There's a reason why piano earned it's appellation as “king of the instruments”.
Piano is one of the few instruments that can provide melody, harmony, polyphony, and rhythm with a multi-octave range.
Next to familiarizing students to the core principles of my pyramid, namely, engaged listening, self-discipline, and a proactive mindset, introducing piano to entire schools, like Castle Hills Elementary School’s 600 students, New Castle Elementary School’s 700 students, or Wilbur Elementary School’s 1,200 students, was one of the greatest joys and accomplishments of my teaching career.
Teaching piano to one child is much different than teaching to twenty-five students.
Kids who parents have signed them up for piano lessons usually have some background with the instrument.
When I was working in Title 1 schools, many of the children had never touched a piano before I introduced my music room piano lab.
Much of what I was doing in my music room piano curriculum was playing developmental catch-up, especially with students’ fine motor abilities.
Every kid deserves the opportunity to play piano, starting with what all little kids first love to do – “climb the mountain”.
We started with “climbing the mountain”; starting at the bass side and sequentially playing each black key – no skipping allowed! - all the way to the “top of the mountain” and then back down the mountain.
We would climb it again with the white keys and eventually chromatically with all the white and black keys in order.
Want to use only your index finger the first few times you do it?
No problem!
Eventually I would demonstrate what using the index and ring finger looked like. And then introduce the thumb.
Eventually we got to five fingers for five keys.
I would invite the kids all around the electric piano so they could see my hands and fingers up close. Modeling at this stage was so important.
“If you can make your hands look and move like mine, you have a great shot at sounding like me, too!”
Our chromatic xylophones usually had a range of a tenth, with the low note being a C.
I put a round red sticker on all of the low Cs and a yellow sticker on the high Cs.
Correspondingly, I put similar stickers on all of our keyboards: blue on C3, red on C4, yellow on C5, and blue on C6.
This facilitated easily and quickly switching back and forth from xylophone and piano.
When two children shared a piano, it was easy to say, “The pilot uses the blue and red; the co-pilot uses yellow and blue”.
They would immediately be ready to play in matched hand position.
While I transferred and generalized music and concepts between the xylophone and piano at the outset, I didn't waste any time focusing on the polyphonic aspect of the piano, the ability to play multiple notes at the same time.
There are some general music teachers, primarily band and orchestra players, that, when given the opportunity to work with a piano lab and a class of kids, dwell for inordinate amounts of time on playing single line melodies.
While playing single-note lines is a desirable skill, one not to be scoffed at, it doesn’t take advantage of the core strength and ability of the piano – the ability to play many notes at the same time.
Vocalists especially need the ability to play a melody occasionally to check themselves with pitches. I'm often disheartened when a vocalist needs me to play a melody on the piano that they need to sing.
Every singer needs to be able to be able to plunk out melodies, maybe not performance worthy lines of music, but accurate pitches to help them learn lit.
In elementary school, with the limited time that we had, much of our initial effort was spent nailing down those simple five note diatonic melodies, from C4 to G4, D4 to A4, and all the corresponding variations.
But we quickly moved into polyphony, namely, intervals.
While we always used five fingers over five keys on both hands, I would introduce intervals in a visual way.
Let me give you an example.
“Let’s play a song like “Hot Cross Buns” just with your right index finger.
I know, I know! We're're breaking our 'five fingers on five keys" rule but just work with me!
Now use your right hand index finger and your middle finger to make the shape of the letter “V”.
Make sure you have a big space in between the tips of your two fingers as you form the V. That way there will be a piano key that doesn’t get pushed in between your index and ring finger.
Now, when you play the first note of “Hot Cross Buns” with your index finger, the left side of the V, your right side of the V, your middle finger, will skip over the note F and play G. Don't those two notes make a pretty sound?
Now keeping your fingers wide apart, let your index finger play the melody to “Hot Cross Buns” and allow your ring finger to travel along with it, always keeping that open space in between the two sides of the V.”
I used another visual for teaching chords and, you guessed it - I used the letter “W”.
After all, if I've already taught the letter V, why not generalize that to the letter W?
As far as assigning fingers to chord tones on the piano, I wasn't that picky at first.
I let kids experiment playing C, E, and G simultaneously with three fingers on either hand.
We took advantage of a “theme with variation” paradigm on piano.
That basic C chord was our theme.
We had tons of variations on it: playing it with the right hand, with the left hand, with both hands at the same time, alternating back and forth, creating a three four rhythm, left-right-right, left-right-right, starting at the lowest end of the keyboard and playing the C chord toward the top, starting at the top of the mountain and playing the C chord going down, arpeggiating it going up or going down with either hand or both simultaneously.
And all the while, we would be our repertoire of singing folk songs to our C drone chord.
In many ways, I wanted kids to have the ability to play melodies and to branch out into beginning piano books as they got older but I also wanted them to be able to harp movable chords on the keyboard within several weeks.
Harping is generally a guitar concept transfer to the piano.
Just as guitarist primarily play harmonies, chords, and rhythm, the same can be done on piano to accompany a vocal or instrumental melody.
Just ask Elton John, Billy Joel, John Legend, or Alicia Keys.
Kids, as well as adults, love being able to play chords and sing songs.
That was the goal.
Not to necessarily be a virtuoso but leave that option open for the future, to be conversant with the instrument, to make a sound that makes the performer as well as the listener smile.
To acquire the skills to make music for the rest of their lives.
