The nitty gritty of my teaching philosophy

Like other poor music students, I elected to be a traveling piano teacher in college.  One of the families I traveled to consisted of two boys and their mother.  I enjoyed teaching the whole family but especially connected with the mother.  She was at an intermediate level and we were able to explore some fun repertoire as well as have some very illuminating conversations.  When I decided to move on to graduate school, I was sad to leave my students but especially this family.  At our last lesson I remarked that it would be a breath of fresh air to have another teacher who could give different suggestions in new ways.  The mother's response was, I'm sure it will be just like getting a new hair dresser....

The point of this story leads me to ponder two different things...  "Are we as piano teachers as interchangeable as a hair dresser?"  What makes us different, and why do some teachers have students who perform amazingly while others do not? A recent blog post by Elissa Milne, a leading piano pedagogue in Australia, seemed to bring this question into focus.  Entitled "Dichotomies in piano pedagogy"  Elissa brought several core facets of teaching that in the pedagogical world can be very controversial to the forefront.  So in the following paragraphs I will attempt to address my views on each of the following technical dichotomies:

TOUCH: Legato touch at the start v Tenuto touch at the start
     -to paraphrase: playing connected sounds vs. separated sounds
 Because it's easier for a child to feel their arm and the weight of their arm moving up and down in separate motions, I advocate for a Tenuto touch at the beginning of study.  It also allows the child to focus more on keeping fingers curved and using the hand, arm, and finger as a unit.

WHICH FINGERS?: Starting with the 3rd finger v Starting with the thumb  

Since the 3rd finger is located squarely in the middle of the hand, Starting with the 3rd finger allows the child to easily and equally  balance the weight of their arm.   From there we begin to work on balancing on other fingers and finally on the thumb which is a whole different animal.

HOW MANY FINGERS?: Starting with playing only one finger v Starting with playing multiple fingers

See above.  It may take a few weeks or months to master playing on fingers 2 and 3, but once achieved it's easier to feel more progress is gained once we start integrating fingers 4 and 5.  It's interesting to note that any beginner's piece can be re-fingered to be played Tenuto with any finger that needs reinforcing.

GEOGRAPHY: Black keys pieces at the start v White keys pieces at the start.

It has been my experience that it is infinitely easier for a beginner to balance on white keys before black keys.  The reason simply is that white keys are bigger!  According to Wikipedia the average size of a black key is 13.7 mm while the average size of a white key is 23.5 mm.  When the target is almost twice the size, it can make a big difference! Once again, any beginning black key piece can be easily transposed to white keys.

Stay tuned for my next blog post that explores teaching dichotomies related to reading music!