Teacher Dreamaurora - Piano Q&A
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Dreamaurora:
My no.3 would just say \"don't play then don't play, lor!\", and he'll discover something else to do and still NOT practise. He'll never practise more than 20mins each time and not everyday some more. No one can force him to do anything.
Haha, possible. I remember last time when I was young I hated studying a particular subject. My mom told me straight to either suck it up or no SEGA for holiday. -
phankao:
Wow phankao, you have feisty children. I recalled watching an interview on arts central with kam ning the violinist and her dad. I was struck at how casual and buddy like the way she talked to her dad. I think the free environment she had at home really helped nurture her to be a musician.
My no.3 would just say \"don't play then don't play, lor!\", and he'll discover something else to do and still NOT practise. He'll never practise more than 20mins each time and not everyday some more. No one can force him to do anything.Dreamaurora:
Haha, possible. I remember last time when I was young I hated studying a particular subject. My mom told me straight to either suck it up or no SEGA for holiday. -
sacredmusicals:
That particular feisty one is the most musical too. And he is a good (albeit reluctant) performer, but there's no mistaking how the presence of an audience changes something in him. I wonder if there's any correlation with his temperament.
Wow phankao, you have feisty children. I recalled watching an interview on arts central with kam ning the violinist and her dad. I was struck at how casual and buddy like the way she talked to her dad. I think the free environment she had at home really helped nurture her to be a musician.phankao:
My no.3 would just say \"don't play then don't play, lor!\", and he'll discover something else to do and still NOT practise. He'll never practise more than 20mins each time and not everyday some more. No one can force him to do anything. -
hi Dreamaurora ,
how would you like to prepare the students for their aural and sight-reading? I basically did it by myself as teacher seldom spent any effort on it, only focusing on practical. -
All these talks about sight-reading is making me confused. Don’t kids learn to play music pieces by reading all the notes themselves, and the teacher corrects them whenever they make mistakes? Can someone please enlighten me on what is expected of sight-reading?
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Phankao, did you send all your 4 kids for private piano lessons or Yamaha grp lessons? Wah, must be a huge financial investment!
phankao:
My no.3 would just say \"don't play then don't play, lor!\", and he'll discover something else to do and still NOT practise. He'll never practise more than 20mins each time and not everyday some more. No one can force him to do anything.
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Sight-reading is more than just reading music notes, there's alot more to it. But I'll let Dreamaurora explain in details to you, he's the expert here.
chamonix:
All these talks about sight-reading is making me confused. Don't kids learn to play music pieces by reading all the notes themselves, and the teacher corrects them whenever they make mistakes? Can someone please enlighten me on what is expected of sight-reading?
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Angelight:
Oh, I don't mean reading just the notes, but also observing other areas like accidentals, clefs, timing, etc. For tempo, my kids will start slow first and adjust the speed accordingly when they get more familiar with the pieces they are learning. Found this online http://www.wikihow.com/Practice-Sight-Reading-Piano-Music . Is there more to what is mentioned on the website?Sight-reading is more than just reading music notes, there's alot more to it. But I'll let Dreamaurora explain in details to you, he's the expert here.
chamonix:
All these talks about sight-reading is making me confused. Don't kids learn to play music pieces by reading all the notes themselves, and the teacher corrects them whenever they make mistakes? Can someone please enlighten me on what is expected of sight-reading?
Do teachers usually go through the new pieces with the students before they start working on them? -
For the purpose of the discussion, I am going to adopt the definition of sightreading as being able to play an easier piece several grades lower immediately without any preparation or practice.
A pianist’s ability to sightread well is determined by a few factors. The most important is familiarity with patterns and vocabularies of piano repertoire. Our mind learns music similar to written language. As we acquire knowledge of vocabularies and sentence structures, we can read a book much faster. Our mind perceives patterns in music similar as well. Lets take for example the humble 5 note rising scale pattern: CDEFG. When we actually play this on the piano, we don’t think those notes as 5 separate notes; that will be the equivalent of pronouncing a word syllable by syllable. Instead, we play them as a 5 note ascending scale starting on C instead. The next time we encounter a 5 note ascending pattern again, our mind will identify it visually and process it accordingly. So, the more musical ‘words’ we know, the better we sight read.
Unfortunately though, a student cannot expect to be proficient in sightreading by just learning 3 to 5 pieces per grade. The breadth of piano repertoire is simply too wide and students will not be exposed to all the genres and eras in their core pieces. This is why there are various sightreading books on the market such as joining the dots and right at sights that attempt to address this issue. These books can be used to expose students to more musical vocabulary. The extracts are short enough so they don’t take too much time away from practicing core pieces. Another alternative would be to assign various easier pieces and duets for students to work on; i prefer this approach. This way, students can acquire actual repertoire and be exposes to different eras and styles more easily. So let’s say a student cannot sightread swing rhythm well, just give short jazz pieces to fix the problem. Do note that these sight reading extracts are meant to be practiced and played like actual pieces to get most benefit out of them.
Beside acquiring as much repertoire as possible, a student will need to be proficient in theory as well. Piano music is harmony based and an extensive knowledge in scales and harmony will go a long way in helping to identify the notes and chords on the page page to turn them into musical ‘words’. E.g. C E G Bb are perceived as C7 chord. I encourage students if possible to sit for grade 8 all the way to acquire sufficient knowledge to interpret their pieces and to aid their sight reading. Alternatively, students can pick up improvising to train their harmonic knowledge if they are not fond of written papers so much. Improvising also has the added benefit of being able to use musical ‘words’ in a more hands on manner.
Lastly, listening/aural skill also plays a part in sight reading well. When we do actual sightreading e.g in exam, we need to read ahead and process the information few bars ahead. So when we are playing bar 1, our eyes should be scanning bar 2 and bar 3 to see what is ahead. So what actually happen is our mind will process the patterns (which hopefully we acquire the knowledge of beforehand) and transform them into aural/sonic approximations in our mind. These aural approximations are then conveyed to the fingers accordingly. So basically when we read a piece, we must be able to approximate how the piece would sound just by looking at the score visually. There is a saying that we can only play what we can hear. It is actually quite true when applied to sight reading.
I hope the write up above explains how sightreading skill is actually acquired. The skill is one that is very useful and very enjoyable to have once proficient. Nothing beats taking out random books and being able to just read and enjoy on the piano. -
kathyh:
For aural, normally teachers won't go through every week. Usually I only go through the aural requirements 3 or 4 months before the exam (more if the student is quite weak). Highly encouraged that students join a musical activity especially choir though. Sight reading I just ask my students to learn one simple piece or duet per week.hi Dreamaurora ,
how would you like to prepare the students for their aural and sight-reading? I basically did it by myself as teacher seldom spent any effort on it, only focusing on practical.
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