From 2018 onwards, I will not be posting updates here. All updates will be posted on my Facebook Page. Please follow my facebook page in the link below for the latest updates.
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For those who need more help in scales and arpeggios, I have published a series of scales fingering diagrams and videos from grade 1 to grade 5. You can either click on Learn to Play Scales under Resources or simply click on the links below. Have fun learning!
Have you ever wondered how good or bad you are compared to most piano students (in Singapore)? Have you wondered why you always get lower than what you expected to get in piano exams? Have you ever thought of what it takes to be a distinction student or even a high scorer (140 and above)? Take this quiz to find out!
Click on the link below to take the quiz.
Am I a Pass, Merit, or Distinction Student?
For those who can read music, I would recommend that you get this to help your child in learning. This is because a magnetic board is much more flexible than using notecards – there is no need to shuffle or search for the correct card; just move the note up or down on the stave, and students can learn intervals more effectively using this board. The magnetic board shown above is available at MUSIC THEME, excelsior shopping centre #B1-04/5/6. Alternatively, another version of the magnetic board is available for students enrolled in the music course in Yamaha Music School.
These cards are very useful in learning note-reading, music terms and rhythm. Available at most major music stores (e.g. Yamaha Music School)
From Top Left:
From Bottom Left:
There is actually not much difference between this and Hal Leonard flashcards, only that for the note-reading cards, only one clef/stave is shown instead of both staves. Available at most major music stores (e.g. Yamaha Music School)
An alternative to using the magnetic board to learn intervals, with answers shown at the back. This is available at Music Essentials, #02-70 Concorde Hotel & Shopping Mall.
by Josephine Koh & Florence Koh
This is a fun way to learn note values and their value relative to each other. Available at most major music stores (e.g. Yamaha Music School)
by Brio Music Press
This set of cards provides an interesting way to learn music terms. It comes in two sets – set 1 consists of terms mostly for grades 1-2 and set 2 consists of terms for grade 3-5. The cartoons shown on the cards helps students to remember the terms easily. All definitions come in 3 languages – English, traditional and simplified Chinese, and Japanese. To test yourself, you can use to TV card (bottom right) to cover up the meaning and to guess using the cartoon shown. Unfortunately, these cards are only available for sale in Hong Kong, at Tom Lee Music. It is, however, available for loan at my studio.
Major & Minor Scale Picture Workbook
by Glenna Battson
These workbooks provide an interesting and fun way for students to learn and remember the structure of each scale using by cartoons to represent each scale. Students follow a worksheet format designed to help them discover, then remember, scale notes and fingering. Click on each thumbnail above to see the contents of the book. This is available at Music Essentials, #02-70 Concorde Hotel & Shopping Mall.
by Brio Music Press
Scales Plus offers an innovative way in scales learning. It makes good use of the strong visual and aural memory of learners to help them learn fast and effectively. Unfortunately, these books are also only available for sale in Hong Kong, at Tom Lee Music. It is, however, available for loan at my studio. To view the content of this book, click on the thumbnail above. Each book consists of:
by Emeritus Professor Edward Ho
Very often, teachers do not have enough time during lesson to prepare students adequately for Aural tests, especially for higher grades (test C/D) where aural exercises can be rather time-consuming. Furthermore, the student is unable to practice by themselves without the teacher as the teacher needs to play the exercises for them to hear. With these supplementary exercises for aural, students are able to practice aural test by themselves and check with the answers provided. With more than 40 musical excerpts for test C/D, these books would provide the student with more than adequate practice in aural.
All books shown below are available for loan at the teacher’s studio
Learn About the Great Composers!
Did you know that….
Bach became famous 100 years after his death.
Haydn, the young and mischievous composer, later known as the “Papa of the Symphony”
Mozart, the incredible Child genius who started composing music at the age of five.
Beethoven became deaf but continued composing wonderful pieces of music as he could “hear the music in his head.”
Chopin is known as the “Poet of the Piano” because of the wonderful and expressive music he wrote just for the piano.
Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most famous ballet music which are still widely played today.
Find out more in “My First Book of Great Composers“!
My Second Book of Great Composers gives you a chance to get to know some of the world’s best loved composers. Explore the exciting world of these great musicians and read about:
Schubert, a famous songwriter who wrote over 600 songs!
Schumann, a brilliant composer who went mad.
Debussy, who is known as the ‘Father of Impression’
Bartok, who is well known for writing Hungarian Folk songs.
Ravel, a composer who is most well known for his Concerto written specially for the left hand.
The Life Stories of famous musicians – Bach, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Woody Guthrie – are familiar to many. But what were they like really?
What kind of children were they? How did they die? And what went on in between? What did they eat? What did they wear? How did they spend their money? What were their phobias, quirks, and bad habits? Who were their “significant others”? And what did the neighbours think? (Music is not a quiet career.)
Most interesting of all, what is it like to live a truly creative life? The musicians in this book, representing different countries, historical periods, and musical styles, do have things in common. About their music, they had a perseverance and single-mindedness that led not only to success, but also to eccentricities, sometimes amusing, sometimes sad.
Of all of them it could be said that their work shook up the times they lived in: It provoked riots (Stravinsky and Satie), led to death threats (Prokofiev), required police to control the crowds (Schumann), shaped entire generations of students (Boulanger), created wealthy superstars (Gilbert and Sullivan), was condemned as “addictive” and “immoral” (Joplin), and left blood on the piano keys (Gershwin). Music that we think of today as acceptable, “classic”, or even staid often caused passion and controversy during its time. “Beethoven thought that through his music he could change the world,” points out cellist Yo-Yo Ma. “Today, rock musicians are virtually the only ones who think that.”
