter of hearing a new voice, sometimes a different gender, describe or explain something in a new way that makes them pay attention in a way they didn’t with the old teacher. Different environment, different materials perhaps, different vocabulary, and also very simply a bit of adrenaline because everything is so NEW! and not familiar yet.

To parents of teenagers this is nothing new. One of my favorite books as a parent of teenagers was “Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me & Cheryl to the Mall” by Anthony E. Wolf, Ph.D.  In the chapter on “They Don’t Listen to Anything I Say” he imagines the following conversation: 

“Eloise, I think it would be a good idea if you dropped Spanish. You’re spending a lot of time on it, and you’re still failing. I’m afraid it’s pulling your other grades down as well.”

“No, Dad, I can handle it. Just leave me alone. You don’t know anything. I’m doing okay.”

“No, Eloise, you’re starting to do badly, and I think the Spanish is just too much.”

“Dad! I can handle it. I’m doing okay. Now leave me alone.”

Two nights later: “Dad, I’ve decided to drop Spanish. I was talking to Becky’s mother about how I was having trouble in school and she said maybe I should drop Spanish. I think she’s right. Besides, I don’t need it anyway, and now I’ll have more time for my other subjects.”

“What did I just say to you two nights ago?”

“I don’t remember.”

… 

 

Vanhal Cello Concerto in C

In May, Mark came across mention of a cello concerto by Vanhal he wasn’t familiar with, decided to look for it and found a delightful YouTube recording but no score.

After much research he did find the full score (via interlibrary loan). imslp has the composer’s own transcript for viola, but not cello.

International Music Company sells the version for viola and piano, but both the cadenzas and the piano reduction are highly romanticized and therefore not really useful.

On the Reddit Cello Forum, Mark posted,

“The only thing I could find was a full score via interlibrary loan.

With the help of my cello teacher and my wife, a pianist and piano studio owner, I was able to produce a cello transcription from this score. Unfortunately the score had a number of inaccuracies, and even some cello parts in viola clef.

After several weeks work, with dozens of edits and revisions, we have a cello transcription that includes articulations, fingerings, and dynamics.”

The inaccuracies in the full score were at times mind-boggling – missing accidentals, horrible melody lines (“resolving” an F# up to C, etc.), and as Mark said, cello parts written in *viola* clef.

I created a piano reduction of the orchestra part, attempting to stay true to the Classical style and also aiming to keep it at a (late) intermediate level so it would be playable by an advancing student.

After two months of much tedious and exciting work, we are proud to announce that we now have a publication of the Cello Concerto in C major by Johann Baptist Vanhal, for cello and piano, the only one in existence. Published on SheetMusicPlus as well as SheetMusicDirect. 

It is reminiscent of the Haydn Concerto in C, just as delightful but a tiny bit easier and therefore approachable for cello students who are not quite ready for the Haydn.

Here is the link to Mark’s post on his cello blog: https://music.zanshin.net/2023/07/02/vanhal-cello-concerto-in-c-major/

How to Practice Better

The following are excerpts from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s daily email where he wants to cultivate “the positive corner of the internet”. While his emphasis is of course on physical fitness, many of the things he advocates for apply to any endeavor where you are trying to get better.

From the June 5 email:

Less Is More

Want to know what goes great with focusing on your wins? Narrowing your focus and not trying to do too much at once. A simpler approach can make all the difference between breaking through and experiencing setbacks.

​Research suggests the more goals you try to tackle — and the more complicated you make them — the less likely you are to achieve your desired outcome. People try to “build Rome in a day” and overvalue complicated decisions over simple, repeatable behaviors.

[…]If you want healthy habits that last, you must make it so easy it’s hard to fail. Only then, can you progress to the more difficult challenges. I didn’t start by deadlifting 700 pounds or doing the workouts that made me Mr. Olympia. It began with pullups on branches and deadlifts in the dirt. Over time, as the reps and weights increased, I could train longer and harder and become stronger. But none of that would have been possible without tremendous focus that allowed me to build great routines.

So instead of setting 10 goals, start with just one or two — and make sure that they are realistic. Want to become a better cook? Start with basic recipes with simpler ingredients. Want to get up earlier? Limit your screen time later in the day and set an earlier bedtime. If you haven’t been in the gym in a few weeks, don’t start with an hour workout. Instead, See if you can do a 20-minute workout, two or three times per week. […]

The behaviors you want to achieve are the byproduct of stacking small wins and doing them repeatedly. The more they add up, the more you can add complication and challenges, and the more likely you are to stick to the plan, gain confidence, and achieve results better than anything you accomplished before.

