I’m going to explain the importance of improvisation, creativity and curiosity in beginner lessons and why a focus on building a musical vocabulary is one of the most crucial and fundamental aspects of teaching.
Why the reading-first approach is wrong
One of the biggest mistakes I see piano teachers making is starting beginner students with reading. It’s just the wrong way to go. Consider this: if you had the responsibility of teaching a young child how to understand and use a language, what would you teach first? Would you start with reading and writing, or would you encourage them to listen and copy you as you demonstrate how to pronounce things out loud? Would you force them to comprehend a written text or encourage them to start experimenting with their voice to say something meaningful? Would you stop them for every tiny mistake or see this as part of the learning process? If starting with reading and writing is not the approach we use for language, why use it for music?
Think about how we learn a language. As babies we listen, mimic and babble as we start to juggle and use our mouths to speak. As we receive more encouragement, we learn words. As we get better, we start connecting the words together into phrases and then these into full sentences. Our vocabulary soon grows, as does our ability to string words together into coherent and complex structures.
Would we ever discourage a baby from trying to speak? Would we say: ‘No! No! No! No making sounds; no speaking until you’ve learnt to read’? Of course not; it would be ridiculous. And yet that’s exactly what we do with music students when we make reading the focus. Worse still, we may encourage overload. In the words of Australian music educator Elissa Milne, ‘Fifty or 60 years ago, that first-lesson information dump would cover semibreves through to semiquavers, dotted notes, a range of simple time signatures, both clefs, names of all notes on both clefs, the basic accidentals, the concept of leger lines, and a scale or two.’
What the research tells us
In recent years, I’ve incorporated the approach of many far more experienced music educators than myself in my teaching. The approaches of Kodály, Orff and Suzuki have been instrumental in developing my own approach with beginner pianists. In addition, the American researcher and author Dr Edwin E. Gordon, during a keynote address at the 2015 National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (in the USA), highlighted interesting parallels between language and music learning, describing ‘five parallel music skill vocabularies as: (1) listening, (2) singing and chanting, (3) audiating and improvising, (4) reading, and (5) writing’. He explained, ‘As with language, listening is fundamental in piano instruction as well as all music instruction. Unfortunately, in typical instruction, listening is disregarded. Detrimental results are similar in music as in language when the importance of listening is overlooked.’
Educator and author Paul Myatt has also described why teaching music reading is the wrong way to teach piano, and presented Dr Gordon’s ‘language acquisition process’ in the following diagram. The music learning process moves from left to right, just like in language learning:
© Paul Myatt
Notice where reading sits in the learning flow – second to last – and how it comes after a lot of listening, singing and playing, with the last of these incorporating audiation and improvisation.
What should beginner pianists do instead?
What are the musical fundamentals they need? What do you want them to learn? Ultimately, it all comes back to your philosophy and why you are teaching. What are you trying to achieve in the long run? What are the most important outcomes for your students?
My beginner-teaching goals
Here are the things that I want to impart to my piano students in their first 10 weeks of lessons:
- That I love music and I love teaching them.
- That music lessons are creative and exploratory.
- That creating music is fun and easy.
- That music can tell stories.
- That music is more than pushing down keys.
- That music is art and involves dynamics, speed, feeling etc.
- That singing and moving to music is just a part of ‘how we do things’ in music education.
- That playing the piano the right way (that is, with the right technique) is really important.
- The importance of understanding, feeling and moving to metre (duple/triple).
- The concept of ‘home’, tonic/dominant tonalities and being able to hear and create bass lines.
- That music is made up of chords, patterns and melodies.
- That they can transpose music into different keys.
The best way I’ve found to impart all of this is to keep the method book firmly closed for around eight to ten weeks, in a process I call ‘no book’ teaching.
Beginner-teaching objectives
By the end of the first 10 weeks of beginner lessons, I expect students to be able to:
- Know how to sit properly, at the correct height, and know the correct way to use the arm, wrist and fingers.
- Have good sense of a steady pulse.
- Be able to tap rhythm and keep a beat.
- Be able to sing a song and keep a beat.
- Know the names of all the white notes and be able to quickly find any of them.
- Improvise on the black and white keys.
- Know how to tell a story with music.
- Chant and play rhythmic patterns.
- Know the difference between 3/4 and 4/4 time. Be able to explain and demonstrate this.
- Understand the basics of harmony and how bass lines can outline a ‘home’ key.
In my opinion, we need to develop in students the aural, verbal and physical language of music well before we add the complexities of reading.
My ‘No Book Beginners Framework’
The best thing is that all of these objectives can be explored through experimentation, play and improvisation, without any reading. But how exactly do we do this?
I’ve put together my own sequence of lesson plans for teaching in a more creative way, without method books, during those all-important first 5–10 lessons. I call this my ‘No Book Beginners Framework’. I think of this as exploring music at a much deeper level than you can with reading, and as enabling students to understand how music works.
The framework is most suited to students aged 6–11 in one-to-one lessons of around 30–45 minutes per week. It’s designed to be flexible – you can pick and choose what you’d like to use to suit students and your teaching style – and it guides users every step of the way, even those who’ve never ventured ‘off the page’ before.
