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Episode Summary
In what order do you teach technical patterns? Have you ever considered going outside the exact order your method books suggest and laying out the order YOU feel would best suit your students? In this episode, Amy challenges some of our thinking around the order in which technical patterns are taught and encourages us to design a progression that works for us and our students.
Items Mentioned
Episode 70 – Teacher Talk with Jason Sifford
On Establishing a Daily Habit (Practicing the Piano or Otherwise) – Joy Morin
052 – Think Again: A Mindset for Getting (and Staying) Organized
101 – ReThink, ReAdjust, ReNew
Transcript
Do you want to lead life to its fullest as an independent music teacher? You’re in the right place!
Welcome to episode 103 of The Piano Pantry Podcast.
I’m your host, Amy Chaplin – a piano teacher who is also on a quest to support and enrich the lives of this community with amiable advice, practical products, and simple solutions. If you’re tired of your life and business feeling like it’s on overload, take a step back because I’ve got your back.
This podcast is brought to you by teachers like you who support this work on Patreon. Today, I want to give a special shout-out to insider Jason Sifford. Jason is an incredibly creative teacher and composer whom I first met at a conference. He also joined me on episode 70 for one of our teacher talks. I especially love what he said in that episode about how he intentionally ends lessons each week with students. If you’re curious, you’ll have to have a listen.
If you have been enjoying this podcast and want to throw a little support my way like Jason, visit PianoPantry.com/Patreon and join at either the $3 or $7 per month level.
As we are gearing up for a new semester, I wanted to talk about a pedagogical topic that has been near and dear to my heart for a while – the progression of how we teach technical patterns.
While I will share some of my thoughts and choices on the order in which I teach technical patterns to my students, my main goal today is to get you thinking about what order YOU prefer to teach technical patterns. Notice I didn’t say what order your method book wants you to teach them, but what order do YOU feel is most beneficial to your students?
If you’ve been around here for a while, you’ll know that I don’t often talk about pedagogical topics. There are two reasons for this. One is that I have a natural proclivity to support teachers more on the business and organizational workflow side. Two, I think some of it is actually a little thing we all deal with in wondering if we’re good enough. Crazy, I know, but we all deal with it.
So, here’s to being vulnerable.
First, I want to give you a little background of my educational history – not as some kind of crown that allows me to speak with authority – no, not that at all – this is so that you know where my influences are coming from.
First, I have a Bachelor of Music in Choral Education K-12 and a Master’s in Piano Pedagogy and Performance. In 2016, I obtained a level 1 certification in the application of Music Learning Theory – also known as MLT – for piano from the Gordon Institute for Music Learning.
I have had experience teaching from at least half a dozen different methods over the years, including Bastien, Celebrate Piano, Piano Adventures, Tales of a Musical Journey, and more.
I was a huge proponent of the Piano Safari method, especially in their early days, and I’m talking before they were even known; Julie, one of the authors, went to grad school with an acquaintance I did my undergrad with. I used their very first book every way back around 2010 – maybe even earlier. Don’t quote me on that date, but it’s been a while.
The biggest reason the Piano Safari method had me at hello was for how they approach students learning physical techniques using the animal songs. Some of the reason I bring this up is because I’ve had experience teaching technical patterns in a variety of orders from many method books. I also mention Piano Safari because of physical technique which brings us to an important question:
What is technique? It’s always irritated me a bit that we use the term interchangeably for both how we approach the piano physically as far as bodily movement and engagement and from the angle of learning to play a variety of actual exercises, as in 5-finger patterns, scales, chords and inversions, arpeggios – and such. Yes, they’re, of course, intertwined, but they can be separate conversations, and today, we’re focused on the latter.
I struggle to tell students it’s time to do their technical exercises or to open their technique book. I mean, put yourself in your students’ shoes – that doesn’t sound very exciting. I stubbornly refuse to call them technical patterns and instead call them “Piano Patterns.”
OK – minor rant over – LOL.
Well, maybe not. I also have to admit I also struggle with most technique books that accompany method books and haven’t used one in years. While I’m actually developing my own book of piano pattern progressions, I otherwise generally teach most piano patterns without any materials in front of the student.
Method books are there to help us have healthy progression in our teaching, and that’s great; it can be very comforting to have that – especially as a new teacher – but honestly, I don’t think it’s that cut and dry.
I want you to really think about the order in which you think it’s healthy for students to learn various patterns at the piano. I’m about to throw some points at you to ponder and I am going to take it slow and pause just for a few seconds after each one so you can process and think.
Are you ready?
- Do your students really need to learn all 24 Major and Minor 5-finger patterns in a dozen different combinations and articulations before they ever learn an 8-note scale?
- What if students learned a scale before they learned what a 5-finger pattern is so they understand the bigger context from which the 5-finger scale is extracted?
- Do they really need to learn one-octave scales, or would it be easier just to go for two octaves straight away – hands separate to start?
- Would it help students realize the alternating 1-2-3 | 1-2-3-4 finger pattern of scales if they played at least one contrary motion scale first?
- Are students introduced to hands-together scales way before they ever even have to play repertoire that has them playing scale passages hands together?
- F# and Db major scale fingering patterns are so easy when you think about them in relation to the 2-3 fingers on the 2 black keys and the 3- tall fingers on the 3 black keys – and yet, we don’t often teach these black key scales until years into piano lessons. Why not introduce students to these scales earlier so they don’t seem so scarry – because they’re NOT! If you have students play them chunked first, they’re so visually easy to see at the piano. Chunk-thumb-chunk thumb.
