The Miracle that is Musical Notation

 

I've often marvelled at how musical notation conveys so much information with just a combination of various dots and lines, and wondered how it developed the way it did. I recently read a book on this subject titled Capturing Music by Thomas Forrest Kelly. (Yes, I admit I am a total musical theory geek.) Although it didn't answer all my questions, I did learn a lot.

There is no known written record of music from the Ancient Greeks and Romans and we know very little about it. In the Middle Ages, music was learned by rote, that is, by copying another person. Almost all music was sung at first, and had words, taken from the various liturgical texts in the church. Many scholars were quoted as saying they believed it was impossible to notate music. For centuries, music was simply learned by listening to another person, and the various chants, hymns, songs and so on were passed down generation by generation in this way. 

Eventually they began to use symbols over the words to indicate a vocal embellishment over a given note or notes. This led to other innovations, and dots on lines were used to show the direction of the melody (up or down) and by how much. They still would have had to depend on having heard someone sing it, but perhaps this primitive notation served as a sort of "reminder" of what they had heard. Undoubtedly, someone saw the potential of this, and there began to be notes written on lines which did correspond to actual notes.

The hardest nut to crack was rhythm. When music was sung, the words determined the rhythm, to some degree. And again, you would just copy someone else to get the rhythm as well as the notes. But when notes began to be written, there would have to be something to indicate the rhythm. If someone was singing solo, they would have a lot of leeway to do the rhythm as they saw fit, but if multiple people were singing together, they would need notation so they would all be in sync. The written record shows all sorts of attempts at this. For example, the reason we show eighth notes with a bar across the top is that these "faster" notes were sung over one syllable of a word, so the line connecting them indicated that.

Music was probably a lot more fluid-sounding before rhythmic notation. But of course it also had its limits, especially where multiple people sang or played together. Harmony, which evolved from multiple lines of music sung together, would have been impossible without rhythmic notation. So it was a small price to pay, I think we would all agree!

For years I have wondered why our notes on the staff correspond to the white keys on the piano, or the scale of C Major. Notation preceded the invention of the piano (or harpsichord) by many years, so it wasn't because of the keyboard. If anything, it's the other way around. Although the book I read didn't answer this completely, I speculate that the staff we use today was based on the scale that we call A Minor, which the Greeks called Aeolian. This may have been the primary scale that the early chants were sung in. (Is it just a coincidence that the first note on the piano is an A? Probably.) Later on, there was a need for an occasional "out of scale" tone, and it seems that the flat sign evolved first, and later the sharp sign. It appears that they didn't think of notating in different keys as we do today, and there was no "key signature" as we now use.

When you compare musical notation to our alphabet, it's pretty incredible. Although every novel, poem, treatise, essay or memo is written using just our 26 letters, and once we know the alphabet we can read or write an unlimited amount of material, the alphabet itself doesn't give us any information about inflection, rhythm, speed or other nuances if you speak the words aloud (or even silently in your mind). We need punctuation, and such indicators as italics, underlining, and other methods to convey more specific meaning. Yet music notation, with fewer actual symbols, tells you a tremendous amount, not only what to play, but how to play it, yet still allowing for a great deal of flexibility which is necessary for music to be interpreted differently by individual musicians. (We still need the addition of other symbols and directives, just like the alphabet does, for the composer to indicate qualities as dynamics. I will discuss this in a future post.)

We who play an instrument (or sing) probably take our musical notation for granted. But it's good to appreciate the amazing evolution which enables us to experience and communicate the beauty of music.

Independence

 

Today is July 4th, Independence Day, and I want to talk about the subject of independence of the fingers.

Most traditional (read: "old") methods promote the idea that the fingers must work independently from each other. There are many exercises given to students that involve such things as holding several notes down while playing another note with a different finger. You are probably told to lift the finger as high as possible before it comes down onto the keys. Supposedly this is to increase the strength as well as independence. 

