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[applause] Hello and welcome. My name is Brendan Hogan.
Today in this little session we are going to talk briefly about the Musiah Teaching
Method and in particular how the method applies to the teaching of note reading.
But before we get into it too much, let's just look at what is it that we actually teaching?
We are basically teaching piano lessons, even though we use keyboards for the obvious practical
reasons. But what else is there about the method that
is uniquely original? OK well first of all let's have a look at
some of the main methods that are known throughout the world today.
There are basically three main methods... there's Suzuki, Yamaha and traditional teaching.
Now the thing with Suzuki, no disrespect to Suzuki, but in summary it is teaching the
kids or adults to play by ear. Yamaha method, again no disrespect to the
Yamaha method I'm sure there is more to it than this, but in summary the gist of Yamaha
is it's all about teaching the kids to read the notes using solfa names DO RE ME FA SO
etc. And then of course there is traditional, and
by traditional I mean where we actually teach the kids to read the notes.
The thing is, with Suzuki as an example, I used to leave next door to a young girl in
her teens and she was getting ready for her Grade 8 exam and basically she couldn't play
the pieces and she would ask me to come in and actually sight read the pieces for her
so she could record them in order to hear how they sound and then she would essentially
learn them for her exam by ear from the tape. So that's just an example of one of the deficiencies
of the Suzuku method if it's used in isolation, without at least some exposure to traditional
teaching where we learn to read the notes. Yamaha, well you know it's another approach,
another valid approach I guess when taken on its own merits.
But I have had experience where I've taught students who've learnt with Yamaha for perhaps
three years and they don't know where Middle C is. They call Middle C "DO".
And I point to the key and say "what's that note?" and they'll say "oh that's DO".
What the Yamaha teachers never seem to teach the kids is that DO can shift, so for example
in the key of C Major, C is DO, but in the key of G Major G is DO.
So it shifts. So there is no such thing as "oh Middle C
is DO". It's just interesting some of the things you
actually see when you come across this various methods.
So by far out of the three existing well-known methods I would say traditional teaching is
the best. However, having learnt traditionally myself,
there are some drawbacks even to traditional teaching.
And it's those drawbacks and limitations that led me to gradually overtime develop the Musiah
Teaching Method. When I was a young kid learning piano, I thought
I was the only one that had this problem, but basically my left hand was weaker than
my right hand. So I was a little bit stronger, more confident
at reading and playing with the right hand then with the left hand.
And then as I got to know other students as I, you know, mingled with them in music school
and so on, I found that some of them had the same problem.
And over the last 17 years as owner-operator of Australia's largest in-school keyboard
music program, I found that many of the kids that were being taught through our program
also had a similar issue. And in fact so had many of the teachers.
So basically it seems to be the case that 95 percent of students all over the world
from Ireland to Australia and everywhere in between have this funny little thing, which
is a deficiency in the left hand. Why is that? The answer is surprisingly simple.
It's basically the way they're being taught. You know it comes down to even otherwise good,
well-meaning teachers... they're basically for some reason teaching the kids to habitually
start every song with the right hand. There is no particular reason for this.
If you ask a teacher "why do you always start with the right hand?" usually they just don't
know. And yet, unwittingly, unknowingly they are
doing huge disservice to the kids that they teach all over the world.
I'm going to ask you a quick question: How many hands am I holding up?
It's not a trick question. I've got two hands, right, because God gave me two hands.
Why logically would I repeatedly, habitually favor one hand over the other to the detriment
of the other? There is no valid reason for doing it.
So... very important but very simple, the first aspect of the Musiah Teaching Method
is... Start with the left hand at least 50 percent of the time.
Now, notice I say at least 50 percent of the time, because there is actually a very good
reason why you should consider starting with the left hand more than 50 percent of the
time. Apart from the fact that we need to do something
to redress... redress this sort of global consciousness of "Oh, I must start with the
right hand all the time", there is a very, very good reason over and above that.
See this... This historically is what music used to be written on. As legend would have
it, before we had the treble and bass staves of staffs, whichever you want to call it,
you say tomato I say tomato... however the saying goes, before we had two separate staves,
music used to be written on a big stave like this which has eleven lines.
The thing about the eleven line stave was, yes it was harder to read then today's stave.
And this thing here, see this funny little symbol on the left, that what's called a C
Clef, OK, and this note here is actually a Middle C. And it's hard to read because obviously
with eleven lines on the stave, you know, looking at that at a glance... Is it the fifth
line from the bottom? Is it the sixth line from the bottom? A little bit hard to tell.
So somebody quite clever came along and basically rubbed out the Middle C line thus creating
two separate staves. And what they did was they gave Middle C it's own little line which
is called a ledger line. Next thing was of course we added treble and
bass clefs and then we moved the staves a little bit further apart to make it even easier
to read. And this seems like a good idea, of course,
and for the most part it is a good idea. Let's have a look at this. This is back to
our old fashioned stave, if you like eleven lines. Here is a chord made of four notes.
The one advantage to the old system is that reading a chord like this, we would start
at the bottom and we would scan up the stave in one eye movement, OK.
By contrast, because of the way that 95 percent of the teachers all around the world are teaching
their piano and keyboard students, today's students are basically reading the right-hand
notes first, they scan up the treble stave and then in a second inefficient eye movement
they come down to the bottom and they scan up the bass stave.
