Possibilities for piano instruction

American Music Teacher, April-May, 2003 by Barbara J. Hendricks

The steps for developing this independent musicianship through audiation in formal piano instruction can be accomplished easily in the context of an enjoyable group lesson combined with additional private instruction. Marilyn Lowe suggests that students spend forty-five to sixty minutes in group activities revolving around four particular aspects of piano instruction (a) teaching audiation and skills: movement, singing and chanting; (b) developing keyboard technique; (c) encouraging keyboard exploration, creativity and improvisation; and (d) presenting keyboard pieces. (21) Instruction in the audiation/skills section would focus on rhythmically chanting, singing and moving with music that eventually will be performed on the keyboard. Continuous fluid movement, as well as other Laban movements, would be integrated throughout the lesson. With younger children, the rhythmic movement first would focus on the smaller microbeat and eventually move to the bigger macrobeat. Later, students would be asked to layer the three components of rhythm: the small beat, large beat and melodic rhythm of the piece. In addition, rhythm and tonal pattern instruction would continue to help students develop a music vocabulary. Initially, the patterns would be sung or chanted on a neutral syllable such as "bah" for rhythm patterns and "bum" for tonal patterns. When the students are able to accurately imitate, solfege syllables would be introduced to help them remember and organize the patterns. Once students can associate the syllables, they would need additional practice recognizing the tonality or meter of familiar music. Once these steps are completed, students can begin to learn to read and write the tonal and rhythm notation of the patterns that are now familiar to them. Soon they are performing pieces that begin on F as do or on G as la. To assure technical as well as tonal and rhythmic understanding are well in place before students are asked to coordinate these skills with reading from the staff, keyboard performance pieces initially would be taught by rote.

Because the use of solfege is key to bringing what students hear to learning to play an instrument, it is important to consider which tonal and rhythm solfege systems to use in instruction. The most important goal when choosing syllables to associate with tonal and rhythm patterns is to make sure the syllables are based on musical syntax. (22) Of the familiar tonal systems--the interval names, numbers, fixed-do, moveable-do with a do-based minor, and moveable-do with a la-based minor, the only one that is based on syntax is the moveable-do with a la-based minor. Familiar rhythm systems are eurhythmic words, mnemonic words, 1-e-and-a syllables, Kodaly syllables and beat-function syllables. A rhythm system based on beat function rather than phonology, notation or theory is the best choice for helping students organize the sounds they are audiating. This beat-function system is easily learned: (1) Du (pronounced doo) is always the macrobeat. (2) Duple meters use du-de (doo-day) for beat divisions; triple meters use du-da-di (doo-dah-dee). (3) Further divisions in either meter use the syllable ta. (4) Unusual meters with uneven macrobeats use the letter b for divisions, such as du-be-du-ba-bi.