Second Year Piano Sight Reading Instruction

A sight reading program should be designed for students based on a level of reading that is slightly below the current repertoire level.  Second year students shouldn't be assigned music at the second grade level because these pieces are too difficult for that purpose; they aren't meant for casual study.

Most piano courses are designed around a progressive reading program, but often the rate of progression accelerates too fast for good reading. So, it helps to add books or assignments on sight reading that give supplementary easier works to read.  Additionally, sight-reading flash cards are great in individual lessons.

As the card is held, the student should quickly acknowledge the cleff signs, key signature, time signature, and ascertain the correct position on the keyboard for both hands.  The note values can be tapped before beginning to play to get the correct rhythm.  Any changes in the hand position that might happen should be noticed.  While playing the student can recite the counts out loud and look far enough ahead to keep going in tempo.  He needs to play straight through without stopping.

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Triads and Inversions Second Year Piano Students

Chord studies serve two purposes, technical and theoretical.  Chord drills aid in developing a good hand position to learn the keyboard, shaping the fingers, and developing a general facility for playing in more than one key at a time. 

In the first year students should have learned major and minor triads in root position, dominant seventh chords and subdominant chords.  Sometimes near the end of the second year of lessons students can be taught triads and inversions of majors and minors.  Correct fingering is important for inversions:  students usually want to play the same fingering for inversions as was learned for the root position.  Circle the fingering in each hand for the new inversions.  Teach the chords in both block and broken style.

Triads and inversions should be studied both ascending and descending.  Often students can play ascending but have trouble with descending.  The chords should not be discovered by trial and error using the hunt and peck method.  A strong mental picture of the correct fingering should be established to form an anticipated feeling for successive chords for the pattern.

Sufficient drilling should be assigned so that over time the correct fingering will become automatic.  Students can recite the fingering for the middle note of the chords, as this is the finger that changes in the inversions. 

Students should learn all twelve major and minor triads and inversions. Remind students that the word practice means repetition and spell out how many times you want each item repeated.

Keyboard Triads and Inversions

Chords are a vital part of all students' technical programs.  This is because chord playing helps in developing a good hand position, shapes the fingers, and promotes facility for playing in more than one key at a time.  In the first year, piano students learn major and minor triads in root position, dominant seventh chords and subdominant chords.  Sometime near he end of the second year of lessons students can be taught triads and inversions.  These will be major and minor triads.  The correct fingering is very important when teaching chord inversions on the keyboard.  A common problem is that students play the same fingers for the root position and the inversions.  To make students aware of changing fingers, it can be helpful to circle the written fingering in each hand that is different.  Students should also be taught the chords in both block and broken style.

Triads and inversions should be studied both ascending and descending.  While many students are able to play the chords ascending, many have lost the picture of the chord they are inverting and are not able to return back down.

The chords should not be "discovered" by trial and error using the trial by ear method.  A mental picture of correct fingering should be established to form an anticipated feeling for successive chords in the pattern.

Since fingering is important when learning triads and inversions, enough drill should be assigned so that in time the correct fingering will become automatic.  Sometimes it helps to have students say out loud the fingering for the middle note of the chords.

Students should learn all twelve major and minor triads and inversions.  Remind students that the word practice means repetition.  Advise students how many times you want each one repeated on a daily basis.

For more information about Basking Ridge piano instruction, contact Barbara Ehrlich Piano Studio.

Scale Playing

A thorough knowledge of scales in all keys is a fundamental necessity for the pianist. Scale practice, indeed, must be continued constantly throughout the career of the greatest artists. Scale study offers excellent ear training as a student must hear the scale pattern in order to play songs in various keys. Scale study is fundamental in transposition. It also provides drill in step and half-step relationships in scale patterns. Early songs that give five-finger and triad positions in each hand for every key are invaluable in scale playing. They are an excellent early step in the study of keyboard harmony.

The foundation for scale playing is laid in the early songs where through transpositions the first five tones of all the scales are learned, leaving only the addition of three tones to complete the ascending scales. In accordance with the pedagogy of the first year, the ascending scale occurs in various songs furnishing the fingering which is used in all ascending scales. The descending scale also is included with first year fingering.

The scale is the basis of melody, and this practice trains the ear to appreciate melodic relationships. With motivated students, the scale can be taught immediately from the beginning lesson, including the thumb-under position of the full eight-note scale. This introduces students immediately to fingering of the keyboard. Once the full scale is mastered, the students can proceed to full keyboard scales.

Scales are the beginning of finger exercises, as well. Scale drills, however, should not be forced upon young students or they may rebel. They will want to learn songs right away. After all, isn't this why they wanted to learn piano in the first place?

