My experience tells me not!

Many young children have to be taught to hear the pulse of music, and most of us have had to learn to keep a steady pulse. One needs to practise, sometimes, with a metronome.

My feeling is that before the age of the gramophone, musicians worried less about tempo, and went with the flow - one only has to listen to some 78s (transfers!) to hear that old way of playing. It's not that they couldn't play in time; and it isn't (usually) idiosyncracy: what they are doing is playing with flow. I like it!

Here are a couple of anecdotal tips for early grade aural tests: 

(1) I find that many young children can't clap in time, but they CAN tap their foot in time. Is that a common experience? Why would that be? Is foot-tapping entrainment, but clapping isn't - also, they try and clap like seals, rather than tap with the fingers of one hand into the other.

(2) Most young children can count 2-in-the-bar, but some seem to have difficulty with 3. Perhaps 3-in-the-bar is a more unusual time signature in these days when almost every pop song is in 4, or perhaps it has always been so. I have been known to tell ABRSM exam candidates, that if they aren't sure whether the piece in the Aural Tests in in 2-time or 3-time, that it is most likely in 3-time. I know that's bad of me, but it does usually work.

---------

Notes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrainment_(biomusicology)

 

Don't play the wrong notes! Does that sound simplistic? Bear with me. 

I auditioned a few years back to be an ABRSM examiner (they didn't take me, after it emerged that I couldn't listen and write at the same time, which was something I didn't know about myself). Anyway, there was a Grade 8 singing candidate who messed up the sight-reading. She knew, of course, because she was very good. I offered a second go, and in muy naivety was really surprised that it was pretty much exactly the same.

I've since found that this is common - even when people know something is wrong, they will sing or play it wrong again.

Hence the mantra (well, my mantra!) "You need to play that again, not because it is wrong, but because it is right". Students need repetition to get things right, and then they need more repetition to keep them right. Repeticio est Mater Studiorum!

Here's what I've learned: when you play or sing wrong notes the brain learns them - it is almost as if the brain is undiscriminating, saying to itself "That's now s/he played it the last time, that must be how it goes; I'll do it again that way". This is probably helpful when out hunting on the plains, but a real problem in the studio.

Students are impatient, worse luck. They need to Hasten Slowly (that's another mantra!)

 

I constantly re-iterate "Pitch, Rhythm, Fingering" when students are embarking on learning a new piece - to help their learning. Pitch and Rhythm alone are not enough. My understanding of the the science of performance skills, is that you should play the music the same each time - if the fingering is different each time, then the performer never learns the piece in a deep way ("muscle memory") - they could conduct it, because they know how it goes, but they can't deliver it consistently! (I suppose in an ideal situation, one might insist that students also learn dynamics and articulation with their initial study).

But which fingering?

Apparently Claudio Arrau insisted that following the composer's fingering is a "cultural, historical, and perhaps even ethical [question]".(1)

Debussy, in the forward to the Douze Etudes, was of the opposite view. Much more pragmatic:

"One cannot impose a fingering that can suit the different formations of different hands ... One is never better served than by oneself. Let us seek our [own] fingerings!"(2)

I notice that the first book in Thomas Johnston's Read and Play Series (called Beginner's Tunes) does not provide fingering at the start of the pieces - that is such a brilliant idea: it forces the student to look ahead and see the whole phrase, so they know which finger to start on.

I tell my students, that unless they have a better idea, they should at least give the supplied fingering the benefit of the doubt, and try it first. If it doesn't suit, then they should change it. On no account do I allow them to change the fingering and not mark it in. I know from experience what happens if you do: in the middle of the concert, you look at the music, and say to yourself "Oh! I'm supposed to put the 4th finger on the C." (which you've never done before!). Then all is lost: you are distracted, the fingering is wrong, you lose your concentration, and the notes.

Be warned!

(1) quoted in The Science and Psychology of Music Performance, Parncutt and McPherson, Oxford University Press, 2002, p297

(2) Debussy, preface to the Douze Etudes, 1916

 

I wrote some piano music recently, and had my students perform it in a concert. Gosh! I was much more enthusiastic about drawing their attention to the details of the score than I think I usually am. 

I am vexed by students who are unobservant. I ask them to reconsider their prospective job choices, and advise against being a detective: both the performer and the detective look for clues. Is that unkind? Probably.

Sticking with the jobs analogy, I explain to my students that I am not a magician - when I know how something goes and they don't, mostly I am simply reading what it says on the page. I often don't have any more knowledge of the piece than they do.

I do remember, in the dim and distant past, my own piano teacher (who was married to a Very Famous Composer) remarking somewhat drily that it takes longer for a composer to write down performance directions than it does for him to miss them out: the least a performer can do is not ignore them.

Quite.

 

"How long is a dotted crotchet?". Most music students who are past the basics of Preparatory Grade can answer that one: "One-and-a-half beats! Although "One-and-a-half crotchet beats!" would be a better answer, and one would need, as a teacher, also to check that the answer to "How long is a dotted minim?" wasn't: "Two-and-a-half beats!". Nevertheless, it is clear that the student understands the principle, that they "get it".

