Harmonizing Melodies

As soon as students have learned two chords, I and V7, and have begun to practice pieces for two hands, melody and accompaniment, they can try to adapt harmonies to familiar melodies. Keep the melodies within the compass of the five-finger position.

Students can be led to listen to the agreement of melody and chord, and to change the harmony at the proper place in the melody according to the musical effect rather than because of the teacher's directions. This elementary study in the feeling for the proper relation of harmony and melody is important and is actually a fundamental lesson in harmonic ear training.

After harmonizing a simple melody, the student can write the chords in blank staves.

A little study will also show students that by changing the third tone of a five-finger group they can alter the effect from major to minor and vice versa.

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Musical Orientation

Singing. Just because a child is a non-singer (monotone), does not necessarily imply that he is not suited to piano study. Sometimes these children correlate eye, ear and hand better than singers do.

The song approach, though, does make the ear the guiding force. Singing helps develop expressive playing. The song approach provides a connecting link between music associated with text and absolute music. Singing naturally introduces the study of music form and interpretation. Singing is a much truer and more musical rhythmic guide in early piano instruction than is the practice of counting aloud. It reduces mistakes at the piano and allows for self-correction. Further, the song approach easily leads to ready playing in all keys. Singing is the best background for the development of fluent sight reading. The song approach has the strongest, simplest and most interesting appeal for home practice.

Rhythm. The piano teacher can play or sing something in simple duple time, having the student clap keeping time, gradually accenting more strongly, making crescendos, diminuendos, accelerandos, and ritardandos. Then change to triple time and try the same game.

Pitch. If children have been singing with so-fa syllables, you can test pitch discrimination simply. Play or sing various intervals, having the student name them by syllable. If they have had little or no music experience, give them an idea of "high" and "low"; then, playing or singing, start with the extremes, high and low, and gradually bring the intervals nearer and nearer together. The readiness with which a student distinguishes between the higher and lower tones indicates his power of pitch discrimination.

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Phrasing

Phrasing is to music what punctuation is to language. Just as punctuation indicates the divisions of sentences and parts of sentences within paragraphs, so does phrasing show the groupings of tones of the composition into such divisions as will make the tonal flow most comprehensible. And as in speech there are longer or shorter periods of silence separating the word groups, so in music the phrasing is effected by brief periods of silence between the tone groups. In singing a breath is usually taken between the phrases; and in playing the hands should likewise seem to breathe between the phrases. The phrases usually end softly, with a gentle release of the tone. Phrasing gives clarity to the expressive interpretation of the music. Definite phrasing is as essential to the interpretation of music as are the rhetorical pauses in expressive speech. The best and most natural way to teach phrasing is to sing the phrase.

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