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Sight Reading

One of the most important objectives of singing and playing is the development of fluent sight reading. Every selection provides material for correlating ear, eye and hand. The piano teacher should realize that the child's early experience is best not directed to playing new material from the notes. This practice leads merely to note-to-note reading, rather than to a comprehensive grasp of music notation. Instead of reading new material the child should have an opportunity to develop ready recognition of the notation of familiar passages of music.

For example, a child of at least five years old can be taught the C major scale fairly easily. Once the scale is learned, the piano teacher can point out pieces of the scale found in the song. Often beginner songs are composed of scale fragments. This will also facilitate fingering by reminding the student that the fingering used is the same as or similar to that used in playing a scale. The familiarity of the scale fingering gives the student an anchor of self-confidence in recognizing phrase patterns.

Songs can be freely used as sight reading drills. After a piece has been learned so that the student can play it readily and accurately, the piano teacher can choose a phrase and ask the student to play just that much. The indication may be given by directions such as "Play the second phrase," or the teacher might point to the phrase.

With a minimum of effort the student learns to recognize a familiar phrase and to play it in its correct octave, as indicated by the treble or bass staff. This practice in recall can avoid note-to-note playing and lead to real music reading.

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How to Teach Song

In teaching a rote song, it helps to familiarize the children with the song as a whole before asking them to imitate the pattern sung for them by the teacher. While listening to the song as sung, it is best that each child has his book open and follows the music and words as he hears them. This helps in the development of his grasp of musical notation.

After the child has received a general impression of the song as a whole, the teacher sings the first phrase the the child imitates. The phrase corresponds to a line of text. If some portion of the phrase is not imitated correctly, the teacher repeats the phrase a a whole or repeats the figure in which the inaccuracy occurred, until the student responds correctly. The second phrase is learned in the same way. Then the two phrases are presented together and imitated. If the song is longer, the remaining phrases are taught in the same manner, first a phrase at a time and then combined in accordance with their structural relationship in the song.

After all the phrases have been taught and combined into sections, the teacher and the student sing the whole stanza. This process helps young students learn to hear music phrasing and notation.

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Plan of Technical Development

• The piano is a medium for the musical self expression of the student. Technique is really a means to this end.
• The approach to piano playing should be through the music to be played. The music should be interesting while stimulating the desire to play, grows out of the student's past experience and is directly linked to it. Hence the importance of the "song approach."
• In learning to play even their earliest and simplest pieces, students recognize certain technical demands and requirements. These should be immediately reinforced by the teacher as material for drill.
• Each technical drill grows out of an immediate musical experience and should be applied to additional new and interesting musical material. Drill may at times be given per se, but it should grow out of actual music and lead to more actual music.
• These are especially applicable to the earliest years of study. They easily lead to the formation of musical habits and a keen interest out of which attention to matters of technique become more or less automatic. The older students then find real pleasure in overcoming the problems of more advanced technique.
• During the first year technical drills grow out of the experience of playing the musical numbers in the course books. To these are added games designed to develop control of fundamental movements of arms and fingers. Gradually this is developed into organized, independent drill in the several essential elements of technique, such as chords, scales, arpeggios, etc.

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What Is Reading?

Some of the instruction of little children and the music material prepared for piano instruction is based upon the idea that sight reading is the development of a fluency in deciphering one note after another. It is assumed that if a child can be taught to read one note after another correctly, and kept it up patiently, he will gradually be able to repeat this faster and faster until he becomes a ready music reader.

Studies shows that reading is the ability, first, to recall to mind a previously learned thought by means of recognized symbols; and second, to group familiar symbols into larger and larger units, each group representing its previously learned idea. in other words, fluency in reading does not consist in seeing single notes more rapidly, but in visualizing in larger and larger units the groups of notes.

This process is greatly facilitated where the note groupings on the page correspond to tonal or music units. Where the notes of a phrase skip from staff to staff, the unity of the group is broken and the eye must follow the music from note to note. When teaching reading, look for keyboard sheet music where the music is printed phrasewise, each tonal figure printed to be grasped in one eye span. Where the chords may be seen as units, the melodic line encourages groupwise rather than note-to-note thinking. These considerations are basic to the development of good sight reading skills.

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A Path to Learning Music

What's the best way to teach music? The word method means "way", and a piano teacher's method is the way she organizes her procedure, progressing step by step to the goal. Actually, method looks to psychology to tell us how to make learning progress with great satisfaction. The teacher's approach should conform with the student's level of emotional development. She needs to understand how and when to present, develop, drill and apply the successive steps of lessons. An example of this is that students may need to understand the concrete before the abstract, proceed from the known to the unknown, etc.