This music can still arouse emotion – and claim listeners. It’s estimated that if Mozart were alive today, he’d be earning $20 million a year from sales of his records. The music, above all, is the reason people remember these musicians today.
Here, escorted by the patron saint of music, Saint Cecilia, are twenty lives, colourful and mysterious. These untold stories, never before collected in one volume, are offered now as a way of getting closer to the musicians – and the music.
Now in its third edition, Not Until You’ve Done Your Practice! has been acclaimed as the first book on the planet to help young music students with the one thing none of them can escape – praticing.
The first part of the book shows how to make practicing more productive, so that your child can do in fifteen minutes what might otherwise take hours. The second part of the book is devoted to making the whole experience not only bearable but fun.
So if your child suddenly asks for a pack of cards because they want to go and “give the hard bits a hard time”, you know they have been reading this book.
As a concert pianist with a recording contract with a major international label, and as someone who learned violin for ten years and hated every second of it, Philip Johnston is uniquely placed to write a book on practicing, because he understands what it is like to avoid it. (Reliable sources say he did thirty-five minutes of violin practice altogether in those ten years, and used to over-tighten the strings until they broke to avoid lessons…)
Philip runs one of Australia’s largest music teaching studios, and is heavily book both as a presenter for seminars for teachers, students and institutions, and as performer in his own right.
An Illustrated History of Music for Young Musicians
Over the years, music in the Western world has been changing constantly and the music of today is very different from the music people made 300 years ago.
To help you understand how this music has developed, each of the book in this series will describe a different musical period. For each era, we will show you the way the people of the time lived, and the kinds of art and architecture that were typical of the period. We will discuss the important musical characteristics and describes the lives and contributions of the major composers.
The history of Western music is usually divided into six board time period:
Middle Ages (before 1450), Renaissance (1450-1600), Baroque (1600-1750), Classical (1750-1825), Romantic (1825-1900), Contemporary (after 1900)
All books in this series include
The Middle Ages and The Renaissance
The Baroque Period
The Classical Period
The Romantic Period
The Twentieth Century
All books shown below are available for loan at the teacher’s studio
In this trailblazing book, world-renowned violinist and teacher Shinichi Suzuki presents the philosophy and principles of his teaching methods for developing the natural abilities of every child. He illustrates by examples the amazing success of his work with young pupils at his music school in Japan, which has attracted the attention of educators from every major nation.
Professor Suzuki presents convincing evidence to substantiate his view, basic to his method called Talent Education, that every child is born with ability. Accordingly, a child’s slowness in any subject indicates a deficiency in his environment, educational or otherwise.
The author writes, “If Einstein, Goethe and Beethoven had been born during the Stone Age, wouldn’t they likewise have had only the cultural ability and education of men of the Stone Age? The converse is also true; if I were to receive a suckling babe of the Stone Age and educate him, before long he would be able to play a violin sonata by Beethoven as well as any young person of today.”
According to Professor Suzuki, the greatest joy an adult can know comes from developing a child’s potential so that he can express all that is harmonious and best in human beings. In Nurtured by Love, the author relates many meaningful experiences in his career and the circumstances which bought about his discovery of the Talent Education method.
Professor Suzuki has achieved worldwide acclaim, and his students, under his direction, have performed internationally, including appearances at the UN, the Julliard School of Music, and numerous places throughout the United States.
From playtime to bedtime, music builds children’s cognitive, motor, and creative development and adds joy and beauty to their lives. Experts believe that children’s exposure to music in the early years determine both their musical ability and their capacity to enjoy music. Regardless of a child’s age or your own musical background, you can learn How to Grow a Young Music Lover who will have a passion for music that lasts a lifetime. In this book you will discover:
*Includes a “Classics Month-by-Month” chapter offering a full year of music curriculum for the parent or teacher.
This self-help guide is essential reading for any parent or carer wishing to know more about bringing music into the life of their child. 20 short chapters, which assume no musical knowledge, are packed with expert advise on how to support your child through every stage of musical development, from birth through early childhood.
Helpful advise is included on:
Whatever stage of learning your child has reached, Raising an Amazing Musician will empower you to make the right decisions for your young musician, and enrich their experience of music as an enjoyable life-enhancing activity.
This book is actually for teachers, but for parents who are ambitious and keen to help more in your child’s practice, you might want to read this book. Otherwise you can also consider a shorter version of this book meant for students – Not Until You’ve Done Your Practice!
Music students have to be taught how to work by themselves… because for six days in every seven, they have to work alone.
Instead of the traditional obsession with how much practice students do, The Practice Revolution looks at how students practice in the first place. With over 320 pages of what works, what doesn’t and why, it’s the most ambitious, comprehensive and approachable guide to practicing ever undertaken, aiming to turn professional music teachers into nothing short of practicing experts….
…so that they can then help their students become practicing experts too…
And for today’s students, who are busier than ever before, making sure that the time they do spend practicing actually produces results is one of the best lessons they’ll ever learn.
This is an article taken from a December issue of a large city newspaper years ago. I hope that this will correct any misconceptions about learning the piano and highlight to you the importance of practice, parental involvement, having a good teacher and a good piano to practice on, and the importance of taking your piano learning seriously.
