Incredibly advanced Self-taught student unable to read music!!

[stephberg2]

I am a fairly young piano teacher, and I have recently come across a 17 year old student who has been playing piano himself for about a year. He started off playing music from video games (which I am seeing has become a new genre) and learned them all by ear.

Some of the pieces he taught himself were incredibly difficult, one in particular along the lines of a chopin waltze from the grade 9 repertoire. Obviously a lot of technique is not there, but he is incredibly dedicated to learning and improving and since we have started a few months ago he has dedicated HOURS a week to just practicing scales. (and has learned a few RCM grade 6 pieces as well).

This young man came to me not knowing the different between forte and piano. absolutely NO musical knowledge whatsoever, but by looking at his hands while he played you'd think he had been taking lessons for years.

He has shown interest in taking music in his post secondary education, and i'm struggling with how to catch him up with all of the knowledge that he needs.

The biggest issue is sight reading. He knows his note names quite well, but in the context of sight reading he has quite a bit of trouble. He had been doing sight reading exercises from a grade 1 book, and i just started him with the grade two. This seems to be the one area he is struggling with.

I know developing the ability to sight read well is a very slow process, but does anyone have any advice? He is so dedicated and willing to do any exercises and work that I give him.

Also, if anyone has been in this situation before and has suggestions on which aspects of theory to focus on first that would be wonderful. I've tried to focus most on scales and triads first and have just introduced the idea of intervals.

It's incredibly daunting to think about how much more of the basics he needs to know! We came upon a ritardando in one of his songs and after three weeks he asked me what that meant!!!!!

Any advice would be so graciously appreciated!

[nanabush]

Check out Mark Sarnecki's theory books.  He has one for each level of RCM theory; it literally runs through every theoretical concept just up until you would start four part writing.  If you work through the books with him (if he's dedicated, he could probably do the first one in under a month), then he will get a good background with key signatures, chords, cadences, RHYTHM (which a lot of students lack), musical terms (french, italian, german, symbols), and basic analysis of a passage.

Also, he might be interested in four star books.  They only really work if the student can remember to do a few a week, and I've found that any students under 10 forget every single week about the four star.  Maybe a grade 4-5 four star book (which would have grade 2 excerpts a line or two long for sight reading) would be good, considering he's doing stuff from the grade 2 for sight reading.  Ear tests are good too (4 star books have a section on these); identifying the quality of a chord, or repeating a rhythm or short passage really help develop ear.  Combining that with the sight reading and drawing parallels will help him understand what a passage could sound like at sight before playing it.

Scales are really good to solidify his technique; be very specific with things like fingering and wrist rotation for the technique.

I actually have a student like this too; after the first lesson he found a few songs from Super Mario and learned them all!  It was like he wouldn't stop practicing until he could play them; and again, these were much more advanced than what a 13 year old would play at a first lesson.


Maybe give him the url for this forum?  I remember I found this place when I just started high school and had not heard of any of the stuff by many great composers.  If he's really interested, he could spend hours looking through the threads for little bits of advice.

[mcdiddy1]

If you  say his technique is lacking , then that would be the area I would focus first.

As fas a sight reading, teach his how to recognize patterns visually, read from the bass up, start simple and easy reading.

It sounds like you want to catch him up to a specific level. Find a piece that interesting that has all the concepts he lacks understanding- like you said dynamics, and basic theory. Focus on rhythm!

[ask_why]

I'm not sure if this is actually a good way to do it, but when I was little I used to love the multiplication table races we had in our math classes, so I took that idea and just did it with music:  Picked a piece and timed myself to see how fast I could write the letter next to each note, then tried to beat that time.  I guess you could probably figure out some way to do the opposite as well; write letters out and make him draw the notes... that never occurred to me when I was younger though haha

Given that he's 17 and I was 6 it might not be very appealing to him, but the fact that he loves video games makes me think there might be some hope.  I was always drawn to video games because of the competitive aspect -- it'd be more fun to compete against another person, but a watch is good enough if there's no one around 

[lostinidlewonder]