If you think about it for just a moment, you will realize that you already have independence of the fingers. Virtually all of us type on the computer keyboard (and our phones) with a good degree of skill, and probably accuracy and even speed. How could you do this if your fingers didn't work independently? You don't find yourself smooshing down several keys at once because the fingers can't move individually. Place your hand flat on a table; hold three or four fingers down while another finger moves; unless you have arthritis or some other condition in your hands, you can already do it. Playing hours of exercises will not make it appreciably better or easier. These exercises are awkward at best, and painful at worst. There is absolutely no reason why pain is necessary to learn to play the piano!

Some people mistakenly believe that playing the piano is similar to typing, and that typing is good preparatory work for playing the piano. However, this is not the case at all. If it were true, there would be a great number more good pianists out there than there are, since virtually everyone types. Many of my students have jobs where they type at the computer all day long, but they don't start out ahead of the game at all when it comes to learning the piano. Playing the piano involves a tremendous number of skills that don't get developed at all by typing!

If you do exercises to supposedly improve your strength and finger independence, your playing will probably start to sound like an exercise, that is, very clunky and stiff, what I call "note-wise." How can it be otherwise? You can't practice one way and then think you will flip a switch and play beautifully.

In fact, the real skill in piano is learning to have the fingers, hand, arm, and even torso, work in conjunction with each other. The fingers already want to "get in the act" and take over, so to speak, but a dazzlingly fast and smooth arpeggio, for example, involves a lot more than just the fingers each doing their own thing. I often say we need to "tame" the fingers. If they work independently, as mentioned above, the sound you produce will not be as smooth, even, and with good phrasing as if they work together.

As you've heard me say before, we also do not need additional strength in our fingers. Most pianists do not have muscular hands. We need agility and flexibility. All the strength we need comes from the larger muscles of the arm. If this were not true, how would we see so many young prodigies who play all the big and difficult pieces? They simply haven't had time to develop muscles in their tiny hands.

The only endeavor that I can think of that requires finger strength would be rock-climbing. You can see that an experienced rock climber has muscular hands. If you think therefore they would have an advantage when it comes to learning the piano, because they already have finger strength, you would be wrong. They would have a much harder time, in fact, because they have probably lost a great deal of flexibility in the aquiring of those muscles.

The whole issue of strength and independence of the fingers is a moot point anyway. Almost ALL of what goes into learning to play an instrument is neurological. It's happening in the brain. I like to call it the "wiring" in the brain. There is no physical skill you can develop without it first happening in the brain. Every time you practice, it is good to be mindful of that. The brain, in my experience, responds to intelligently designed technical work done in smaller amounts, rather than brute force strength training.

There was a well-known pianist who, after a long career of concertizing, suddenly developed a type of paralysis in his hands. He was diagnosed with dystonia. Doctors and physical therapists tried many different treatments, all to no avail. Not a lot was known about dystonia, apparently. Ultimately it was discovered that it was a "scrambling" of the part of the brain which controlled the hands. No amount of work on his hands was going to change that. Later on, he was able to return to playing, but only if he played pieces that didn't require a lot of "finger-action." Pieces with more chords and more dependence on the arm were possible for him. 

You probably won't develop dystonia, but pianists who force their hands and fingers into unnatural exercises for "independence" do develop tendinitis and other conditions. Please don't be fooled by the old idea that you need independence of the fingers.

The Problem With Piano Lessons

 

I've been teaching private piano lessons for many years. In the past I also taught at a private music school and a community college. I am a very committed teacher, as you must have deduced from reading this blog. I have a degree from one of the best conservatories in the country, Manhattan School of Music. After my degree I had further studies with a masterful teacher, Joseph Prostakoff. I have a website which lists my experience, has testimonials from students, recordings of my playing from concerts I have given, and, of course, I have been writing this blog for 12 years.

When I meet people and they learn that I teach piano, I very often hear "Oh, I took piano lessons when I was a kid." Some of them say they really enjoyed it, and others say they hated it. Almost everyone took private piano lessons from a local teacher.