Silent Night, Horrible Night
by Richard Chronister
My mother, who has celebrated 78 birthday and 77 Christmases, has received, in her lifetime, hundreds of presents. She says that, for sheer surprise value, none has topped the one I gave her for Christmas when I was 8.
It all started when my third-grade teacher asked how many children would be interested in taking private piano lessons. I raised my hand. We didn’t have a piano, but that didn’t discourage me. I was a compulsive hand raiser.
Sure enough, it all worked out. Arrangements were made for me to practice in the music room at school on my lunch hour, and my mother said she could manage the 50 cents a week for lessons.
That’s how I met my teacher. She was about 80, the perfect age for a piano teacher – too old to teach class, but not quite old enough to retire. Her energy was minimal, but she tried to remedy that by taking a nap every few minutes. Also, I think she was deaf.
During the next few months, I did learn:
1) The location of middle C, give or take a key or two.
2) That “in the spaces you will find face(s).”
3) That “on the line(s) every good boy does fine.”
Every day I went to the music room after lunch and locked the door. From time to time, my friends would knock softly and I would let them in. We spent the hour whispering and laughing and took turns hitting keys on the piano.
I moved ahead in my music book in spite of the fact that I could not play any of the songs. Most of the time, my teacher dozed through my lessons. I usually had to wake her when my half-hour was over so I could give her the 50-cent piece I carried to school each Wednesday.
We could have gone on this way forever – if it had not been for the recital! My teacher told me early in December that there would be a little recital for the motherrs on December 19. In honor of the season, I was to play “Silent Night.”
“Silent Night” was a song I loved, but even by ignoring the notes and trying to follow the numbers, I couldn’t play anything that faintly resembled it. I tried to tell my teacher of the predicament, but she patted my head and mumbled something about practice making perfect. i wanted to cry.
When I carried home my mother’s invitation to the recital, I tried to tell her how bad things were, but she was busy making divinity and she didn’t have time to talk – or even to listen.
I tried to tell my father. I said I was going to be in a recital… and that’s as far as I got. I couldn’t tell him the rest. He said, “That’s nice, honey,” or something like that. There was no one else to tell.
And then it came to me! I would pray for a miracle. I prayed morning and night and sometimes noon. I prayed that either I would learn to play “Silent Night” or that I would die. All to no avail.
The day of the recital came, as such days must. When it was my turn, I walked out on stage in my new red dress, curtsied to the assembled mothers, adjusted my Shirley Temple hair-bow, and sat down at the piano. I touched a key here and there. Occasionally, I touched two keys at one time. No tune emerged.
I was careful not to look at my mother. I did glace at my teacher. She was smiling in her sleep. Aftter whatI considered a decent length of time, I rose from the piano bench, walked to the center of the stage, curtsied to the group, and walked off. The audience seem dazed, but a few of them applauded.
We rode home in silence. Some of the neighbors’ children were riding with us. I went straight to my room to await developments. I was a wicked little girl, I knew.
After a while my mother came in and sat on the edge of my bed. “I don’t have much time,” she said. “There are only so many days until Christmas, and I think the baby is getting the chicken pox. I’ll get right to the point.”
“Yes, Mother,” I said.
“I don’t believe you were cut out to be a musician,” she said. “We will discontinue your music lessons.”
“Yes, Mother,” I said.
She stood up and walked toward the door. Then she turned and looked at me intently.
“You were very brave today,” she said, “but it was too late.”
“Yes, Mother,” I said.
She came back and held me while I cried.
______________________________________________________________________________
Who Failed?
To learn to read and play any instrument acceptably at the elementary or even the intermediate level does not depend on talent. It depends on a teacher who knows how to teach and a parent who knows how to support that teacher and child. This newspaper article has a few words that I changed to protect the guilty. The words I changed indicated that this teacher had a university education, so we cannot lay this failure at the feet of the little old lady who can play a little and is perpetrating fraud on unsuspecting parents. No, this teacher had been through our college system, probably, and a one-or-two semester course in piano pedagogy, and is, nevertheless, perpetrating fraud on unsuspecting parents. This article is a shopping list of what is causing failure in music education today.
“We didn’t have a piano”
You might suppose we could assume that every piano teacher knows that a child must have a piano to practice on, that this piano should be in the child’s home, preferable away from the living room and the television. Assumptions aside, surely having no piano was partly to blame for this child’s failure; and the teacher must share the blame, since the teacher accepted the child without a piano.
“Arrangements were made to practice in the music room at school on my lunch hour”
Music lessons given and practice done at odd times and in odd places have been an enemy of the piano teacher since time began, I suppose. Avoiding this may be close to impossible, but this child’s failure is certainly partly due to this barrier to efficient work.
“Fifty cents a week for lessons.”
Of course, the lessons were not worth 50 cents! But if that mother had been paying what thirty minutes of good teaching is worth – and what a professional teacher charges for thirty minutes of time – that parent would probably have seen to it that something was received for payment made. Fees charges for lessons are indicative of the self-image and proficiency of a piano teacher. And in this article, this teacher has definitely delivered what was worth of 50 cents of a lesson!
“Too old to teach in class, but not quite old enough to retire.”
It is unfortunate that piano teaching is regarded by some as not really a profession, especially if you already have a college degree. It is just something done on the side while you are waiting to do something else – while studying in college, to get married, to go to graduate school, or to die.
