(continued from the previous post)
11. Now that we had got the outline sorted out, we moved on to put the triplets back. But besides technique, we had accomplished something very important: Now the melody and bass were firmly embedded in her aural memory. You see, if you can hear in your mind what you want to play, the fingers/forearms/arms/etc. will all conspire to produce the sound you had in mind. But most beginners do not have any sound in mind at all. They approach the piano and get the sound from what they are playing (which is of course all wrong) and once that inappropriate aural image is in place, it is very difficult to dislodge, and of course the student’s playing will follow it. And since this is all unconscious behaviour it is baffling for the student to understand why his playing sucks.
12. To put the triplets back in place, we went back to HS again, and worked only on the first triplet. We played it as a chord to start with. Than rather than moving the fingers, we made the arm move the hand and the hand move the fingers. It is an elliptical movement, and I will not bother trying to explain this in writing. It is easy to demonstrate and writing about it just creates a lot of unnecessary confusion for people reading this, who do not know what I am talking about. Once that movement was mastered, we went on to play the first 5 triplets in sequence since they form a loop (the first triplet is the same as the fifth).
13. The way we worked on these first five triplets was also very important. We did several things: First we played them as chords. But there are two ways of making up the chords, one which will make you progress fast, the other which will actually hinder your progress:
First way (intuitive way, will hinder your progress):
[BGD] [BGD] [CAD] [AFD] [BGD]
Second way (correct way, will accelerate your progress):
B [GDB] [GDC] [ADA] [FDB] [GDB*] (B* from the next triplet)
Do you understand this difference and why it will make an immense difference to organise the chords one way or the other?
So you see, I am not just using this study to teach technique, but to teach different ways of learning as well. This principle of chord organisation is so important that it may make the difference between mastering a piece quickly and never mastering it at all. People who do everything right (either because they are geniuses at learning, or because they had excellent teachers who knew this stuff) go on to amass huge repertories in little time. Other people can hardly manage two or three pieces a year. Why? The answer is right here on this chord comparison. It is this sort of thinking that will allow fast learning.
After learning the chords, we then broke the chords by using arm movement rather than finger reaching (again easy to demonstrate, impossible to write about coherently).
Then we kept alternating playing the outline (to remind ourselves what the melodic outline was like) and playing the triplets so that the melody would stand out.
Finally both hands were put together again.
14. Getting the triplets to sound even was also a problem. This was tackled by rhythm variations. Some people do not like them, but work they do! My approach towards this sort of variation is that they are unnecessary if you can play well without them. But if you are stuck - as this lady was – with uneven notes, then you must do something about it. Just repeating the passage over and over again wrongly is not going to solve the problem.
It is the same with separate hands. If you can play something straightaway perfectly with hands together, don’t bother with separate hands. But if you have not mastered the technique of each hand separately, going straight to hands together is a big, big mistake.
Again on the subject of evenness, it is important to point out to the student that in order to have an even sound you must do an
uneven movement. We should not really tell a student “play even” since playing with even movements will result in an uneven sound. We should say “play so that it sounds even”
15. So we proceeded like that for the whole of the first part. Not only we developed the technique to play triplets evenly, bringing up the melody, as we learned much about scales, arpeggios, chords, music theory, and most important we learned about a variety of methods to tackle a certain kind of musical passage.
16. The second part of this study needed a different approach. It is actually far more difficult than the first part. After working on the outline (which by the way was only the LH since the right hand only provides the accompaniment), we went on to use repeated note groups ti learn the second part (you can read a description of this practice method in this thread:
https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=perf;action=display;num=1079553524)
17. As you can see from all the above, I used Burgmuller’s “Courante limpid” for a variety of purposes:
a. To learn and practise the scales and arpeggios of G major and D major.
b. To learn different approaches to learning these scales and arpeggios.
c. To learn about music theory (key signatures, triplets, three voice writing in two scores, chords, broken chords and chord progressions, musical notation).
d. To learn technique (movements, touch, fingering, and how they related to sound produced).
e. To learn different practice procedures and how they may or may not apply to a passage (hands, separate, hands together, rhythm variation, repeated note groups, outlining, working in small chunks, etc.)
f. To serve as a learning device/stepping stone for a much more advanced piece (Schubert’s impromptu op, 142 no. 2 – second part) which requires a similar technique and will benefit from a similar approach. By using Burgmuller, I was able to point out an obvious fact that many times escpes the unexperienced: most advanced music is not really more difficult: it is simply
more complex. Complex is not the same as complicated. Something is complex because it is made up of a large number of simple things. If you learn how to tackle one simple thing (which Burgmuller will teach you to do), tackling a complex thing is simply a matter of tackling each simple component in turn and joining them. Once you had this exhilarating learning experience, you will be empowered to tackle whatever complex music comes your way. You are still left with the task of breaking down the complex task into its simpler components (not that easy – you can go very wrong), and in finding out simpler repertory examples. But as I said before, your only limitations will be your experience with different musical patterns and your knowledge of repertory.
18. After she mastered Courante limpide, we worked on Gurlitt’s “Berceuse” (op. 224) again with similar technical and musical problems as the trio in the Schubert’s impromptu. We used a similar approach, but it took a fraction of the time since most of the steps were now well known. Finally, to deal with the first part of the impromptu I used Chopin’s prelude no. 7, and Schumann’s “Ein Choral” (from Album for the young). It took about four months to do all this preliminary work.
19. To actually learn the impromptu took less than a month. She has now memorised and performed it many times for friends and family. Interestingly enough her arthritis has alleviated somehow. As a bonus she also has 4 beautiful pieces (“Courante Limpide”, “Prelude no. 7””ein choral” and “berceuse”) in her repertory. Moreover she has learned all the 24 major and minor scales and arpeggios (if you learn the scales present in each of this pieces they will cover all of them) plus a lot of theory and harmony.
20. So as you can see, rather than teach isolated subjects in a certain order, I teach in an integrated way everything that concerns a certain piece. Then of course we try a different piece. If you follow this approach, syllabus and grades are not that important (this lady, after six months is playing right across grades from grade 3 to grade 7 – but all the pieces are musically superior and can be performed with pride). It is very important not to teach in a logical way – logic is a great way to organise knowledge you already have, but it is a terrible way to acquire knowledge - but in a pragmatical way. But to talk about this will require another book.
I hope this has helped.
Best wishes,
Bernhard.
Topic: teaching studies ( early-intermediate student)