So, how does that apply to practicing?

One Thing At A Time

Decide what you want to improve. If the goal is to play correct notes only, then you may have to temporarily ignore dynamics, articulation, expression, even rhythm to some degree. My favorite advice here is to “abandon fluency”.

Of course you are aware of what the dynamics, articulation, expression will eventually be, but for now, focus on that one thing: correct notes.

On the other hand, if your goal is to play with more expression, then you may have to ignore an accidental wrong note here and there.

Eventually, it will all come together, and you will be able to play correct notes with the correct rhythm and appropriate dynamics, articulation, expression, fluency, and tempo (which should always come last).

The goal should always be to make things so easy it’s practically impossible to fail.

The more concrete and manageable your goal is, the more likely you will accomplish it.

While some people are spurred on by failure, success is actually the best motivator. So, set yourself up for success, by focusing on One Thing At A Time. 

Dealing with Performance Anxiety

Most of us who grew up learning an instrument and therefore performing at recitals were offered various pieces of advice on how to deal with performance anxiety.

They ranged from, “Just focus and you’ll be alright!” to “Pretend the audience is wearing nothing but their underwear!” (because half-naked people are – less threatening?) to “Pretend the audience isn’t there.” That last one always baffled me: if you pretend the audience isn’t there, then why are you performing? Isn’t it for the audience? The audience you pretend isn’t there?

My teacher was different. She didn’t give advice but she made sure we were so well-prepared that any chance of “messing up” was minimal (and we practiced recovery for when mistakes did happen). We also practiced to perform, not once at a dress rehearsal but many times during the lessons leading up to a performance: how to walk up to the piano, bow, make sure the bench was at the proper height and distance, sit down, hear the beginning of the piece in our head, perform, finish, get up, bow, walk back to our seat.

If that sounds tedious – yes, maybe it was, but those are the steps involved in performing and so we practiced all of those steps until they felt natural and became part of “performing” – not just practicing your piece until it was perfect.

She also addressed the physical aspects of being nervous: feeling like you can’t breathe, etc.: she had us do jumping jacks – “faster!” – until we were out of breath and then immediately sit at the piano, and figure out what we had to do so we could perform while – initially – being out of breath. It was a good exercise, both physically, but also mentally in that the vague “nervous” became a very concrete physical sensation one could deal with.

I have since added my own ideas: butterflies in your stomach? Make them fly in formation. Shaky knees? Gently hold on to them with your hands and move them with purpose. And of course breathing techniques. All of which is meant to put you back in control, not allowing the performance and everything around it to control you.

The Art of Teaching

The Art of Teaching is different from, say, the art of painting, or the art of playing an instrument, different from the art of tuning a piano, or the art of making a beautiful home.

If you mess up your painting, you’ve got a messed up painting. If you mess up on your instrument, you messed up a piece of music. If you don’t do a good job tuning that piano, then you’ve got a messed up piano which is annoying and can be expensive to fix.

When you mess up in your teaching, you are messing with a human being.

So, why is it that people who know how to play their instrument but have NO training in regard to teaching are let loose on pupils?

Recently, I had the opportunity to observe some poor and inexperienced teaching. One of the two teachers had a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching, in addition to a frenetic and somewhat chaotic personality (and teaching style). While this teacher was without a doubt very experienced, the lesson itself was not a very promising sign of things to come: it was crammed full with irrelevant information (way too much theory that would not be applicable/useful for several weeks), redundant information (without checking with the student what he already knew, this teacher “taught” concepts with which the student was thoroughly familiar already), and way too little actual instruction on the instrument. The student was not given sufficient time to try out the new concept and then make sure that it was sufficiently understood to be taken home and practiced for a week.

The other teacher had a much more pleasant personality and some day will probably be a good teacher. At the moment, however, this one has neither the experience nor the training to teach a beginning student. After grousing about how inexperienced this teacher was, I came to the realization that it was not inexperience but the obvious lack of pedagogical training which made the lesson unsuccessful.

We all start out “inexperienced”. None of us are born with experience. There’s a first time for everything. There’s a first time a physician performs an exam or a surgery. There’s the race car driver’s first race.