“Her energy was minimal. At times she dozed off. I think she was deaf”
It is important that a student’s image of his/her piano teacher is a positive (and perferably an inspiring) one. Unfortunately, in this case, the piano teacher do not represent music. It only represents a piano teacher’s music, which is a breed unto itself, not to be heard anywhere else in the child’s real world.
“I learned the location of middle C; ‘in the spaces you will find face’; and so on.”
Finding middle C, spelling “face,” maligning “every good boy,” and cutting up pies into quarter notes are cliches of the piano teaching profession. Also included is wasting time over unneccary and unfruitful exercises. Much of piano teaching is still in the dark ages. This was proven a few years ago when one of the major publishers came out with a brand new, but unchanged, edition of the W.S.B. Mathews course which first appeared in the 19th century. This is not a reflection on the publisher. He would not have re-issued it if there had been no demand. The failure of piano students has something to do with the teaching material the teacher chooses to use.
“I moved ahead in my music book in spite of the fact that I could not play any of the songs.”
Unfortunately there are many teachers who teach by just teaching ‘songs’ and ‘moving ahead’ even when the student could not play the song well or could not even play it, blaming lack of practice as a reason that they are struggling with the piece, when the fact is that they have failed to give the student a solid foundation to cope with pieces that get more and more difficult. Similarly there are students who simply assumes that they can learn the instrument by just ‘attending’ the lesson and ‘practicing’ during the lesson, only to forget everything completely by the next lesson and make the teacher go through exactly the same thing all over again the next lesson, and the next lesson.
“…to give her the 50-cent piece I carried to school each Wednesday.”
Piano lesson are training in a physical skill. A physical skill is developed by slowly acquired tiny habits which acculmulate and finally burst into seemingly natural activity. Only a course of study carefully planned to make this apparent miracle happen will finally result in success for most students. Carrying the lsson fee to lessons each week means the teacher is selling lessons like loaves of bread. There is no long-term plan or goal. The piano teacher who says,”This is what we will accomplish this term, and this is the cost of the term,’ is saying to the parent, “I know what I am doing.” This inspires confidence in the teacher; it commits the parents; it prepares the child for the teacher’s attitude toward lessons. Part of the failure of this child must be attributed to the fact that there was no plan for accomplishment and no commitment on anybody’s part to anything.
“We could have gone on this way forever if it had not been for the recital.”
Remember, this was written by someone looking back. At the time, the child probably thought it had gone on forever already. And, sometimes, it does go on forever. A recital, however, can be a major atriculation which causes awareness of reality, as it did in this case. One could think of making a case for poor teaching by saying that teachers put too much emphasis on recital preparation , spending too much time preparing students to play flawlessly on recitals. But is that really the case? Piano recitals are, fairly regularly, deadly things – deadly for the child, the parents – but never, it seems, deadly enough for the teacher. Too often, we explain poor recital performances by our unshakable belief that only the talented can be assured of successfully rendering “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” “Over the Fence Is Out,” or “Oscar the Octopus.” No, we cannot blame the failure to read on rote-prepared and beautiful recital performances. But we can explain some of the public’s attitude toward piano teachers by looking closely at the principal showcase of piano teachers, the recital.
“I ignored the notes and followed the finger numbers.”
There is surely no need to comment on that.
“The teacher patted my head and mumbled something about practice making perfect.”
It is the teacher’s job to teach the student how to find his way out of any predicament in which he finds himself. But here there are two problems. First, the teacher must be able to recognize the exact nature of the predicament; and second, the teacher must know the way out.
“I tried to tell my mother; I tried to tell my father.”
Once, one of my piano classes included the daughter of a colleague on the music faculty. At the usual parent meeting a few weeks after the lessons began, he listened to what I had to say, mainly about what I planned to do with the students, how I planned to do it, and what I expected in home practice. He raised his hand suddenly and said, “Do you mean Jeannie is supposed to practice at home?” I was new at that college, and he told me he thought I had brought an amazing new method which required no home practice. That experience is living proof that we can never assume anything so far as parents are concerned. The failure of the child in our story had as much to do with the parents’ failure of the child in our story had as it had to do with the teacher. However, it is the teacher’s responsibility to communicate clearly to the parents their part in successful piano study, and to accept nothing less.
“And then it came to me; I would pray for a miracle.”
With many piano students, that is about their only hope if teachers persist in believing that failures can be explained by such nonsense as, “Well, Johnny just doesn’t have natural rhythm,” or “Some students can sight read and some can’t,” or “If Johnny only had an ear for music.” It seems that we blame both our failures and our successes on supernatural causes. One of the first things we have to do is to take the magic and the mystery out of music study – not out of music. Music is a glorious language, which everyone can read and speak if only we will learn how to create an environment in which the learning can take place naturally.
Developing bravery is not a goal of music study.
The child in this story went home from the recital in dejection and was told that lesson would be discontinued because she struck out. She wasn’t cut out to be a musician. As though being a musician were the only valid goal for learning music. But then a really true statement was made by the mother. Unfortunately, as it often the case with true statements, it was said for the wrong reason. The mother said, “You were very brave today.” How true! But then she ruined it. She added, “But it was too late.”
Yes, it was too late.