So that all the time when they're reading they're basically going one, two, one, two,
one, two. And that's just crazy!
Ok so, even though there are two staves, this little line here, this vertical line at the
side, joins the two staves to form what we still call to this day the Grand Staff.
It is still one stave or staff. So we should be teaching students to read
the notes as though it's one staff. They should be reading up in one scan per
chord or per group of notes. Ok, so that's a very important aspect of reading
notes and so it brings us to an extension of the previous point which is... Start pieces
with the left hand first and then the right hand almost all the time.
Sometimes you come across pieces where you know the obvious thing is to start with the
right hand just because of the character of the piece.
But most of the time, as a general rule, start with your left hand first, and then do the
right hand. And if you get the kids into the habit of
starting each new piece this way, they get used to thinking about left hand first then
the right. And then they read that way. And that will do a great deal to speed up their
reading. And the next little tip I'd like to give you,
this is a... this is a... a great, simple little tip, that most people would never,
never think of, but it will save your students, those of you who are teachers, it will save
your students two to three years of time they would otherwise spend learning to read notes.
And what it is, is this. Don't use phrases like "Every Good Boy Deserves
Fruit". OK, because if you think about it, for a child
particularly, let's say a youngish child who is just getting used to the alphabet, for
them to read a note, let's have a look at a sample note, OK, here's one.
If there were going to read this note and they're going to go... Every Good Boy Deserves
Fruit "Oh, fruit begins with F, therefore it's an F".
They don't make that connection instantaneously the same way an adult would, OK, so rather
than going... Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit, to read that note it's much quicker to go
E G B D F... Just like that! So say it like a tongue twister. How quickly
can you say E G B D F? Because the quicker you can say E G B D F,
the quicker you can think it and the quicker you get to the note.
OK, so by... by encouraging kids to continue saying if they already know these phrases
"Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit", you're actually slowing them down.
And it was actually my third piano teacher who got me on to this very simple tongue twister
technique. So in the right hand it's E G B D F for the lines, and of course “FACE”
for the spaces F A C E. In the left hand instead of going something
like "Great Big Dogs Frighten Auntie", it's just G B D F A.
How quickly can you say G B D F A? It's almost like the word Jibidy F A… G B D F A.
That's how we read the lines in the left hand. And of course we can say ACE with a G for
the left hand spaces. So tongue twisters are much more efficient
way of teaching kids the lines and the spaces for both the treble and the bass clefs.
So forget the phrases, use the tongue twisters. Now my third piano teacher did a great job
in quite dramatically improving my note reading in a short space of time by introducing me
to that simple technique. But there was one limitation to that technique
that my piano teacher, even though he was brilliant, didn't quite pick up on, and it
is this. If I were to read this note, this very high
note up here, four lines above the treble stave, my third piano teacher would get me
as far as the top line very efficiently, but then I'd be stuck.
So I would be going E G B D F and then I'd have to go, OK... G in the space, A on the
line, B in the next space C D E F "Oh, it's a G".
So it would take me a long time to read this thing.
Here's a really cool technique and this is for probably more advanced students.
You wouldn't be teaching this to kids on day one or adults for that matter.
Write this down if you have never seen it before. It's very easy.
A B C D E F G A B C D E F G and another A at the end.
And then what you do is just circle every second letter.
What we can teach our students is that it goes in a loop.
So if you start on A and you go A C E G B D F, it always comes back to A, it comes back
to where you started. Whatever letter you pick, say you start on
E ... E G B D F A C it comes back to E, so it's a never ending loop.
And the thing about the never ending loop is, when we come back to our note over here,
let's read it again using that technique... E G B D F A C E it's a G. That make sense?
So just by teaching kids the sequence of every second letter and how it comes around in a
continuous loop, we can help them read even the most difficult of notes.
And that's just a quick snapshot of some of the things that we do in the Musiah Teaching
Method particularly in relation to teaching note reading.
And it really does work. It saves the kids a lot of time.
But probably more importantly even than the techniques that we use to teach, is the philosophy
behind the teaching. Basically for me what teaching is all about
is not so much teaching, but rather being a guide and using music as a means of helping
students discover that they can teach themselves anything they want.
Every lesson, of mine anyway, almost every lesson of mine, when I'm teaching a student
regardless of whether they are adults or kids, there's usually a kind of a maybe the first
two thirds of the lesson when they're really thinking "Oh, I can't do this" you know, "it's,
it's ,it's a, it's a... I just can't get it, can't get it".
And then they have this kind of breakthrough and the breakthrough is... you could roughly
describe it as the feeling of "WOW I can actually play this piece!".
But it's more than that because it's Wow I can play this piece and I've just discovered
that I can play it because I've basically taught myself.
You know, yeah the teacher is there to give them a little pointer along the way, but it's
that moment when they just beam all over because they so full of that pride, I guess, that
they... that they can actually really, really do this.
And that's a really special thing. And that for me is what teaching is all about.
And so these techniques that we suggest, teachers and students, to consider using as you learn
your music is... that's just part of it. But the bigger part is to enjoy the journey
and of course discover that thru learning music you can in fact teach yourself to learn
anything you want to learn. That's basically all we've got time for today.
For more information about either Musiah or the Musiah Teaching Method, visit musiah.com
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.
[applause]