What sets these people apart is the fact that before their first “real” thing they did spend time, usually a very long time, observing their masters, and then learning to practice their craft, usually under the guidance of their masters.

For some reason, people think that as long as you can play an instrument, you can teach. I actually once overheard the wife of the head of a music department at a university tell one of the professors something to the effect of “I don’t understand what there is to learn about teaching: you gotta love kids and you gotta love what you do.” There. She said it. What more could there possibly be to it?

There are, of course, “natural” teachers, just like there are “natural” psychologists, people who have an instinctive, intuitive, “feel” for people. But think of the training a psychologist has to undergo before she is allowed to practice her craft!

My wish list for pedagogical training of any future teacher of musical instruments includes:

•mandatory lesson observations of different masters in their field, more than just once or twice please;

•study the art of teaching their particular instrument: while there is some flexibility, there is usually a certain order in which things need to be learned (master addition before you attempt multiplication) or else you end up with an unreliable foundation;

•study the teaching literature for their instrument: just because you grew up with a certain method doesn’t mean it’s the best;

•teach many, many lessons under the supervision of your teacher/master. In the beginning, this should take the form of observing your teacher’s lesson (of another student) and taking over for 5 minutes to teach a certain concept. Over time, you grow into teaching an entire lesson, more time and you’ll be creating your own lesson plans.

In short, some form of apprenticeship.  Think about a physician’s first surgery. Regardless of how simple the surgery, the physician has most likely observed this surgery many, many times, then, with more training (reading about it, studying all aspects of it, passing tests to prove she understands all aspects of it), assisted in this surgery before she ever gets to touch a patient without supervision.

Of course, you say, well, with surgery – you have to be that careful.

But why should a student’s learning process be different from surgery? As a teacher who gets transfer students, I see all the time the damage a teacher with insufficient training can do to a student who doesn’t know any better.

I dream of a world in which we hold (the training of) teachers of musical instruments to the same standards as physicians, psychologists, and other professionals in charge of human development and health.

(Originally published Nov 19, 2009)

 

Retard!

Retard!

Ever since I came to this country, I’ve been puzzled and appalled by music teachers who use the term “ritard”.

I recently came across it on a website where the blogger talked about taking advantage of “phrases, cadences, ritards, etc… – Whenever I have an excuse, like at the end of a phrase, at big cadences, in spots marked with tenuto marks, or where there are ritards, […]” .

If you were to hear someone use the term “dimins” – would you know what they meant? It’s the same kind of abbreviation as “ritards”.

Yes, “ritardando” is a long word, but so are crescendo, decrescendo, and five-syllable words such as accelerando and diminuendo (which is even harder to pronounce).

The use of the term ritardando varies of course from composer to composer and from one style period to the next: Baroque and Classical composers didn’t seem to use the term (they trusted you to know where and how much to bend the tempo), 19th Century romantic composers actually did not use it as much as one would think, whereas contemporary composers who compose in a romantic style use it a lot. Impressionistic composers do use it but prefer French terminology (en retenant or cedez).

There are two commonly used abbreviations for ritardando:  rit. and ritard.

In scores, whether we find rit. or ritard. seems to depend to a large degree on the edition: Wiener Urtext does ritard., Henle has mostly rit., Schirmer seems to be 50/50, Maurice Hinson and Jane Magrath use rit.

Chopin, in Polish and Hungarian editions, uses rall. or rallent.

Here in the United States, I find the use of “ritard.” appallingly insensitive because ritard. sounds too much like “retard” – a word we have been working so hard to get people to stop using. Retard *is* a word in the English language, and to use something that sounds alike, even though you mean something different (the root is the same, though), shows an appalling lack of concern, especially when it comes from a teacher.

If you want to abbreviate ritardando please use rit. (There is no confusion with ritenuto which is always shortened to riten.)

P.S.: I similarly like to shorten diminuendo to dim. (not dimin.) because it is short and unambiguous, and because it is descriptive: dim the lights, dim the sound.

 

Competitions – who gets to go?

In my studio, I have many ambitious and competitive students and parents who naturally aspire to enter competitions and win prizes. This leads to the important question: Who gets to participate?

When a student or parent asks if they can “do that competition,” I’ve learned to follow up with, “Why do you want to enter this competition?” Often, the answers are somewhat vague: “Because we did it last year,” or “Her friend is doing it.” For me, these reasons alone aren’t sufficient.