I am not sure what she meant, but I know what it means to me. It was too late for that mother. It was too late for that teacher. It was too late for either or both of them to undo the monumental harm done to that 8-year old child who easily could have had the same ability – and the same talent – as 90% of college piano majors when they were 8 years old. It was too late for that child to find the pleasure that musical literacy brings to all those lucky enough to get through those early years in spite of their teachers and parents. Too late for that child to fully explore one of her native tongues.
Home || Articles || Common Misconceptions About Learning Piano | Learn to Read Music | When You Needed an Inspiration |
These people managed to learn (and some master) an instrument despite their disabilities. Hope these true stories will be an inspiration to you.
Hee Ah Lee, the 4-finger pianist
The videos are real and Hee Ah Lee is Authentic. It is the story of a mother and a daughter who have overcome odds from the very beginning.
Lee’s mother became unexpectedly pregnant while married to a disabled man. Doctors told her that because of a medication she had been taking her child would not be normal. She elected to continue with the pregnancy and in 1985 in Seoul, South Korea, little Hee Ah Lee was born with only two fingers on each hand, disfigurement of her legs, and slight brain injury. The hospital told Sun that she could not care for the child at home and relatives wanted her to place the child for adoption in a foreign country. Sun thought her baby was beautiful, however, and was determined that she would live a successful life.
When Lee was a pre-schooler her mother decided that she wanted her daughter to take piano lessons and for two reasons. One was that she felt it would help her strengthen her hands so she could hold a pencil. The other was that she felt that if she could master the piano, she could master anything. For six months piano schools turned them down then the one teacher who did accept the task got discouraged and wanted to quit. It became a three-month contest of wills between mother and daughter that led to a confrontation in which Sun actually threw her daughter on the floor in frustration. She said Lee got back up on the piano bench and for the first time played the children’s song she had been trying to learn. That was the turning point and one year later Lee won the grand prize in a piano concert for Kindergartners. It was at age 7 that Lee won Korea’s 19th National Handicap Conquest Contest and was presented with her award by the President of Korea.
Today Lee is 22, has won numerous awards, and is a widely traveled concert pianist with more than 200 appearances. Her first album titled “Hee-ah, a Pianist with Four Fingers” was to be released in June, 2008.
Lee gives tribute to her mother for challenging her to master the piano and said that although her training was difficult, “as time went by, the piano became my source of inspiration and my best friend.”
Dr. Wong Hoi Yan, Connie – The Pianist
Translation:
Mother: “there are a lot of pressures and trials… why is she like this?”
John 9:2
‘And his disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”’
Connie: “My mother had German measles when she was pregnant with me. That is why I am disabled. There is a period of time when I believe that, it must be my parents who had done something wrong. So the curse was placed on me.”
Mother: “Maybe it was something I had done wrong in my past life.. why is it so? Why did God let this happen to my daughter? I feel wrong for bringing her into this world.”
Connie: “When I was young there was something that I always envy, that is the school holidays that my classmates have, but I don’t, because I have to go through all kinds of operations. There are times when I was unhappy and discouraged, for example, I couldn’t play the game ‘scissors, paper, stone’
Mother: “because of my daughter’s condition, I have changed. I accepted Christ in my life.”
Connie: “If my fingers are normal, I would be no different from other girls. Maybe I would not have liked music. Maybe I wouldn’t be playing the piano. Sometimes I don’t know why I chose this path. Now then I know.”
John 9:3
‘Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.’
Mother: “I believe that it was God’s gift and I’m proud of my daughter”
Connie: “because I believe that I have no disability in my fingers, I am able to see what other people can also see. Those that I cannot see, I use my heart and passion to play it out, to represent my life. Many times things that you cannot see are more exciting than those that you can.”
Connie achieved her BA music degree in the Chinese University, and her MA and PhD in UCLA. She is currently teaching ethnomusicology in the Chinese University and is committed to do a lot of volunteer work. She has visited many hospitals, schools and churches to share the inspiring story of her life.
More videos on Connie Wong
Pianist with no finger on one hand
Liu Wei, the pianist with no arms
“I think there are only two roads to choose for my life, one: to die quickly, another: to live gloriously. Nobody says that you have to play the piano with your hands” – Liu Wei
Ye Eun, the 5 year old blind pianist
Ye Eun’s Mum: “She couldn’t see since she was born, and she has never learnt how to play the piano. But she can play the songs after listening to it once. No one taught her. She wanted to play the piano for a lot of people.”
Nobuyuki Tsujii, the blind pianist who won the Van Cliburn Internation Piano competition
Nobuyuki Tsujii was born blind but was gifted with a talent for music. At the age of two, he began to play “Do Re Mi” on a toy piano after his mother had been humming the tune. He began his formal study of piano at the age of four. In 1995, at the age of seven, Tsujii won the first prize at the All Japan Music of Blind Students by the Tokyo Helen Keller Association. In 1998, at age ten, he debuted with the Century Orchestra, Osaka. He gave his first piano recital in the small hall of Tokyo’s Suntory Hall at age 12.[1] Subsequently, he made his overseas debut with performances in the United States, France, and Russia. In October 2005, he reached the semifinal and received the Critics’ Award at the 15th International Frederik Chopin Piano Competition held in Warsaw, Poland. Tsujii competed in the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and tied for the gold medal with Haochen Zhang. He was also awarded the Beverley Taylor Smith Award for the best performance of a new work. He played all twelve of Frédéric Chopin’s Op. 10 Études as part of his performance in the preliminaries.
