Should “Classical” Piano Lessons Teach Reading First or Aural Skills First?
This is an interesting topic because on the one hand it shouldn’t even be a question and on the other hand it’s totally understandable why it is a concern amongst teachers who consider themselves to be “serious piano pedagogues”.
I like to think I’m a “serious piano pedagogue” so I understand the concern of any method that falls under some type of “Fad”, ‘Fashion” or “Learn the Piano in One Day” category.
However…
Many years ago I received a transfer student who had been “learning by ear”. She could whizz up and down the keyboard performing impressive pieces but she had no idea what a line or space was. I set out to teach her to read music and she hated every second. Needless to say, she didn’t stay with lessons long and I came away with the FIRM opinion that learning by ear was not just a hindrance but that it was harmful.
Sometimes when I talk about the PianoForte method and how it teaches students to play the piano by building a foundation of aural skills I see a teacher’s eyes glaze and I know they are thinking something similar along the lines and this must being a play-the-piano-quick scheme.
I totally get it - I was that teacher.
But then I was introduced to advanced solfa singing and Kodaly training and suddenly something that seemed silly became so utterly important that I realised I had a huge missing element in my teaching.
Fundamentally:
Aural Training is NOT the same as “playing-by-ear”.
Of course good aural skills makes playing by ear possible, but it also makes everything else possible and that included reading music on the stave and understanding compositional harmony. Good aural skills makes it possible for a piano student to sing all the voices of a Bach Fugue. - or to sing one voice whilst playing the others.
Aural training allows students to:
• Understand chord progressions and big structural themes.
• Sight read quickly in any key.
• Perform the lovely nuances of phrasing that can’t be described in words.
• Possess a rich aural palette of sound qualities that will help them make a musical colour change or show the difference between a section that is pp and one that is ppp.
The PianoForte Method teaches students aural skills alongside piano playing:
• Students are introduced to the solfa syllables that will eventually become the Diatonic Scale using Moveable Do.
• Lessons involve lots of singing and music making away from the piano. The goal is to wake up their ear to musical sound and then build upon basic musical ideas so that they can hear it and then understand how it is notated.
• Students spend several weeks at this level reading pre-notation and getting to know how the piano keyboard functions, how to move their hands and how to read basic note values.
• Notational reading is introduced with Landmark Notes alongside solfa reading so that singing and sound comes first and supports notational reading.
• Playing ‘hands together’ becomes ‘playing in harmony’ and students learn to hear, sing and read the different voices in piano repertoire.
• All major scales are learned through singing and reading music in each key by finding Do and singing by sight.
• Students playing repertoire and sing the solfa along in their mind.
This type of learning is not just playing by ear. It is genuine musicianship. It also takes away the abstract quality of reading music and notation can be seen for what is actually is - a crude symbolic representation of musical sound.
Aural skills are utterly necessary in the development of a musician.
Order the PianoForte method for your students here:
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A piano method book for beginners that develops musicianship, technique and the basics of reading. Level One builds a strong foundation in Moveable Do Solfa that prepares students for Level Two when they learn to read notation. Students love learning the music in Level One. Each piece is fun to play and perform.
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Level Two is a natural progression from Level One. Children learn to read music notation using Moveable Do Solfa and Landmark Notes. This provides a solid understanding of note reading and musicianship. The musical pieces are fun and prepare them for more advanced reading and playing in Level Three.
**The price is converted into USD at checkout at the current exchange rate. American orders of the PianoForte books are printed and shipped within the United States.