Teach how to use key signatures it will provide the best starting point for people with good piano playing skills but poor reading.
 What I generally do is get them to play a C major scale, then play it again with the key signature of the piece applied. I get them to play this scale both hands scale fingering is not too important but they should have logical fingering. Once they play scale then they should play randomly around this scale single notes, different intervals (thirds most importantly), then improvise on the form (at least covering three octave range). They should understand shapes created by the key signature with their fingers. Once they see these general shapes and patterns then transferring to read a piece in that key signature becomes somewhat more easier. They have a more inbuilt feeling of what notes need to be played (and what can be missed) and where their hands need to be, it allows them to use their muscular memory to guide their reading beforehand which is perfect for those who are strong in memorizing but poor in reading. Browse sight reading threads on pianostreet and you might get some more ideas.

[rmbarbosa]

I`m not a teacher but if I was perhaps I`ll ask your pupil to play two voices Bach Inventions. They are easy to play but not so easy to understand... For example, start with Invention nr 1. It has so many theoretical things to learn! Modulatios, Invertions, rethrogads, etc... I remember the feeling of happiness I had when I understood all those things, with this Invention, when I was a young boy. May be your pupil feels the same and looks for MUSIC like MUSIC, not only like a kind of computer game.
But I`m not a teacher...

[pkpianist]

I have a student who's like that right now. I basically am continuing to teach her pieces by ear and memory at the level she's playing at the same time, starting from scratch to build her reading abilities from the beginning.

I think there's no real way around starting from the beginning with music reading skills. Also I think it's important to start from the beginning to also address technical issues that are present. No matter how good a self-taught student is, there are definitely little issues to address like clean pedals, minimizing stress on the wrist etc. So I split the lesson into two halves. Half I treat as if she's a beginner while the other half, I ignore all the technical issues and reading issues and teach her based on what she already knows and focus on musicality so that she doesn't feel like she's not getting to play real stuff that she already could.

[urlicht]

I think it's important to remember that people generally sight read at a level below their playing level. His sight reading level will be well below, but there's a possibility that because of his musicality and keen interest he will catch up quickly. I think you and he could come up with a series of "experiments" to dial in on what his sight reading level is, and then branch out from there and find some pieces for him to practice sight reading. After reading each one a few times, however, there's the possibility that he'll become bored since they are so well below his level. The trick will be to keep it fresh and interesting while slowly increasing difficulty.

[drorperl]

There's a lot of good advice & input up here so i'll just add shortly that as a teacher a lot of times you'll get to work with piano students that have obvious lacks at certain departments. it is your job as the teacher to recognize where are the wick spots (like you did in this case) and start working on them together in order to achieve a more balanced overall level. there's definitely no shortcuts and if your student is lacking in the sight-read department you'll have to build it up ...but it sounds like he's not afraid of hard work and he'll surely get there with time if you will keep encouraging him in this direction. good luck.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dror Perl. Pianist, Composer, Teacher.

https://www.sheerpiano.com/

Sheer Piano: The First Full Color Piano Music Books
simple jazz & contemporary compositions that are fun for beginner pianists & up

[quasimodo]

My advice would be to teach the student as he was an absolute beginner but with bearing in mind that you'll advance in the lessons much, much faster than with actual beginners.

[nadia goh]

maybe my comment won't help much but i am like your student. i taught myself piano before i registered for piano lessons. it was hard discarding my bad habit which is memorising how the piece sounds like. i am quite good at memorising as it naturally registers in my head. So, even if i just play through the whole piece once or twice (3,4,5 pages), i sort of remember the notes already. you may have problems teaching students like me who can't wait to play difficult pieces because we really want to improve fast. you can say that i am very ambitious. so, to teach a person like me, you just need to make the student reads the notes. sometimes, i tend to deceive my teacher by looking at the sheet when actually, i don't read it at all. you have to check your student from time to time. ask the student to pause and begin playing at different bars. i used to really hate it when my teacher does that but the method helps me a lot.

hope that my suggestion will be of good use to you.

happy teaching