Piano is one of the few instruments that can provide melody, harmony, polyphony, and rhythm with a multi-octave range.
Next to familiarizing students to the core principles of my pyramid, namely, engaged listening, self-discipline, and a proactive mindset, introducing piano to entire schools, like Castle Hills Elementary School’s 600 students, New Castle Elementary School’s 700 students, or Wilbur Elementary School’s 1,200 students, was one of the greatest joys and accomplishments of my teaching career.
Teaching piano to one child is much different than teaching to twenty-five students.
Kids who parents have signed them up for piano lessons usually have some background with the instrument.
When I was working in Title 1 schools, many of the children had never touched a piano before I introduced my music room piano lab.
Much of what I was doing in my music room piano curriculum was playing developmental catch-up, especially with students’ fine motor abilities.
Every kid deserves the opportunity to play piano, starting with what all little kids first love to do – “climb the mountain”.
We started with “climbing the mountain”; starting at the bass side and sequentially playing each black key – no skipping allowed! - all the way to the “top of the mountain” and then back down the mountain.
We would climb it again with the white keys and eventually chromatically with all the white and black keys in order.
Want to use only your index finger the first few times you do it?
No problem!
Eventually I would demonstrate what using the index and ring finger looked like. And then introduce the thumb.
Eventually we got to five fingers for five keys.
I would invite the kids all around the electric piano so they could see my hands and fingers up close. Modeling at this stage was so important.
“If you can make your hands look and move like mine, you have a great shot at sounding like me, too!”
Our chromatic xylophones usually had a range of a tenth, with the low note being a C.
I put a round red sticker on all of the low Cs and a yellow sticker on the high Cs.
Correspondingly, I put similar stickers on all of our keyboards: blue on C3, red on C4, yellow on C5, and blue on C6.
This facilitated easily and quickly switching back and forth from xylophone and piano.
When two children shared a piano, it was easy to say, “The pilot uses the blue and red; the co-pilot uses yellow and blue”.
They would immediately be ready to play in matched hand position.
While I transferred and generalized music and concepts between the xylophone and piano at the outset, I didn't waste any time focusing on the polyphonic aspect of the piano, the ability to play multiple notes at the same time.
There are some general music teachers, primarily band and orchestra players, that, when given the opportunity to work with a piano lab and a class of kids, dwell for inordinate amounts of time on playing single line melodies.
While playing single-note lines is a desirable skill, one not to be scoffed at, it doesn’t take advantage of the core strength and ability of the piano – the ability to play many notes at the same time.
Vocalists especially need the ability to play a melody occasionally to check themselves with pitches. I'm often disheartened when a vocalist needs me to play a melody on the piano that they need to sing.
Every singer needs to be able to be able to plunk out melodies, maybe not performance worthy lines of music, but accurate pitches to help them learn lit.
In elementary school, with the limited time that we had, much of our initial effort was spent nailing down those simple five note diatonic melodies, from C4 to G4, D4 to A4, and all the corresponding variations.
But we quickly moved into polyphony, namely, intervals.
While we always used five fingers over five keys on both hands, I would introduce intervals in a visual way.
Let me give you an example.
“Let’s play a song like “Hot Cross Buns” just with your right index finger.
I know, I know! We're're breaking our 'five fingers on five keys" rule but just work with me!
Now use your right hand index finger and your middle finger to make the shape of the letter “V”.
Make sure you have a big space in between the tips of your two fingers as you form the V. That way there will be a piano key that doesn’t get pushed in between your index and ring finger.
Now, when you play the first note of “Hot Cross Buns” with your index finger, the left side of the V, your right side of the V, your middle finger, will skip over the note F and play G. Don't those two notes make a pretty sound?
Now keeping your fingers wide apart, let your index finger play the melody to “Hot Cross Buns” and allow your ring finger to travel along with it, always keeping that open space in between the two sides of the V.”
I used another visual for teaching chords and, you guessed it - I used the letter “W”.
After all, if I've already taught the letter V, why not generalize that to the letter W?
As far as assigning fingers to chord tones on the piano, I wasn't that picky at first.
I let kids experiment playing C, E, and G simultaneously with three fingers on either hand.
We took advantage of a “theme with variation” paradigm on piano.
That basic C chord was our theme.
We had tons of variations on it: playing it with the right hand, with the left hand, with both hands at the same time, alternating back and forth, creating a three four rhythm, left-right-right, left-right-right, starting at the lowest end of the keyboard and playing the C chord toward the top, starting at the top of the mountain and playing the C chord going down, arpeggiating it going up or going down with either hand or both simultaneously.
And all the while, we would be our repertoire of singing folk songs to our C drone chord.
In many ways, I wanted kids to have the ability to play melodies and to branch out into beginning piano books as they got older but I also wanted them to be able to harp movable chords on the keyboard within several weeks.
Harping is generally a guitar concept transfer to the piano.
Just as guitarist primarily play harmonies, chords, and rhythm, the same can be done on piano to accompany a vocal or instrumental melody.
Just ask Elton John, Billy Joel, John Legend, or Alicia Keys.
Kids, as well as adults, love being able to play chords and sing songs.
That was the goal.
Not to necessarily be a virtuoso but leave that option open for the future, to be conversant with the instrument, to make a sound that makes the performer as well as the listener smile.
To acquire the skills to make music for the rest of their lives.
Catch me next time in “Stacking Skills for Success: Piano - Part 4”!
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