Episode 268: Cheers to The Stuff No One Tells You to Teach
Well, hello there, my studio teacher friends! Today is an exciting day around here at Beyond Measure, as I am officially OFF my summer hiatus and back in your ears with new content. Phew – it’s so important to take breaks, friends. If you are in the throes of revising your studio calendars for the upcoming year, I can offer you no better advice than to plan for AMPLE TIME OFF. Even if you don’t feel like you “need” to take it off, you will come back refreshed and at the top of your Teaching Game. There’s an episode on that; I’ll link it in today’s shownotes…but for now, let’s get on with a brand new show! My name is Christina Whitlock and you are listening to episode 268 of the Beyond Measure Podcast.
Okay friends. What a pleasure to be back with you in real time. I feel the same way about this podcast as I do about teaching: I never feel like I *need* a break. I feel like I *can* push through and keep working working working (it’s fine! Everything’s fine!)… but when I actually give myself a little bit of breathing room? Ah. It’s always refreshing to feel EXCITED again. There is something to be said for giving your creative energy a chance to build up a little bit, so it’s ready to explode, in a good way, of course.
I am pumped for ALL KINDS OF THINGS coming up, including the 2nd session of my Intermediate Piano Teaching Cohort that I co-lead with the fabulous Janna Williamson. Last year’s Cohort was a fulfilling experience on all the levels and this year’s is shaping up to be another incredible ride. We start on September 4th and meet weekly for 12 weeks. We have an incredible group of teachers signed up – I cannot WAIT to learn alongside them – and there are, quite literally, a couple of spots left as of this recording. If you have any interest in joining us for a 12-week study of ALL THINGS Intermediate Piano Teaching – literature, technique, learning styles, transfer students, teaching rhythm and reading, historical performance practice, and more – head to ChristinaWhitlock.com/cohort before this year’s group is sold out. Okay…on with the episode!
Today’s episode is something I’ve been kicking around for a while. The more I work with other teachers, the more fascinated I become with naming the skills our method books are NOT teaching. I don’t say this as an indictment on method books. I’m not saying they’re missing things they should otherwise include. I just want to highlight the fact that no method series on this planet can specifically outline EVERYTHING your students need to know. It would be a mess. It’s not your method book’s job to do the teaching for you. Method books are collections of graded repertoire and they work for us. Not the other way around.
There’s a specific exercise I give my pedagogy students. It’s available for purchase, as well, if you’re really curious… but that exercise involves looking through a method book and making a list of every concept a student will learn in that book. There’s more to this exercise, for the record, but that’s how it starts. By listing EVERY concept a student will learn while working through that book.
Most method series begin with some kind of concept map. Maybe it’s just the Table of Contents, combined with subheadings for each unit. But regardless, there tends to be some kind of breakdown about what students learn on which pages.
Most of my pedagogy students – and other teachers I’ve walked through this exercise – will use that breakdown at the start of the book and call it a day. For instance, Unit 1 teaches quarter, half, and whole notes, finger numbers, and groups of 2 and three black keys. Case closed.
Obviously, those are important concepts to note. However, I contend there are many things about learning our instrument that go beyond those headings. It’s more than rhythmic values and dynamic signs and things that can be neatly categorized in subheadings. And I’m kind of obsessed with noting all those things.
Today I’m sharing a few of them with you, in hopes that my obsession will be a little contagious. I am super curious what skills and concepts you come up with that are never expressly taught in your method books.
Are you ready? Oh this is going to be fun….
First up today: let’s talk about measure numbers. A lot of us made a shocking discovery when we pivoted to teaching exclusively online during the pandemic lockdowns. I read many posts online where teachers were commiserating that our students didn’t know how to find measure 7. It was one of the many things we all realized we’d been taking for granted. Sure, we’d always asked students to start in measure 7, but we also always pointed to it when we referred to it.
I know a lot of teachers who had to take time out of those online lessons to teach students how to count their measures. So let me say it here: If we’re not intentional about explaining how measure numbers work, some students will never realize that square at the top of the second line with a 9 in it MEANS measure number 9. And, even if they do, a surprising number of students think that ONLY the measures with the little numbered boxes are counted. As in – if measure 9 is numbered in the book and you ask your student to start at measure 10, sometimes they will say, “I only see measure 9”. That is a learning opportunity, my friend.
