Of the hundreds of thousands of children who start to learn the piano around the world each year nearly all of them will say, later in life, that, despite their years of piano lessons, today they can’t play a note. And then they’ll tell you about a family member who never had a single lesson and who can play anything by ear. This incredible disconnect between lessons and life-long skill doesn’t get discussed much by piano teachers, despite the overwhelming evidence that the hundreds of thousands of brand-new beginner pianists will not grow into adults who can actually play the piano. There is always the exception to the rule, and of course every piano teacher is one of those exceptions who found that piano lessons did help them become better pianists. And so they teach pretty much exactly the way that they were taught. This even comes down to using the same method books with their students that their teachers
WOW, said the Owl
Sumptuous illustrations and energetic (but not complicated) text are the order of the day when looking for great books to read with 2 year-olds, and WOW, said the Owl meets the brief to perfection. Subtitled A BOOK ABOUT COLOURS, this brand new book from Tim Hopgood could not be simpler – a little owl is curious about what the world looks like in the daytime. And it is astonishingly beautiful, with each new moment in the day bringing the little owl a new perspective on what it is like to see the world (including ‘her’ tree) in colour. Each illustration has so much to explore that a patient parent or caregiver can happily spend twenty minutes with a toddler reading the story, while the text is equally well suited to a quick couple of minutes just before bed. Tim Hopgood has recently won an ’emerging’ illustrator award in the UK, and the inference I (excitedly) make from this is that
How hard is a piece of music?
For piano teachers working in countries with a strong examination culture (this means anywhere that is, or once was, part of the former British Empire/current Commonwealth) there is a general consensus about how hard certain pieces of piano music are. And this general consensus revolves around an idea of ‘grading’ – that a piece of music ‘is’ Grade One, or Grade Five, or Grade Eight. No one ever talks very much about what makes a piece have Grade One-like qualities rather than the qualities of a Grade Two piece. But, within a teaching culture where the lesson is almost entirely focussed on the exam, teachers develop an acceptance of the gradings given to pieces by the examination boards they choose to use, and this becomes the basis for intuiting a degree of difficulty for new repertoire. If the piece ‘feels’ like Grade Four, then Grade Four it must be. The challenge to grading new repertoire is most keenly felt when grading
Fabulous Children’s Books
Children’s books have always been seriously fabulous (think Peter Rabbit) but somehow during the last decade the standard has become truly stunning, whether we are talking design, wit, educational value, moral lessons, illustrations or intelligence. My most exciting find (since the birth of my son 29 months ago) has been a writer/illustrator called Petr Horacek. I came across “Beep, Beep” and “Choo, Choo” either in late 2007 (which must have been the moment they were in the book shops) or early 2008. Absolutely perfect for my then not-yet 1-year-old. Since then we’ve collected Petr Horacek’s earlier books “Stawberries are Red” (an introduction to colours) and “What is Black and White?” which won awards back in 2002, and just this week we bought “Silly Suzy Goose” (2006). The first four books I’ve mentioned are board books, and simply perfect for the pre-2-year-old. There are die-cuts, glorious illustrations, and energetic (but not plot-driven) text. “Silly Suzy Goose” was this week’s addition to
Educational Piano Music
There’s so much of it in print, so little of it that you want to use. In this blog I’m planning to work my way through the contemporary (meaning somewhat recent, or at least, still in copyright) piano music I love and use, as well as reviewing new publications I am looking at in my quest for great new material. The shame of it seems to be that for many piano teachers Bartok’s Mikrokosmos drew a line in history, and they are reluctant to use anything very much that has been written since – unless it is just ‘for fun’. Further, the profession’s collective propensity to start beginners on white notes with both thumbs moored on middle C makes some of the brilliant contemporary contributions to pedagogical repertoire to be (at first glance) far too advanced, when in fact these pieces are perfectly designed to celebrate what young fingers, wrists, arms and brains (belonging to beginners) can and do enjoy
Assorted media stupidities
A host of radio and tv shows said earlier this year that Australia could not sustain a Daily Show type program because all the journalists know each other too well, and even with the range of opinions various establishment media will give voice to, there just isn’t the diversity of views to create adequate fodder for an entertaining tv experience. I suspect he’s right on the first count, and that alone. The nightly news on any commercial tv station is filled with laughable vocabulary problems, most recently a Channel Nine reporter claiming that his sources (for a story that had proven to be completely erroneous) were ‘impeachable’. The reporter was shooting for ‘impeccable’ I’m guessing. I still treasure the news I heard over the radio a few years ago that Aboriginal ancestors were performing welcoming ceremonies in the Botanic Gardens. Talkback hosts either don’t understand arithmetic, statistics, or both. Recently I heard a talk show host announce that it would
The blog begins….
Previously: A childhood in New Zealand, desperate to start piano lessons so I could compose more easily, not enough books in the school library but plenty of sexism to confront and theology to deconstruct. Growing up on a farm, growing up in a city, sick through enough of my childhood that I didn’t quite expect to grow up. Composing came easily, but what to choose to say to the world, and who to decide to be? Sometimes charting a perilous course between incompatible identities, irreconcilable expectations. Choosing to change the culture. The culture I’m changing in 2009 is the culture of piano teaching (see “P Plate Piano”, “Getting to” and other topics in weeks to come), but this very niche educational market is only one terrain I hope to help change (for the better).
Elissa Milne 