Every teacher has their own criteria for deciding whether a student should enter a competition. For me, I focus on two key factors:

First, the student must demonstrate a strong and consistent desire to excel—not just when there’s the lure of a competition or a potential prize. If the student lacks this drive, then it must be evident in the parent.

Second, the student needs to genuinely benefit from the competition experience. Preparing for a competition is demanding and can involve tedious work, and for some students that’s exactly what they need: a goal, and a deadline. However, for others, the pressure might not be helpful. It’s also important to recognize that a student’s needs can change from year to year.

thou shalt

In an article in the October 2006 issue of Clavier, Greg Brown says the goal of The 5 Browns is

to relax some of the formality of concert etiquette that might discourage people from attending classical music programs. We don’t mind when people applaud between movements of a work; it just means they like the music.

Say what?  Dilute the clear distinction between the educated who know that thou shalt not clap until the end of a work, and on the other hand the hapless, uneducated, uninitiated, who – heaven forbid – applaud enthusiastically after a particular beautiful or rousing movement even though there’s more to come?  (I am not talking about the people who clap because they think they are supposed to clap but have no clue where and when.)

Why is it that we hold the inseparatability of a multi-movement work so sacred? Can you imagine an opera where no one claps until the very end?  The singers wouldn’t know what to think!  Or imagine a rock concert where people start to clap at the beginning of a song because they recognize the song and show their enthusiastic anticipation of what’s to come. (Ah, yes, I hear ye, “But a rock concert is not the same as a classical concert!”  That’s right.  A rock concert is usually sold out, to tens of thousands of people, who want to be there.)

I once attended a concert with a woman who politely started to clap immediately at the end of a piece – even though the end of the piece was particularly quiet and there was the afterglow of the last couple of notes still in the air.  Her clapping actually disrupted, destroyed the lingering scent. When I mentioned this to her she said that she felt obliged to clap because otherwise the performers might think that she didn’t like the piece.

What I would really like is a performance world – and I have read that this is how they do it in Israel – where you clap when you feel like it, but only then.  No more holding back your enthusiasm after a movement that excites you, but likewise no polite applause at the end of a piece whose performance you didn’t like.

There are other cases of  “thou shalt” – traditions that we hold onto religiously, because we think we’ve always done it this way, although a closer look at history would prove us wrong.

Among the most passionately fought wars in piano pedagogy is the issue of memorization.  For most of the 20th century, pianists performed from memory, and teachers required their students to memorize.  While there are students who seem to memorize effortlessly without even trying, memorization is actually a skill that can and needs to be taught and learned, just like sight-reading, or playing by ear.  The issue of whether to require, some will say “force” students to memorize, has been at the heart of many articles and discussions in professional journals.

What seems suspiciously absent from these discussions is the distinction between memorizing and performing from memory which is a completely different issue.

I teach memorization skills because they are an important part of a good piano education.  Those of my students who have studied with me for a while know better than to ask, “Do I have to memorize this piece?” because my answer is always the same: “If you do a good job practicing then you cannot help but memorize along the way.”  The implication being that good practice trains all the elements of memorization:  finger memory (because you have played the piece a million times), intellectual memory (because I have asked you to explain all the details of the piece and you have trained to play hands separately and from anywhere in the piece), aural memory (because you know how it sounds), visual memory (because you know what it looks like), and so on.  Memorization then becomes a mere extension of practicing, a different aspect of practicing, but not a separate issue.

My students are required to memorize their performance pieces.  But I don’t require them to perform from memory anymore.  If all that separates the student from a great performance is the comfort of having the score in front of him (I call it a security blanket), as a visual reminder, then he gets to use the score.  If there’s any suspicion that the student needs the score to read the notes, then we know that the piece is not ready for a performance.

The one criterion for a good performance is that the performer enjoyed performing and the audience enjoyed listening.

 

Planning and growth

Many, many years ago, when I was still in the first ten years of my teaching career, I was successful. I was able to attract good students, where good meant talented and dedicated, with supportive parents.

So it was quite a shock when the mother of a younger (3rd grade?) transfer student after about one semester decided to quit lessons with me. She explained that her daughter still missed the previous teacher’s daughter with whom she had been good friends, so “piano lessons” had always meant a play date as well.

But also, and more importantly, the mother explained, I just didn’t have a plan. There was no plan in my teaching, she said, no logical progression, no first this then that, nothing to look forward to, because nobody knew what was coming up.