So – sure – all of our method series talk about MEASURES and what those barlines mean. But actively counting and numbering those measures is a whole new story.
This is a skill we take for granted… and a lot of students will figure it out intuitively. But others? They will not know the difference between the second measure and the second SYSTEM or the second LINE until we spell it out clearly for them. Right? Do you have students who confuse the second measure with the second line? You’re not alone, friend.
AND: because TELLING ISN’T TEACHING, we can’t just say the words and expect them to stick. For the first few weeks your students are introduced to measures, and occasionally throughout their study, it’s important to take a minute or two and ask your student questions like, “Which hand is playing in measure 4?”, “can you point to measure 3?”, and “how many measures are in this piece altogether?” It’s ALSO important to pull out music from other publishers…music that uses a different spacing on the page or a different typesetting…and ask students to find measure 9 in THAT piece. You can pull out a big ole Prokofiev sonata and ask them to find measure 12. That’s actually really fun: watching the initial shock you’re your students when they see such a gigantic score, but then watching students discover they can, in fact, find
So, when I talk about things are Method Books don’t teach… that’s a good example. Students learn about measures… but introducing them to the idea of numbering measures and counting measures is up to us.
Here’s something else method books don’t expressly teach: the REAL , ACTUAL functions of Tonic and Dominant. Sure, most methods teach that the first scale degree is called Tonic and the fifth scale degree is called Dominant. There may be SOME explorations about when to use tonic and when to use dominant in some of the companion theory books, but these two terms are largely regarded as terms to know in case you’re ever taking a theory test and have to name them. Right?
When I was a new baby piano teacher at age 14, that’s how I regarded them as well, because everything I knew about piano teaching came from the method books carried by the music store I was teaching at.
But here’s the thing: Tonic and Dominant relationships are the foundation of EVERYTHING we listen to here in Western Civilization. Students cannot fully understand the music they are playing until they have some working knowledge of tonic and dominant relationships.
This impacts everything from sightreading to improvisation to pattern recognition to memorization. Students need to be singing these harmonies and learning to listen for how they change throughout their pieces. Aside from Marilyn Lowe’s Music Moves for Piano series, I think it’s fair to say most of our materials are lacking in attention to this concept.
Obviously, this can get very deep… but I have a really simple application for you today. Most of us have a student or two who love adding their own endings to pieces. Right? Do you have that one student who ALWAYS needs to add one more note to the end of their piece? And sometimes it takes them a minute to get to the correct one? So they finish a piece in the key of G major and they add a C to the end… then realize that doesn’t sound right… so they play a D… and that doesn’t sound right… and eventually they land on G and breathe a big sigh of relief. Right?
When you introduce students to the term Tonic, I think it’s important to point out TONIC sounds like home. MLT teachers will call tonic the resting tone because that’s where the music feels settled. So, I always make it a point to tell my students – if you ever want to add an ending to your piece, you just have to make sure the ending is on tonic. Unless, of course, you’re trying to mess with your audience and leave them hanging on a musical question mark. In which case, you would end on anything besides tonic.
But seriously. Do your students realize their pieces generally end on tonic? If they want to add a single note in the upper or lower registers as a final “ta-da!” at the end of their piece…do they realize it’s NOT really a guessing game which note to choose? That – as long as they know the key they’re in – they just have to choose THAT note?
I don’t think a lot of students know that until we make it a point to tell them. And I don’t believe most method books are going to make that point. So, again, that’s on us.
Here’s another one for you: Your method book is not going to expressly tell students where their eyes should be when they play. Sure, maybe there’s one suggestion here and there, but learning to train the eyeballs is a SERIOUS part of our job… and a lot of us overlook it. Ha! Overlook it. Get it?? I’m so funny.
Let’s be clear: this topic is not without controversy. There are lots of opinions about what is good and bad when it comes to training our line of sight. Personally, I do believe students – from early piano study on – need to learn how it FEELS to use different fingers without looking at them. This builds physical security that is tough to maintain if students always use their eyesight as a crutch. It also makes sightreading difficult if eyes are darting up and down between the score and the piano keys. These things are all true and that’s why I’m mentioning this topic today. I *do* think we need to pay attention to where our students’ eyes are when they play and I think we need to look for moments when their line of sight is limiting what they are able to accomplish at the instrument.
