Separating the Reading of Rhythm from Pitch

This is a screen grab from the internet taken from a book that uses pre-staff note reading. Many piano tutor books such as Alfred's Premier Piano Course and Faber Piano Adventures employs pre-staff reading taking up to half the number of pages in the beginners level 1 book. It would be a mistake for piano teachers to skip over these first 30 pages of the books to go right into the pages where pitch is introduced on the staff. Many piano teachers who themselves were taught on the Middle C approach are at a loss at how to teach pre-staff reading to their beginner piano students.

Why is rhythm separated from note reading?
Some teachers may ask, "What is wrong with the old system of John Thompson and Schaum, which teaches rhythm AND note reading at the word 'go!' when a child starts learning piano?". There is nothing wrong, but over the years, piano pedagogues have found that fluent reading is actually not by reading note names. That is not how good piano performers and sight readings process notes on a page and turn them into sounds out of the piano.

Let us conduct an experiment, look at the word below:

BUTTERFLY

How does your brain take in that information? Does it recognise the entire word? Does it think of the meaning behind the word? Or, does it just see the individual letters of the alphabet spelling the word 'butterfly'? 

Similarly, look at this:

How does your brain process this information? Notice there are no clef in front of the notes. But what your brain is probably processing is the intervallic relationship from one note to the next.

This is actually a more fluent reading process. It is more wholistic, taking in the big picture rather than the sum of it's parts. You are able to get a flow, rather than sporadic 'typing' action from one note to the next and ignoring the melodic flow.

The pros of pre-staff reading is:
1. Young beginners at the piano can focus on building a good hand shape.
2. They learn high and low sounds on the piano, and apply that to reading Directionally. Going up and going down, once they have placed their hands on the the starting spot indicated by the picture on the keyboard.
3. Starting on the black keys as opposed to the white keys of the keyboard, anchors the students to arch and curve their fingers. It also points them out to the 2 and 3 black key pattens on the piano which will come in handy to find the white keys later on. Eg. The 2 black keys help students to find all the 'CDE' on the piano and the 3 black keys help students to find firstly 'F' and 'B' and then 'AG'.
4. Only the concept of playing with both hands, maintaining a steady pulse and feeling 'crotchets' and 'minims' (quarter and half notes) is taught and reinforced in pre-staff reading.

What pre-staff reading does is to lay a good FOUNDATION to learning how to read music.

Dorothy Chia is a  piano teacher and author of 'Piano Pedagogy - The Questions', 'Piano Pedagogy - The Answers', Theory Explorer for the Young Musician, books 1 and 2, available at Kinokuniya, MPH, Yamaha, Gramercy, Renner, Music Bookroom and Chiu Piano. Dorothy holds a Master of Music in Piano Pedagogy and Performance from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and is the 1992 DH Baldwin Fellowship winner.

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Middle C Approach

Most piano teachers or students would be familiar with John Thompsen, Easiest Piano Course (with dwalfs on the cover) or the Modern Piano Course (red book). John Thompsen is a classic case of teaching note recognition using the Middle C approach. Other piano tutor books using such an approach include: Edna Mae Piano Course, Leila Fletcher Course, John W. Schaum etc. Most of these books were published in the 60s and 70s. Books currently in the market using this teaching approach include: Lina Ng Piano Lesson Made Easy, Poco Piano for Young Children etc.

In the Middle C Approach, students are taught Middle C on the grand staff in the beginning lesson.

On subsequent new pieces, one note is added at a time. So, first week is Middle C; second week is Treble MC, D; third week is Bass clef MC, B; then Treble MC, D, E; and Bass MC, B, A etc.
On top of note recognition, rhythm, meter is taught simultaneously together with the note reading.

The pros of this approach is:

• It is systemetic teaching 1 note at a time.
• It utilizes the middle range of the piano, which fits nicely to the comfort zone of little children.
• It begins with the thumb and work its way outwards to all 5 fingers.

The cons of this approach is:

• This approach teaches note reading through 'note spelling'.
• The piano has 88 keys, but only 10 keys are explored by the end of the first book.
• While emphasis is built on note identification, not much foundation is laid on a steady pulse and rhythm.
• There might be an association of finger numbers to specific keys at the piano since children spend an excessive amount of time on the same keyboard area. Hence, children may think finger 1 is the equivalent to Middle C.
• Limited chord playing.

Concepts such as intervals, chords, transposition, major and minor keys are generally not explored or minimally touched upon. Creative exercises like improvisation or technique and sight reading are not explored sufficiently.

This method approach has had much success in the early years as it was the market leader in the 60s-70s. But much research into Piano Pedagogy has shown that the Middle C approach is old fashioned and outdated. Newer and updated ways of teaching music has evolved.

Are you still a teacher using the outdated Middle C Approach in your piano studio teaching?
What new methods are there?
Stay tuned to find out more.......


Dorothy Chia is a  piano teacher and author of 'Piano Pedagogy - The Questions', 'Piano Pedagogy - The Answers', Theory Explorer for the Young Musician, books 1 and 2, available at Kinokuniya, MPH, Yamaha, Gramercy, Renner, Music Bookroom and Chiu Piano. Dorothy holds a Master of Music in Piano Pedagogy and Performance from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and is the 1992 DH Baldwin Fellowship winner.

Are You Teaching Your Students to read in an Outdated Method?

Every piano teacher laying the foundation of teaching young beginners at the piano is tasked with the very important responsiblity of teaching students how to read music notes. A non-music person always marvel at how a music person can decipher the 'tow gays' (bean sprouts) ala music notation on the printed page and out of the musical instrument, produce such heavenly music. Little do they know that the reading of music notation entails a process of:

1. Note names and pitch recognition
2. Rhythm notation and execution
3. Eye-to-Hand execution of music notation into playing an instrument

That is a lot to process from symbol to sound. In the subsequent blog postings, l will be examining this mysterious process of learning to read Music. Every serious piano teacher who is serious about creating music literate students, stay tuned to this blog for more.

Dorothy Chia is a  piano teacher and author of 'Piano Pedagogy - The Questions', 'Piano Pedagogy - The Answers', Theory Explorer for the Young Musician, books 1 and 2, available at Kinokuniya, MPH, Yamaha, Gramercy, Renner, Music Bookroom and Chiu Piano.