However, I see a lot of problems with private piano lessons, and also with some schools. Many people who teach privately are simply not qualified to teach. You wouldn't send your child to learn math or science or most subjects to just some person in your neighborhood. In a public or private school, the teachers must be certified and have proven competency in their fields. In addition, they may be required to have continuing education to keep up to date. A private teacher may not have a degree in music, or any kind of certification, and has no proof of their level of expertise that they can show you. Some just teach a few lessons "on the side" to pick up a little extra money. Furthermore, their own education in music may have taken place many years prior, and they may not be up to date on modern theories and practices. You might think, "what could really change in learning to play the piano?" I can assure you that much has changed in our understanding. (Read my post "Are you using 300-year-old ideas?")

Many private piano teachers learned to play when they were kids; maybe they even played reasonably well. But teaching is an art. Just because you played for a few years when you were a kid does not make you automatically qualified to teach others. And most teachers will teach the same way they were taught. If they had a bad teacher, they are probably going to also be a bad teacher. Unfortunately, they may not have even realized they had a bad teacher, so they have no impetus or reason to change how they teach.

Virtually all my adult students who come to me having had lessons previously have some level of bad habits they will need to change if they want to play well, make progress, and really enjoy the journey. I hate to use the word "bad," but there is no point in sugar-coating it. They have learned technique either based wholly on a wrong foundation, or they have not really learned technique at all. Often their abilities in sight-reading are sorely lacking. They really have not learned how to practice effectively. And they sometimes have no idea how to play expressively. Theoretically, it's possible they had a good teacher and just didn't follow the teachers' instructions. But when I question them about their previous lessons, I can tell with a high degree of certainty that the teacher didn't know how to teach, and/or was teaching the wrong things.

You may think I sound quite arrogant, saying that others are wrong in how they teach and I am right. I'm sure most teachers think they are skilled and doing a good job with their students. If the student doesn't do well, they just say the student didn't have enough talent or didn't work hard enough. This seems to be quite a conundrum. There is no absolute "test" that you can apply to ascertain the quality of the teacher. It is not until you've studied with them for a period of time that you may have an inkling. But by then you will regret that you spent all that time, energy, and money on a teacher who didn't help you. I suppose there is simply no substitute for using your own good judgement and honestly assessing your own progress at the piano. (See my post "Who can you believe?")

Finding a small neighborhood music school is also not a solution. I am aware of several chains of music schools who teach a variety of instruments, including piano. However, these places usually hire young teachers, just starting out, and they pay them very poorly. The school takes the rest of your tuition money for overhead, and profit, of course. There is no guarantee that the school has chosen teachers with actual teaching skills. This may a be a good way for a brand new teacher to get some experience under their belt, and I sympathize with them, because everyone has to start somewhere. But you may not want your child, or yourself, to be the guinea pig for a brand new teacher. And don't assume that a teacher who teaches at a piano store is a good choice; the store is simply renting out the space, and make no guarantees as to the quality of the teacher.

When parents decide to send their child for piano lessons, they also may not want to spend too much, thinking that if the child doesn't like it and wants to stop, that they will not have lost too much money. But sadly, if the lessons are "cheap" and the teacher is not good, the child probably won't do well, and will want to stop. On the other hand, people have limited budgets and may not be able to afford a top teacher. A high-priced teacher isn't necessarily a good one either. I have known of many high-priced teachers who are still promoting 300-year-old ideas. It's a real dilemma. I sympathize with parents who are trying to do the best they can.

Unfortunately I don't have a magic answer. If you are exploring the idea of private piano lessons for yourself or your child, ask the teacher a LOT of questions. Ask about their approach to all the many subjects I have discussed in previous posts. Also, you MUST ask them to play something for you and assess how you think it sounded. If they say they can't play because they are "too busy to practice" or some other such excuse, that should be a red flag. See my post "Finding a Teacher."