The dot in a dotted crotchet, of course, stands for a tied quaver, and I find that seeing it as such helps to secure an accurate execution of the rhythm. See the section on "Dots after notes" on this page: 

http://www.fergusblack.com/tips/theory_for_singers.html

A problem comes when counting beats: a dotted crotchet at the start of a bar comes off after the second beat - maybe it is just me, but I find it counterintuitive that a note which is one-and-a-half beats long, come off after the count of 2. (It's a bit like in a book, where you turn back to get to the front).

The reason, of course, is the pesky zero - a one beat note starts on the count of 1 and comes off on the count of two; a two beat note starts on the count of one and comes off on the count of 3, and so on.

We don't count beats in the way we count birthdays. When you celebrate your eighth birthday, you are celebrating the end of your eighth year. "When you are born, you are aged zero, on your first birthday you have been alive for one year, on your second birthday you have been alive for two years, and so on".

We count beats with what I believe is called "inclusive counting".

We count intervals in music, the same way - A to E is a fifth (we count the A as 1, the B as 2 etc). A to E is not a fourth - even though that is a popular choice in my experience (nor is it a third - we are not counting the missing notes between A and E).

All this brings me to ask "When was zero "invented" in the west?". Well, the answer seems to be somewhere in the Middle Ages, between 1200 and 1500 - see this article:–

http://www.gap-system.org/~history/HistTopics/Zero.html

Which must mean that the way we count music is older than that. Doesn't it?

Secondary Schools' Countdown to 2014

On 20th July 2011, the UK Government said it was bringing in "strict new criteria" from 2014 for the practical courses included in school league tables. Music exams (e.g. Grade 6 Piano) are to be counted in the tables for the first time. Exams passed at grade 6 or higher will be included.

I wonder what this is supposed to mean, and what difference it will make for me working as a music peripatetic in schools. Will the schools that my private pupils attend start taking an interest in their exam progress? (You might gather that they haven't up till now). Perhaps they will insist that the students are entered for exams through the school.

(As an aside, I am pretty sure that students who study with me out of school do better in exams than those who study in school - although this is a gut feeling that I ought to check. If true, it may be partly because the exam is more 'special' if it is held out of school. So it may be that switching from external centre exams to school exams will result in marks going down. Hmm!)

A colleague once described her feeling that the music peri was the fly on the end of the nose of school administrations - something that buzzed around and had the odd bit of attention now and again. Certainly many peris will feel that their work is not integrated into the school's musical life as fully as it might be, shall we say. So, if one outcome of this change is that schools encourage students to study practical music, and support it more fully, I'm all for it.

This BBC article has some details: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14218920

 

There are too many scales in ABRSM piano exams: far more than for other instruments - and I have sat across the table from the chief examiner and told her so. Also: why are there just scales and arpeggios and not technical exercises, as for other instruments?

 

Anyway, I can pretty much predict what students will find harder at the higher grades:

 

• Diminished and Dominant Sevenths

  • Minor scales starting on black notes

  • Scales in thirds and sixths - especially the black note minors again

 

Thank goodness that contrary motion scales are dropped in Grade 8 - don’t get me wrong: I practise contrary motion scales - they wake me up at the start of practice sessions - they sort the swans from the geese, as it were. 

 

I've started to post materials on-line to help my students get to grips with these three knotty areas. I hope you find them helpful - the Guide to Playing Grade 8 ABRSM Dominant and Diminished Seventh Arpeggios is at:

http://www.fergusblack.com/tips/dominant_sevenths.html

It's not just that students can't get their fingers around ornaments on the piano - although the speed and delicacy is often a problem; I think that many players are confused when they shouldn't play the note printed (e.g. in baroque trills, they have to start on the upper auxiliary - they see a C and have to play D first.

Also, there is the problem of remembering what the different signs mean. Even intermediate players don't come across ornament signs very often. In fact, it's not until they have to learn them for ABRSM Grade 5 Theory, that they do actually learn them. But, without the context of using ornaments, it can be difficult to remember them.

I've written a little piece this Summer to show the different ornaments. "Piece" is perhaps too grand a word - but it is more than a table, although I have given it a subtitle of "Explication"!

You can find it here: 

http://www.fergusblack.com/theory_ornaments/

I recently came across this comment by Richard Egarr of the AAM, in an interview for the Cambridge Alumnus Magazine. Does anyone else do this? I try and involve singers in my choirs with the process of deciding how the music goes: often I get “Why don’t you just tell us?”, or even worse, after the concert, “Sorry that came apart, we had rehearsed it at different speeds and couldn’t remember which one to go at.” (“Try watching!”)

I wonder if he can say that because he works with the very best.

I do quite a bit of work with blind musicians, who very much follow Egarr’s injunction about pencils! I am the opposite - I write everything into the copy.

David Willcocks is alleged to have said that every choir member should bring three pencils to rehearsals - one for themselves, one for the singer on their right and one for the singer on their left.

Seeing what choir member actually write in their scores can be salutary - I once offered to rub markings out of library scores after a concert. Heavens! Some of the scores were virgin - unmarked, others were an untidy mess - too many had breath marks in the wrong place, dynamics on the wrong page, and so on.

What is one to do?