There are also emerging thoughts that we shouldn’t go to extreme lengths to limit our students’ visual experiences. Many of us have done the trick where we hold a book over our students’ hands so they cannot see what they’re doing, or maybe you’ve even seen teachers use specialized Dribbling Goggles that basketball players use to block their line of sight to the keyboard. I think these are fine when used as a novelty to make a point… but I also understand the complexities of visual processing, and there is evidence to say it’s not as simple as putting literal blinders on our students.
Regardless, I will say this: your method books do not teach you where your students’ eyes should be while they’re playing.
Time is running out on us so let me give you one more thing your method books probably aren’t teaching students: how about looking for patterns? Music study is SO much about pattern recognition. Comparing same vs. different. Looking for repeated ideas and taking note of any changes.
This is one of those things that we take for granted as seasoned musicians. When your student is playing a twelve measure piece in ABA form, you probably think it’s obvious that measures 1-4 are the same as measures 9-12. It’s second nature for you to notice those things.
…but it’s NOT second nature for our students. Furthermore, it’s more challenging for our students to recognize those patterns than we realize. What might seem obvious to you is likely not so obvious to them.
Here’s what we DON’T want to do (and in the spirit of full disclosure, I find myself doing this more than I would like to admit). We don’t want to say, “Hey Johnny… you played measures 1-4 so well. Now tell me… what do you notice about measures 9-12? Do you see they’re exactly the same?”
That comment might seem harmless – at it is – but I just gave away the discovery I wanted Johnny to make. I should have stopped when I said, “what do you notice about measures 9-12?”. Even if it takes Johnny some time – and it probably will – to notice, I should avoid rushing to the conclusion I want him to draw. MY telling him the answer is infinitely less effective than letting him come to the answer himself.
That’s probably a whole lesson unto itself, right? Letting your students work for the answers instead of giving them everything yourself. Maybe we’ll talk about that later this year.
Sigh. Can I just say it’s so nice to be back with you today? My summer hiatus was 1 million percent necessary, but I did miss you. If your curious about how I spent my summer, I’ll be sending out some reflections on the past few weeks in this week’s Piano Teacher Confessions e-letter. If you’re not on the Piano Teacher Confessions e-letter, you should get on that mailing list! Links, as always, are in today’s shownotes.
I hope today’s episode got the ball rolling on some new thoughts for you. As I said earlier, I’d love to know what concepts you’ve noticed are not covered in your method books. I have lots of thoughts… I’ll probably do a part two of this topic later this year… but just be on the lookout for things you teach without being prompted by your method books of choice. We all have our things, right?
Please note: I did not even TOUCH my obsession with teaching students how to read the staff today. There are many, MANY things about teaching the staff that our method books don’t cover. If you enjoyed the thoughts in today’s episode and would like to know more about how I dissect the staff in a way that takes away the intimidation a lot of our students feel in that transition, I would encourage you to check out my Building Better Music Readers course. Building Better Music Readers is a 12-week breakdown of the micro steps it takes to read on the staff. We talk about alphabet fluency, finger number drills, seeing notes as groups instead of individual pitches… the list goes on and on. I receive compliments on that material all the time, and I would love to help transform the way YOU teach students to read the staff as well. That link – along with everything else – is in the shownotes for today’s episode. You can find them in your podcast player, or head to ChristinaWhitlock.com/episode268.
You can spend 12 weeks with me in your inbox with Building Better Music Readers, or you can spend 12 weeks with me LIVE on Zoom this fall in the Intermediate Piano Teaching Cohort. So many fun learning opportunities at hand, friends.
Phew! Let’s grab a glass and toast ourselves out of here, shall we?
Studio music teacher friends from all around the world – today we celebrate being part of a worldwide network of teachers. No one fully understands the intricacies of our job unless they do our job. So I just want to take a moment and appreciate ALL the ears that are listening to this show today. We are truly in great company here. And, also, let’s give thanks for our method books! They may not give us EVERYTHING we need to teach, but they certainly give us helpful material to support our instruction. I hope you take advantage of the MANY methods out there; I think they each have something they can teach us. My glass is raised to you, my teacher friends! Hear, hear.
That’s a wrap on Episode 268 of Beyond Measure, friends! Make sure you check out today’s shownotes for a plethora of goodies. ChristinaWhitlock.com/episode268. I’ll see you in your inboxes on Thursday for another installment of Piano Teacher Confessions, and I’ll be back here on Monday with another fresh episode. Onward and upward, my friends! Take great care of yourselves this week.
