Today I draw your attention to those remarkable parents who do not get in the way of their children's joy.
It is easy when listening to one's child perform to imagine what other people are thinking, rather than just listen to what the child is doing.
When the child feels free to share their joy that is exactly what they will do--even though the playing may contain slips and flaws. It is a special category that I have created: "Better than perfect."
Monday, June 1, 2009
Haven't you heard it: "That kid is so gifted: he doesn't need a teacher!"
Gifted kids are easily exploited in situations where their gift is held up as an example to others. But even the most gifted child is a mixture of strengths and weaknesses. What the gifted kid needs is a teacher who is not afraid to spot what the kid needs and to make it possible for him or her to work on it in an environment where everyone is learning on a comparable level but entirely at their own pace.
Such learning inevitably involves some pain: Gifted kids are used to bluffing so that no one will notice their weakness. In the case of one child I taught, his strength was a photographic memory; his weakness the inability to connect his vision to his ear. Working on this was not pleasant for a kid who had never been required to make that kind of essential brain reorganization.
In my 20's I had a teacher who made me correct a similar disconnect. It was some of the hardest work I ever had to do.
Gifted kids are easily exploited in situations where their gift is held up as an example to others. But even the most gifted child is a mixture of strengths and weaknesses. What the gifted kid needs is a teacher who is not afraid to spot what the kid needs and to make it possible for him or her to work on it in an environment where everyone is learning on a comparable level but entirely at their own pace.
Such learning inevitably involves some pain: Gifted kids are used to bluffing so that no one will notice their weakness. In the case of one child I taught, his strength was a photographic memory; his weakness the inability to connect his vision to his ear. Working on this was not pleasant for a kid who had never been required to make that kind of essential brain reorganization.
In my 20's I had a teacher who made me correct a similar disconnect. It was some of the hardest work I ever had to do.
Today a musician who follows this blog told me she likes the metaphysical entries the best. Hmmm.
I had already been thinking about how essential it is to have dissonance in one's musical life. A steady diet of consonance just won't do, just as it won't do to retain the taste of a four-year-old in any other respect.
One person I teach was not granted the possibility of a fully developed brain as most of us experience it, nor does he have sight. I have insisted, gently but persistently, that he learn Bartok from the volumes "For Children." Though he still resists at times, most of the dissonances are there in all their melancholy, even grief. Surely he experiences these emotions somewhere in his being--he is, after all, human--though music is the only means he has to express them.
Everyone who hears him play is moved.
Every time I hear him play I am moved. And challenged.
I had already been thinking about how essential it is to have dissonance in one's musical life. A steady diet of consonance just won't do, just as it won't do to retain the taste of a four-year-old in any other respect.
One person I teach was not granted the possibility of a fully developed brain as most of us experience it, nor does he have sight. I have insisted, gently but persistently, that he learn Bartok from the volumes "For Children." Though he still resists at times, most of the dissonances are there in all their melancholy, even grief. Surely he experiences these emotions somewhere in his being--he is, after all, human--though music is the only means he has to express them.
Everyone who hears him play is moved.
Every time I hear him play I am moved. And challenged.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Ah! The quarter note!
Having learned slavishly to count quarter-note beats most people schooled in classical music lose all sense of rhythmic wit, though I argue that Classical composers go to great lengths to give us hilarious quarter notes.
Plant in your head a musical idea that trips along in eighth notes. Now do it at half speed. Feel the tension? Try the opposite: start with an idea in quarters and transform it by going quick-march/double time. Feel the excitement?
Isn't this why you could never successfully count beats in Mozart's Sonata in C typically given to "beginners?" (I couldn't for many years and I notice that others can't either.)
More than once I have observed experienced professionals rendered rhythmically helpless by a single 4/4 bar in which, after many measures of complex multi-layered rhythms, Haydn requires all four members of the quartet to play quarter notes together. Rhythm is motion; motion is always fluid; without inner tension it quickly becomes what one of my adult students rightly calls "plodding."
No wonder people quit, or go downtown where rhythm swings.
Having learned slavishly to count quarter-note beats most people schooled in classical music lose all sense of rhythmic wit, though I argue that Classical composers go to great lengths to give us hilarious quarter notes.
Plant in your head a musical idea that trips along in eighth notes. Now do it at half speed. Feel the tension? Try the opposite: start with an idea in quarters and transform it by going quick-march/double time. Feel the excitement?
Isn't this why you could never successfully count beats in Mozart's Sonata in C typically given to "beginners?" (I couldn't for many years and I notice that others can't either.)