Evelyn Glennie – the deaf percussionist
Excerpt from video:
“As I grew older I then auditioned for the Royal Academy of Music in London, and they said, “Well, no we won’t accept you because we haven’t a clue of the future of a so called ‘deaf’ musician.” And, I just couldn’t quite accept that so therefore I said to them, “Look, if you refuse me through those reasons, as opposed to the ability, to perform and to understand and to love the art of creating sound, then, we have to think very very hard about the people you do actually accept.” And as a result, they accepted me and not only that, what happened is that it changed the whole role of the music institution throughout the United Kingdom. Under no circumstances were they to refuse any application any entry and every single entry had to be listened to, experienced, and then based on the musical ability and then that person could either enter or not.”
Evelyn Glennie is considered one of the world‘s foremost percussionists and is the first and only full-time solo classical percussionist. The master of more than 1, 000 traditional and unconventional percussion instruments from around the world has performed with a range of musical talents, from the Kodo Japanese drummers to Icelandic pop singer Björk, and with every major orchestra in America and Europe. Profoundly deaf (meaning severely impaired but not completely deaf) since the age of 12, the percussionist identifies notes by vibrations she feels through her feet and body; she insists her deafness is irrelevant to her ground-breaking, critically acclaimed work.
Evelyn Elizabeth Ann Glennie was born July 19, 1965, the only daughter of Isobel, a school teacher, and Herbert Arthur Glennie, a beef farmer. Raised outside Aberdeen, Scotland, Glennie and her two brothers helped on the family farm and, though her mother was an organist, didn‘t grow up in a particularly musical environment. She was a promising student of piano and clarinet as a child, and she was blessed with perfect pitch, the ability to identify or sing a note by ear. At age eight, Glennie started complaining of sore ears and hearing loss. Her condition steadily deteriorated, and by age 11 she needed a hearing aid, which she found distracting and later discarded. She continued to play music and found she could perceive the quality of a note by the level of the reverberations she could feel in her hands, wrists, lower body, and feet. Glennie counts as her major influences cellist Jacqueline du Pré and pianist Glenn Gould.
Percussion “Felt Right”
When she was 12, Glennie saw a schoolmate playing percussion. She started taking lessons, and, she told People, “… it felt right.” She graduated with honors from London‘s prestigious Royal Academy of Music in 1985. She claims her deafness kept her from being caught up by social distractions and made her a better student, but she also realized it affected her ability to play in an orchestra, so she set her sights on becoming a soloist. In 1985 she made her professional debut; the following year she left for Japan to study the five-octave marimba for a year. Glennie‘s first decade as a professional solo performer was filled with milestones: first performance of a new percussion concerto, first time an orchestra had performed with a solo percussionist, first solo percussion performance at a festival or venue. In 1990 she met Greg Malcagni, a recording engineer, and the two wed four years later.
Glennie introduced her rendition of fellow Scot James MacMillan‘s Veni, Veni, Emmanual—described by Billboard as “a devoutly celestial concerto”—at London‘s Royal Albert Hall in 1992. She released a recording of the work the following year. In 1996 Glennie released Drumming, which she described to Billboard as “quite a
personal album.” She wanted to make a “raw, … improvised” album using untuned percussion. Billboard critic Timothy White called her playing on the record “breath-takingly instinctive.”
Glennie‘s twelfth solo release, Shadow Behind the Iron Sun, was released in 2000 and recorded under unusual circumstances. She and veteran pop producer Michael Brauer spent four days in a studio packed with every instrument Glennie played, exploring as many moods as possible, from dark and aggressive to light and happy. The improvised songs, which were all recorded on the first take, were titled after chapters in Eaters of the Dead, a Michael Crichton novel that Brauer was reading at the time. “With this project, there were no boundaries, no rules, no limits,” Glennie was quoted as saying on her website, adding it was her favorite record so far. African Sunrise/Manhattan Rave, released in 2001 on Black Box Records, is a work by British composer David Heath that Glennie and the London Philharmonic Orchestra bring to life. On “Manhattan Rave,” Glennie literally plays on trash (an assortment of sticks, oilcans, and bottles and pans) and “does her best percussion freakout. It truly is an amazing work, capable of raising the dead while remaining somehow ‘accessible, ‘” according to All Music Guide‘s Thorn Jurek.
Master of Timpani, Xylophone, Car Muffler
While countless pieces of music have been composed for the piano, violin, flute, or cello, few works have been written for percussion. In an effort to change that, Glennie has commissioned more than 80 new pieces to date, with projects constantly in the works. She actively pursues new composers and commissions more new pieces, on average, than any other solo performer.
Glennie has collected more than 1,000 percussion instruments, and there seems to be no end to what she is able to make music with. She is a master of common percussion instruments from around the world—marimba, xylophone, timpani, chimes, congas, steel pan, djembes, bodhrans, daiko drums, and many more. But she is also wildly inventive. She creates instruments herself, like an adapted car muffler she strikes with triangle beaters. She also has made music on common items such as a hospital bed, camera, wheel hub, garbage can lid, flower pot, and starting gun. Composer Django Bates wrote a piece for Glennie, which she played only with kitchen utensils, called “My Dream Kitchen.” She designed a line of cymbals for cymbal company Sabian called “Glennie‘s Garbage” that are welded from sheet metal. Glennie, who played clarinet as a child, also began to add wind instruments to her repertoire, starting with Great Highland bagpipes.