There really are just two aspects to method:

1. Method should accomplish the goals.
2. Method should lead to progress.

In the study of music, using a method guides the student toward the ability to play well, to read music fluently, to be well acquainted with musical literature, and more. It should inspire students to a deep pleasure and ear for good music - classical, jazz, contemporary - and a lasting love for it.

There are actually some piano teachers who insist on having no method. They want to use "common sense," to study each student and apply whatever means they believe is useful. Some may even resent the suggestion that they consider following a method created by someone else. These teachers don't really understand the meaning of the term "method," which simply means a plan, or orderly procedure, or progress to an end result.

What these teachers really mean is that they follow no published procedure. A teacher with an inventive and imaginative mind might develop processes adapted to her own personality. But these processes, however ingenious or effective, are only devices that in the end emphasize some aspects of piano without necessarily offering a well-rounded development of the whole subject of music.

The art of teaching piano really begins with using published procedure, whatever school of training is chosen. Then the confidence and ability that comes from her pianistic experience will lend authority to a teacher's practice. That can become a starting point for fresh discoveries in guiding piano students. Actually, piano methods are not static; experienced teachers are constantly improving their art.

In my experience, all accepted methods of teaching piano are good, whether Alfred, Thompson, Suzuki, or the like. A piano teacher who is both artistic and an excellent coach can make good use of any proven method to teach students how to play piano well and appreciate music. No single school of training is better than the other - the teacher makes the difference.

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Psychological versus Logical Order of Music Instruction

A piano teacher should begin where the child is, and lead him step by step through the developing stages of piano instruction. This is the emotional and psychological order of the stages of learning for children. It's where a good piano teacher distinguishes himself from one who is an artist only.

The artist, on the other hand, absorbed as she is likely to be with the music of her calling, will often present the material in logical order. That is, an artist's approach is taking a mental organization fit for adults, chopping it into pieces, and giving it a piece at a time to the child to learn in piano classes.

Psychological order is the order of experience, of discovery, and consequently of learning. Logical order is the order of arranging for later use what has already been learned.

A child's processes will be immensely shortened by having as a guide someone who knows the piano. But, to be effective, piano instruction must be presented in psychological rather than logical order. The best piano teachers are both artist and teacher.

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Attention and Distraction

Attention is a very fleeting thing. Paying attention and focusing means concentration on a single idea out of the many distracting visions that compete for space in our thoughts. If focusing for an adult is a challenge, just consider how a child's quick, diverse and shifting perspectives are like a kaleidoscope of colors each of which captures a child's interest.

The teacher's job is to keep the children attentive to the piano classes at hand. Instead of blaming a child for being inattentive, we really mean that he is thinking of something else than what we want.

A child can give only a few seconds of concentrated attention. His mind must have periods for recuperation between brief stresses of concentration. The more interesting something is, the easier it is to prolong his attention and give it greater intensity. It's also easier to return to a subject after some mental relaxation.

A music lesson must be varied, so that the student's mind is refreshed, lessens the child's mental fatigue, and keeps his attention alert. A change of topic during the lesson will awaken new interest and fresh attention.

Keeping the piano lessons varied also avoids monotony. To remain too long on one topic means loss of interest. It's also just as important, though, to relate the new topic to a prior experience in learning piano so the association rouses curiosity and interest, and thereby secures the child's attention.

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Piano Practice

A child during his or her early piano lessons must concentrate on every little motion and often with even the most intense effort finds it difficult to make the fingers behave as they should. A skilled pianist, on the other hand, may direct his thought to the interpretation of the music, or even to matters less directly connected to his performance, while his fingers play along almost of their own will, without thought.

The well-formed habit of practicing the piano regularly teaches our fingers to move and find keys without thinking or looking at our hands. Finger exercises and playing compositions must be repeated again and again to become fixed by the child's hands and in his mind.

Sight reading, for instance, is the result of habit and memory. The notes awaken associations and habit enables ready performance. How important is it, then, that the right impressions and habits be formed early.

Habits should be established in technique, sight reading, interpretation and all other activities in piano playing. Remember that a wrong action can become a habit as readily as a right action. It's best not to press the child forward too rapidly in his technical progress, because playing music which constantly keeps the student at his highest level of technique is likely to create a habit of tension or a habit of carelessness. Merely explaining a process won't assure correct performance by the student. It's important to see to it that the student performs the correct action again and again just as it should be performed, until you are certain not only of his understanding but also of his accurate fingering.