More than once I have observed experienced professionals rendered rhythmically helpless by a single 4/4 bar in which, after many measures of complex multi-layered rhythms, Haydn requires all four members of the quartet to play quarter notes together. Rhythm is motion; motion is always fluid; without inner tension it quickly becomes what one of my adult students rightly calls "plodding."
No wonder people quit, or go downtown where rhythm swings.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Why does a piano need to be kept in tune?
I hope you don't think this is a purist talking. I am one of those people who believe that a musician should be able to make music on a shoe. But a child does not have that power.
My definition of precision includes a child's ear. For a child a key on the piano is associated with a sound so specific that if it does not match the sound produced by a corresponding key on a different instrument the child will be disoriented--perhaps unable to play.
One of my students is disoriented when he touches my intune piano after playing his own instrument. If he played more consistently he would notice sooner that it is out of tune and perhaps say something, though he is shy and doesn't readily make demands.
If you are going to have a piano and if you expect your child to play it you simply must keep it in tune. If you really don't believe how important this is, I suggest that you take all the rulers in your home and bend them ever so slightly just to see what happens.
I hope you don't think this is a purist talking. I am one of those people who believe that a musician should be able to make music on a shoe. But a child does not have that power.
My definition of precision includes a child's ear. For a child a key on the piano is associated with a sound so specific that if it does not match the sound produced by a corresponding key on a different instrument the child will be disoriented--perhaps unable to play.
One of my students is disoriented when he touches my intune piano after playing his own instrument. If he played more consistently he would notice sooner that it is out of tune and perhaps say something, though he is shy and doesn't readily make demands.
If you are going to have a piano and if you expect your child to play it you simply must keep it in tune. If you really don't believe how important this is, I suggest that you take all the rulers in your home and bend them ever so slightly just to see what happens.
Friday, May 29, 2009
One of my young students is a "natural." What do you think that means?
It might be simpler to contemplate what it doesn't mean. She does not have physical facility: playing the piano does not come easily to her - she can't just sit down and rattle things off.
But her grasp of musical process is profound and entirely self-generated. She is responsive to the tiniest subtleties of timing and tone. For example, she knows that vocal sound and piano pitch are not the same; she even said at one point (with considerable anguish) that she found this "confusing." (It is!)
For her music is too central to be on display all the time. She is the kind of child who dreams music.
I have taught others who, like her, get fascinated by certain songs and continue to work on them over long periods of time--really work on them, not just repeat the same thing over and over.
The challenge in teaching such a child is to get her to trust the depth of her gift so that she does not let it get steam-rolled by competition, which is just another word for conformity.
It might be simpler to contemplate what it doesn't mean. She does not have physical facility: playing the piano does not come easily to her - she can't just sit down and rattle things off.
But her grasp of musical process is profound and entirely self-generated. She is responsive to the tiniest subtleties of timing and tone. For example, she knows that vocal sound and piano pitch are not the same; she even said at one point (with considerable anguish) that she found this "confusing." (It is!)
For her music is too central to be on display all the time. She is the kind of child who dreams music.
I have taught others who, like her, get fascinated by certain songs and continue to work on them over long periods of time--really work on them, not just repeat the same thing over and over.
The challenge in teaching such a child is to get her to trust the depth of her gift so that she does not let it get steam-rolled by competition, which is just another word for conformity.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
What do you do when you really don't like a piece you have set out to learn?
Not liking and liking a lot are two aspects of the same thing. In music they are a reliable basis for what is sometimes thought of as interpretation. (I think it's more basic than that, but that's a long story.)
For starters, translate "I don't like it" as "I don't get it." Narrow down what it is you don't like: is it this note? that interval? Imagine that they are alive and that you, being in charge, can approach them so that they reveal themselves to you. Imagine they are dogs that look threatening and that you are intent on getting them to wag their tails.
The piece will take on what I think of as a plot line. You still might not really like it but you will probably, after this effort, be at least intrigued.
Not liking and liking a lot are two aspects of the same thing. In music they are a reliable basis for what is sometimes thought of as interpretation. (I think it's more basic than that, but that's a long story.)
For starters, translate "I don't like it" as "I don't get it." Narrow down what it is you don't like: is it this note? that interval? Imagine that they are alive and that you, being in charge, can approach them so that they reveal themselves to you. Imagine they are dogs that look threatening and that you are intent on getting them to wag their tails.
The piece will take on what I think of as a plot line. You still might not really like it but you will probably, after this effort, be at least intrigued.
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