Glennie tours extensively and exhaustively. She plays more than 100 concerts each year and has appeared across five continents. She plays on 20 to 50 instruments during each performance, “bounding,” as Michael Walsch wrote in Time, “from instrument to instrument with the grace of a natural athlete.” A Washington Post critic was almost as impressed by Glennie‘s physical show in concert—which he called the “Evelyn Glennie Workout”—as he was by “the subtle gradations of sound and color she brings to every phrase.” In addition to the details of her music and instruments, Glennie pays attention to the non-musical details of her shows, performing in colorful, theatrical costumes and with thematically designed sets and lights. Because she feels the music through her feet, she prefers to play barefoot. In addition to about two tons of equipment, Glennie travels with her Gameboy video game player.
Did Not Want to Hear about Hearing
In addition to performing, Glennie and her husband have composed award-winning music for British film and television. She also hosted two series of her own television programs for the BBC, including one called Soundbites, which featured interviews and performances by musical guests. She has written two books for the marimba and a music education book for schools. Her best-selling autobiography, Good Vibrations, was published in 1985.
Glennie believes that her hearing impairment has no bearing on her position as a world-renowned percussionist, and she is reluctant to discuss the subject with interviewers. Although she is active in some 40 organizations for the deaf, such as a program that provides music-based therapy for hearing-impaired children, Glennie downplays her involvement, preferring to concentrate on elevating the art of percussion. She has achieved her goal, according to Symphony magazine: “Glennie is the one individual most responsible for the sudden emergence of percussion from the rear of the orchestra to front-and-center stage, both in fact and in public attention.”
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Learn to Read Music
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All musicians, excepting blind ones, need to learn to read music if they are to make the most of their ability. The entire history of Western music is available to those who have mastered this skill. Yet for so many, reading music remains the single biggest obstacle to learning music.
It certainly was for me. I even had an incompetent piano teacher (famously, I think) fire me because I couldn’t learn to read music. (I’m at long last more competent at sight reading than she was at recognizing musical talent, to say the least.) She literally told my mother, “Take your money every week and throw it in the garbage! Albert will never be able to play the piano!” Much as I’d like to, I won’t name names, although I presume she is no longer with us (or at least, one hopes, has no internet access).
What Mrs. [expletive deleted — her name really is an expletive!] failed, astonishingly, to notice is that music is sound. Nowadays, far too much emphasis is in fact placed on simply learning to read music, while neglecting this simple fact, and training the ear ought therefore to be favored above training the eye. I don’t have statistics on the percentage of exasperated piano students whose flashbacks to stereotypical “mean old bat” piano teachers smacking their wrists with a ruler have cost them years of psychotherapy, though I can assure my readers that learning to read music need not be this painful.
Reading music should be thought of much like training a muscle. No one enters a gym with an Olympian physique for the first time. The rest of us may feel intimidated by the pros, but two things are important. First, they had to work very, very hard to attain that level of fitness. Secondly, and most importantly, they’re still working out. To a certain extent, learning to read music is like learning to ride a bicycle. However, the human mind and body function according to a strict use-it-or-lose-it principle, and that ought to compel us to practice…
That said by way of introduction, here are some practical, general tips that will help you learn to read music with greater ease. (Be sure to subscribe to this site, as specific tips and exercises are added regularly.)
Practice regularly
This should be so self-evident that I needn’t mention it, yet it continues to amaze me how many music students don’t make time for regular practice and then wonder why they’re not improving quickly. (Yes, people actually pay me to tell them to practice.) Good practice habits are absolutely essential if you wish to learn to read music or undertake any serious musical activity. In learning to read music, above all this means practicing regularly. Clearly, regular practice will bring results far more quickly than will intermittent work. Make a commitment to practice sight reading at least five days a week. It’s useful to start practice sessions with reading music. This will quickly grow into a habit. As progress is cumulative only with regular work, 10 minutes a day is all most music students need to learn to read music proficiently. By working consistently, with proper practice habits, you’ll astonish yourself with how fast your music reading skills will improve. Improvements on improvements will accelerate your progress. It’s like getting compound interest on your sight reading skills!
Practice with a clear mind
Like all music skills, it is perfectly normal to be able to sight read well one day and less well the next. The mind must be receptive, and a tired mind can no more learn to read music than it can do any other activity that demands concentrated effort. Foreign language learners are well aware of this phenomenon. Some days you might be fluent and on others you can barely get the words out and you end up making a fool of yourself. Those are the days you get to tell your friends about (I certainly have my share of embarrassing stories), but in music it simply doesn’t work this way. Never practice on fatigue.
Focus first on rhythm
Music of any complexity can always be broken into its constituent components. In reading music, this means first and foremost that rhythm must predominate. A valuable warm-up exercise to sight reading is simply to tap the rhythm while counting out loud. (It’s best for this exercise not to be done with the metronome!) The simplest way to do this is with a single line, either melodic or accompanimental. If you’re working with polyphonic music, or if the accompaniment has a different rhythm from the melody, it’s incredibly valuable to tap one voice in each hand while counting aloud. Only once you’re confident with the rhythm should you proceed to actually reading the pitches. Indeed, if you can’t accurately tap the rhythm while counting evenly, it’s impossible to expect to be able to read the music at sight! It is surprising how many music students continue to struggle with learning to read music but who never bother to first learn to tap the rhythm accurately. Much of the battle can be won by that alone.