This was a slap in the face. I had been so proud of being more creative than other teachers who used a cookie cutter approach to teaching: same method for every student, same materials, same pieces on every recital.

I easily dismissed her criticism, and explained it away as the uneducated opinion of someone who simply did not know how to appreciate my creative approach. After all, if this had been a real problem then other parents would have said the same thing, right?

Wrong, of course.

I now know – but don’t remember how I came to learn – that she was absolutely correct of course. I now value having a plan, thinking ahead, designing individual assignment sheets for my students (printed out ahead of the lesson). I try to balance having a plan and at the same time being creative in the implementation of the plan, and I always try to pay attention and make changes as necessary. I appreciate being able to spend the time to do a lot of thinking about my students, where we want to go, and how we will get there. I still don’t have an answer to a parent’s question, “How long before she’s going to play the Moonlight Sonata?” but I can lay out the (kinds of) books and materials I anticipate using, and in what order.

Different but related: eleven weeks ago I got braces. Because the first appointment with the woman who took care of the financial aspect and offered to explain everything was somewhat unhelpful – every question I had was answered with an enthusiastic and just-barely-not-condescending “Oh – it’ll be so easy!” – I made an appointment with the orthodontist, about six weeks into this adventure, asking if he would share the treatment plan: what are the issues he is seeing, and how will he address them, what are his goals, and how will we get there.

It was a most frustrating experience. He seemed genuinely stumped at these questions. “Well – we’re gonna put braces on your teeth …”  He didn’t mention any specific issues, and when I brought up one of them (that I was aware of), he still would not explain what he planned to do about it but spent a good five minutes explaining why we had to address the issue, and how my teeth got to where they are – something he had already explained in detail at the first consultation.

He emphasized how very individual every patient and therefore the treatment is, using the example of two different kinds of trucks: a Ford, and a Toyota – both are trucks, but very different vehicles. I played along and said, “Tell me about my Ford, then.” Again, he spent most of the time explaining why we had to address issues and how my teeth got to be where they are, but no real answers to my very specific questions.

Afterward I thought, either he doesn’t have a plan (not likely), or he is not used to being asked to explain, or he sucks majorly at explaining. Or maybe he misunderstood my questions as concerns and worries that he felt compelled to make me feel better about. The problem is that I didn’t have concerns or worries, I wasn’t looking for consolation, I was looking for information, something I thought was clear from my questions.

Fortunately, my dentist is very good at explaining, clearly and concisely, so he has on occasion filled in when I had questions.

I guess the orthodontist is where I was twenty or twenty-five years ago: toward the beginning of his career, with enough experience to do his job, but with plenty of room to grow.

 

Piano for Young Beginners

For me, teaching young beginners is like having a toddler around, or a puppy: cute, enjoyable, so much fun, and so incredibly much work. Lesson preparation has to be immaculate while the actual lesson requires utmost flexibility.

I love it, but it tends to burn me out. So I have decided to accept only one or two young beginners per year. On my waiting list was a now 6 yr old girl who lives around the corner from me, literally across my backyard. Two weeks ago yesterday, we started lessons. Because she lives so close she comes every day for a short lesson. And I love it. We learn a tiny little bit something new, adding on every day. No pressure to cover more material to keep her busy for the next 3 or 4 days (normally, beginners come twice a week), no pressure to learn an entire song in one lesson. One day maybe 10 days ago, her younger sister spotted my rhythm instruments and rain sticks when they came into the studio. I could tell that both girls were curious, so we played around with different rhythm instruments and took turns making sounds with the different rain sticks. We didn’t really “learn” anything that day, we just explored, and if this had been a traditional lesson I would have felt bad for not really “teaching” something specific. But since I got to see her again the very next day there was no pressure to accomplish  specific things. It feels beautifully and luxuriously relaxed.

2015-08-22 13.27.43Because I get to see her every day right now, she is progressing much faster than the average beginner. And because there is so little time – just one day – for her to forget something she learned at a lesson, or to spend much time practicing something incorrectly, our lessons can focus on revisiting old and learning new things, rather than correcting or re-learning.

Her attention span could definitely handle longer lessons, so in about a week we’ll move on to three lessons per week, later in the semester two lessons per week. She already knows four songs (in different keys), is working on a fifth, and between playing all of her songs and working on theory concepts – musical alphabet, key names, finger numbers, beginning note reading – we run out of time with the shorter lessons.

I wish I could see all of my students for lessons every day …