If you’re interested to see this approach in action, please follow the link below, where you can watch videos of me demonstrating at the piano. In addition, there you can download a complete lesson plan for your first 1–2 ‘no book’ lesson; and on the last page of this article there are examples of creative activities.
Even if this method isn’t right for you, you may pick up a number of creative and fun ideas that you’re welcome to use in your teaching.
Conclusion
One question that tends to come up regarding this approach is ‘What will the parents think?’
If parents have been brought up to believe that piano teaching only occurs with a method book and piano exams, they might need a little coaching. Perhaps they experienced piano lessons themselves as a child and expect that you will teach in a similar way to how they were taught.
To borrow again from Elissa Milne, tell them that ‘it’s much more important that you explore rhythm, pulse, creativity and improvisation before they [pupils] start reading.’ You might add: ‘Never had a parent be anything but thrilled to see their child exploring lots of sounds on the piano, using all the keys and pedals and having a ball.’
Remind them about how much their child will benefit from getting these foundations right and I bet you’ll have them on your side.
I really hope you enjoy exploring this approach in your teaching this year, even if you only try out a few ideas alongside your regular approach.
The following extracts form part of the ‘First Lesson’ plan from No Book Beginners by Tim Topham
What can you play?
- Ask them if they’d like to play something. If they hesitate, tell them it doesn’t matter how simple it is – anything is good.
- Be encouraging no matter how it sounds or how bad their hand position is!
- Show interest and excitement that they are already playing. This lets them show you what they can do and gives you a chance to assess their approach to the keyboard, their rhythm, technique, musicality, and music they like.
Exploring ‘What Can You Play?’
- If they can play something, I tend to work with them a little more on it. For example, if they can play ‘Chopsticks’, then I’ll accompany them. If they can play ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’, I’ll play along with some chords. If they can play part of a song melody from the radio, I’ll ask what it is and try to play along. Maybe we’ll watch the video of the song on YouTube so I can make a connection with it and play something at the same time.
- Whatever they can play, see if you can enhance it with an accompaniment somehow.
- Don’t worry too much about technique at the moment. This activity is about playing and making music.
Improvising on the Black Keys
Time to get creative!
- Let the student know that they are going to be playing on the black keys. Show them that the black keys are divided into groups of two and three notes. Can they play all the pairs of black notes up and down the piano (playing notes together with fingers 2–3)? What about the groups of three black notes (with fingers 2–3–4)?
- Have the student try playing the notes separately starting with all the black-key pairs, making sure that they are always playing in a detached style. Avoid legato playing for this first period of beginning teaching. For background, method book author Julie Knerr Hague discusses the importance of non-legato articulation for young beginners in one of her mini essays.
- Demonstrate a non-legato touch with a light arm bounce.
- Find the improvisation accompaniments in the following section. Explain that you’re going to play some cool accompaniments in a variety of styles, either on a second instrument or as a secondo part on the student’s instrument (in a low register).
- Students need to listen to the ‘feeling’ of the accompaniment and then decide how their improvisation might go. Timid students might start on just one black note. Are they feeling the mood? Are they in time? Are they trying to do too much? Help them out.
- Make sure they are sitting correctly and using a nonlegato touch.
- Try exploring loud and soft. Demonstrate by playing the accompaniment loud or soft. Try short and jumpy. What about slower/faster? Can they change their approach to suit? Are they listening?
Animal improvisation story
A great way to get young children improvising in their first lessons is through the lens of animals.
- Have the student explore the different registers of the piano by demonstrating rumbling down low versus twinkling up high. Ask, ‘What animals would you associate with these areas of the piano?’
- Teach the different sounds and registers of the piano. ‘Which animal is the sound at the top of the piano? Which one lives down the bottom end? What’s in the middle? What animal is slow and heavy? What animal is quick and jumpy?’ Make fun sounds and lots of music. The student may like to use pedal or not. Again, keep exploring.
- Guide the student through a story, demonstrating possible sounds, then having the student play and improvise. ‘Let’s choose two animals to make a story – for example, elephant and ant. What’s going to happen? The elephant comes walking along.’ Make big plodding sounds down low on the keyboard in steady rhythm. ‘Then, he sees all the little ants running around.’ Make twinkly sounds up high. ‘Then, several ants run down the piano to him.’ Play a glissando. ‘He gets freaked out and tramples them.’ Make a final-sounding squashing sound. ‘The end!’
- Kids love creative activities like this, so make up your own with your student and have a ball.
Practice Plan
- The student teaches their parent how to sit at the piano and how to shape their hands. Students love being the teacher. This task reinforces posture and technique, and it will require continued refinement over the coming weeks and months.
- Have the student continue to explore black-key improvisations using backing tracks.
- Have the student choose two or three new animals for a new story at the piano. The student should make them contrasting (such as a bird, duck, and bee).
- topmusic.co/beginners
- To access the first five ‘No Book’ lessons plus more of the history, pedagogy and background to this approach, download a copy of No Book Beginners from topmusic.co/book. Hardcopies of the complete book are available from bookstores.
