Music Teachers National Association

Shut Up and Read! (part 2)

Author(s): Allen Giles
Source: American Music Teacher, Vol. 45, No. 4 (February/March 1996), pp. 20-21
Published by: Music Teachers National Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/43539123
Accessed: 05-03-2019 05:55 UTC

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 Shut Up and Read!
(part 2)

In the
I raise
ideas r
(p. 6,
Musica
and so
while
neousl
and un
these

Mcí ódy
s s
Melodic sequences - motives and
phrases - in the music that beginning
music students generally encounter, are
usually derived from scale forms. They
will include few, if any, notes that do not
occur in major, minor or modal scales.
Examine any beginning instrumental
method book. Most folksong-like melo-
Allen Giles is Professor Emeritus of
music at Golden West College in
Huntington Be¿ich, California, where he
has taught piano and piano pedagogy
since 1972 . He is the author ¿^Beginning
Piano- An Adult Approach published by
the Theodore Presser Company , and holds
the MTNA Master Teacher Certificate.
dies in these books are based on diatonic
scales. Furthermore, most of the intervals
in them are scale steps, with occasional
thirds and, more rarely, fourths and
fifths. Once a student can play a five-note
scale in any key and can play intervals of
a third, fourth or fifth in that key (for
pianists, a scale step means use the next
finger; a third means skip a finger; a
fourth means skip two fingers; and so
on), he is ready to deal with musical ideas
in that key, provided that he is not re-
quired to think about letter names of
notes as they play! The teacher can
show the student the proper hand posi-
tions for the piece and the finger that
plays first, and the student is off and
running. The teacher's responsibility is
then to make sure that the student is
seeing note groups and not single notes.
Thus, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy," for
pianists, becomes:
An ascending three-note scale. The
third finger begins, and the first note is
played twice.
A four-note descending scale that be-
gins with a repeat of the last note of
the first motive.
A repeat of the first motive at a pitch
one step below the end of the second
motive.
A falling second, beginning with a
repeat of the note that ended the pre-
ceding motive. The second note is
played twice.
While I am a pianist and cannot speak
authoritatively about teaching other in-
struments, I would wager that similar
methods could be developed for them.
This approach should work in any key in

20 FEBRUARY/MARCH 1996

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which students can play a five-note scale,
and should work in either hand. Students
read by recognizing motives by direction
and intervals. A second is notated on two
adjacent degrees - line to space or space
to line. A third is notated line to next line
or space to next space, and so on. Your
students will read quickly and with en-
joyment, once you eliminate letter name
recognition, because they are reading
music the same way that you read text.
They are recognizing note patterns , not
letter names. Reading musical ideas is
exciting and rewarding. Reading by let-
ter names is a drag.
Some readers may be wondering,
"When should letter names be intro-
duced? They can't be ignored forever!"
Of course not. But the real question is:
What do students need letter names for?
Is it critical for students to know the let-
ter name of every note they play? Readers
can answer this one for themselves by ex-
amining how they play. Do you think of
the letter name of each key you play as
you play a Beethoven sonata or a Chopin
nocturne? I doubt it. Why do we insist
that our students think this way?
Letter names fragment our attention to
musical ideas. Thinking of them would
distract us. We use letter names to deter-
mine our beginning hand positions and
starting notes. We think of letter names
only if the piece we are playing requires a
major shift in hand position. Letter
names should not be introduced to be-
ginning students, therefore, until they are
firmly established in the habit of reading
and playing by recognizing meaningful
note groups that are comfortably under
their fingers.
AMERICAN
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Jjfirninny
to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" melody: The
rhythm of the fourth motive is
Reading and playing chord patterns
can be approached in the same manner.
Students learn first how it feels to play the
0 J.
basic chords that dominate all beginning Hav
method books. It is best if these chords foo
are presented with proper voice leading, are
not requiring that students make large han
hand-position shifts early in their study. and
Introducing all chords in root position, in t
for example, requires that students look soo
away from the notation to the keyboard, won
greatly inhibiting the reading facility we you
are trying to encourage. Once students the
know how these chords feel under their ide
fingers, and know what they look like in play
notation - by pattern - they are ready to
go in chordal music.
b
me
a p
Jl íjyííjrn
lary
Rhythm is perhaps the most com- pat
monly misunderstood aspect of music Mo
teaching. Too often we teach tonal arith- ada
metic and think we are teaching rhythm. pas
Quoting from Edwin Gordon's Psychology and
of Music, "Knowing the fractional values unt
of notes does not necessarily contribute pra
to the kinesthetic interpretation of a ide
rhythmic pattern seen in notation form."1 nam
Rhythm is not an intellectual process; selv
it is subintellectual - muscles rather than ogy
mind. Think of times that your foot or kno
body responds spontaneously to the On
rhythmic impulse in music you are listen- try
ing to. Do you say, "Foot, tap now... and thi
now... and now?" Your conscious mind is stud
AMT
not involved at all in this spontaneous
muscular response to rhythm.
NOTES
This is the key. Teach rhythm by bypass-
ing the conscious mind, going direcdy to 1 . Edwin Gordon, Psychology of Music
this subintellectual process. Referring again (Princeton, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 79.
MUSIC TEACHER 2 1
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