Use appropriate material
The right material is essential if you wish to learn to read music and to sustain that effort over a long enough period to become proficient. Imagine a personal trainer forcing a weak body to push the crushing weights that professional athletes lift! While this analogy might sound extreme, in my experience this is certainly part of the reason so many music students struggle with reading music — they see a tall mountain and are afraid to take the first step. Since every student will be at a different stage of development it will be impossible to make specific recommendations here (although exercises targeted to your specific level — from rank beginner to experienced professionals — are in the works at key-notes.com!). There is no need to limit yourself to music stricly for your instrument. Song accompaniments can make for useful sight reading material, for instance.
It should be axiomatic that every aspiring music student must find the best teacher possible. Let your teacher know you’ve set a goal to learn to read music competently and ask him or her for appropriate material regularly. Work with your teacher to select the proper material as mentioned above, find a volume of music at or just beyond your level, and set a goal to read through the entire book. Use a bookmark to mark your progress. Read a little each day until you’ve finished, then select the next volume.
Separate reading material from repertoire
Avoid at all costs the very bad habit of continually sight reading pieces you’re learning! Truly sight reading music can only be done once per piece, since the brain will already begin absorbing the musical information. A key distinction is that reading music favors rhythm even at the expense of some wrong notes, while actually learning a piece must be absolutely precise in all aspects. Therefore, repertoire pieces may be sight read once, and fresh material must always be sought out for sight reading work.
Develop proprioception
(Keep your eyes on the page!)
When learning to read music it is imperative to keep your eyes on the page, not on your fingers or instrument. This is one of the most difficult tasks for many students, but it is the major hurdle to be overcome. The technical term for the essential skill required in sight reading is called proprioception. Proprioception is a sort of “sixth sense,” an awareness of the body in space. Athletes and dancers, for instance, have highly developed proprioception, and musicians need to develop this skill as well. There’s really only one way to develop proprioception in learning to read music, and that is to keep your eyes focused on the music rather than your hands.
On the piano, there is a simple exercise you can do that will help you to develop this “sixth sense.” The piano keyboard has two groups of black keys per octave, one consisting of two black keys and the other three. By orienting yourself by means of the black keys it’s possible to find any key relatively quickly. Try closing your eyes and challenging yourself to find all the D-flats, then all the E-flats, working your way through all the black keys. Then practice finding the white keys blindly by first feeling their relation to the black keys. This, by the way, is how blind pianists are able to play.
Know harmony
If you’re versed in harmony and know all your scales and chords, learning to read music can become relatively easy. Once you can immediately recognize all the key signatures and know all the notes within each scale, you’ll be able to feel your way within a given key. Sight reading music well demands the integration of many musical faculties, including full knowledge of the common harmonies and all scales. This is why genuinely musical material, rather than random notes as some misguided electronic methods use, is essential for learning to read music. Good musicians are able to recognize harmonic and rhythmic patterns and to anticipate what comes next. In this sense, reading music is exactly like reading language — a context is necessary.
Read the following paragraph, for instance:
“I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?”
Since we know our own language so well and because we have a context (i.e., the words form whole sentences and the sentences make sense), we’re able to understand the paragraph. Learning to read music works exactly the same way: We learn to recognize patterns and make inferences based on subconscious expectations.
Since we know our own language so well and because we have a context (i.e., the words form whole sentences and the sentences make sense), we’re able to understand the paragraph. Learning to read music works exactly the same way: We learn to recognize patterns and make inferences based on subconscious expectations.
Yet imagine how difficult it would be to have to read a series of nonsense syllables! Instead, we learn to read music as well as language by practicing with patterns of notes and words that we come to know. Sight reading methods that use random notes are therefore to be ignored for any but the most superficial tasks.
Read by intervals, not note names
Reading music is simultaneously absolute and relative. That means that the brain recognizes not only the absolute note names for each clef by memorizing them, it also should recognize the intervallic relations between notes. To aid in reading music, each clef has two notes that serve as references for the eye. By convention, C is common to all clefs. The treble clef is also called the G clef because the spiraled symbol is centered on the G above middle C. Therefore, C and G are the two reference notes for the treble clef:
The bass clef is also called the F clef because its two dots are centered on the F below middle C. Thus, C and F are the reference notes for the bass clef:
Like the treble clef, the C clefs (soprano, mezzosoprano, alto, tenor and baritone) also use C and G as their reference notes. Most piano students have never encountered the C clefs, and essentially only alto and tenor clefs are used nowadays for a handful of instruments, including viola, trombone and bassoon. Here is the alto clef:
It is a very good idea to familiarize yourself with all clefs no matter which instrument you play. The goal is not to learn the absolute note names for each clef, which will only confuse you, but simply to be able to find any note in relation to its closest reference note. Thus, for instance, if you understand that the C clef symbol is centered on middle C, you’ll immediately know that the note directly above it is D, no matter which of the five C clefs you are learning to read.
Practice with others
If you have the opportunity to work with other music students, by all means take advantage of it. If you don’t yet have this opportunity, make it. Reading through music with others is one of the best ways to learn to read music, since you’ll be forced to stay in rhythm. I often play duets with my students to help them acquire this skill. You can play with any combination of instruments and accompany singers. The more variety, the better.
Work according to these suggestions and you’ll be surprised at how rapidly you progress! Best wishes in learning to read music and in all your musical work.
Watch this video on sight reading
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