- When students are learning chord inversions, getting the middle finger of the chord correct can be tricky. Rather than having students play hands together straight away when learning inversions – or rather than having them learn one chord in the RH and then the LH and then go onto the next key – what if we had students play RH inversions of all snowman chords in both major and minor – that would be C, G, and F major, and D, E, and A minor with RH only so they can feel the finger pattern and shape; then, move onto the LH for all 6 chords (Rather than doing one key in both right and then left – like right then left in C major, right then left in G major, right then left in F. )
- What if… and I’m about to stir things up here… what if we taught harmonic patterns FIRST? That is, what if we taught tonic chords and a melodic I-V cadence before ever teaching 5-finger patterns or even scales? That is Do-Mi-So / So-Ti / So-Fa-RE-Ti / Do-Mi-Do. Harmony is the foundation on which melody is born and yet we often teach melodic structure first.
- Do you ever see students struggle with learning their I-IV-I-V-V7-I primary chord progression? What if we taught the progression in smaller snippets – extracting first the movement of the tonic chord to a V7 chord shell (Do-Mi-So / So-Ti / Do) – then the tonic chord to the full V7 melodic cadence (Do-Mi-So / So-Ti / So-Fa-Re-Ti / Do-Mi-Do). Next, we introduced the movement of the tonic to subdominant I-IV in multiple keys (Do-Mi-So / Do-Fa-La / Do-Mi-So). Only then do we have student go through the full progression I-IV-I-V-V7-I (sing the roots then the melodic progression) Of course I’m singing this melodically but students often play it in blocked chords – but why not melodically? I find a lot of students do better when playing broken then blocked (sing what that means).
I know you might be reeling a little and scratching your head a little on some of these, so just know I will address this later but that this is where my MLT influences will come out a bit.
Before we continue this chat, let me just say that there is no 100% right or wrong answer – I believe what’s most important is that you at least put some THOUGHT into what we teach when – that we’re willing to keep our minds open – that we paying attention to what’s working and what’s not for our students – that we’re willing to play around with the order of teaching things.
You might be surprised to realize your students do really well playing two-octave scales long before the method book introduces them or that knowing all 24 major and minor 5-finger patterns in the first two years may not be necessary before ever learning a full scale or chord inversion.
One of the best things I’ve done for my own teaching in recent years is to begin building my own order for how I want to teach piano patterns – notice I’m avoiding the term I used as the title of this episode – technical patterns – I just like calling them piano patterns.
All you need to do is to create a simple table in a Word Document.
Start with Prep or Level 1 – however, you want to label it.
Write down – what’s the first pattern you want students to learn and in what keys?
For many, it may be 5-finger patterns and blocked chords in C, F, and G major.
OK, what’s your second pattern?
Maybe it’s C and G major scales hands separate one octave.
Third – maybe you like students to learn the 2-note V7 chord, so they play a 5-finger pattern followed by the I-V7-I block chord in C, F, and G major.
For your first set – maybe that’s all you have!
Let me play those again to recap.
I only have four different types of patterns in my first set.
Personally, I start with broken chord cross-hand arpeggios in G, F, C, Am, and F# major. Kids find them kind of exciting to play getting to cross their left hand over their right hand to hit the tonic above – and believe me, students can do it.
Besides them sounding fancy for beginners, I start here because of harmonic structure. They’re learning tonic chords on which the melody in their pieces is built. Don’t worry – I do teach the 5-finger patterns, but not just yet.
The second thing I teach is the tonic-dominant-tonic melodic cadence only using the V7 chord shell (So-Ti) in the keys of G, F, C, and A minor; Again, it’s about establishing harmonic function and tonality first and then building melodically from there. Students start learning the movement of the bottom finger going down a half step when progressing from the I to V chord. (Do-Mi-So / So-Ti / Do)
The third thing I teach is one-octave scales hands separate in G major and its relative E natural minor, followed by C major and its relative A natural minor. I teach the natural minor only at first, but just for these two scales and this level. I find this really helps students make the connection between the major key signature and the relative minors to start.
The 4th and final pattern I teach in my first set is the 5-finger scale and blocked chord for what are called the snowmen chords – those that are 3 white keys G, F, and C majors. Students have already played the broken chord cross-hand arpeggios, dominant chord shells, and scales for c and G, so it makes more sense when we say we’re extracting the first 5 notes of the scale.
The only scales I teach are G and C major scales in this level and not F major since the fingering pattern for is different in the RH for F-major so I save that scale for the 2nd level.
You may or may not have noticed I mentioned teaching G major in every pattern. The main reason is so that students learn right away that black keys are involved with the F#, and they don’t get stuck into thinking in only white keys and then get thrown off the first time they have to play a black key – they play black keys from the start.
Let me play those one more time to recap.
I hope this episode has inspired you to think beyond your method books and festival requirements and put together an order of piano patterns that YOU, as a teacher, feel is best suited to your students. Start small. Maybe you just put together your first level – do it with a few students and once you’re confident with that first set – start laying out your next level.
My progression charts are getting tweaked on a regular basis based on how my students struggle or succeed with the order of progressions.
Does this mean you shouldn’t use the resources your method book uses to teach some of these patterns – of course not – I just don’t want you to feel tied to the page or level of a book.
There are lots of resources out there that are wonderful visual images of chords, finger patterns, and scales. Heck – what if we didn’t even use a technique book? What if you just sketched out the fingering or had the students write out the finger numbers or the names of the notes that they’re playing for the scale? I often just take a quick video and either text it to them or upload it to their online practice app if that’s what we’re using.
Don’t let technique books bog you down.
Get creative, think strategically, and enjoy developing your own piano pattern progressions because YOU, my friends, are the method.
Don’t go yet! I promised you in episode 101 that I wasn’t done giving random tips, and today, I have one for you.
This week’s tip is one that I learned first from my friend Joy Morin a few years ago in a blog post on establishing a daily habit. She shared her struggle with remembering to take her multivitamin each day and how she tried placing it around the house in various locations with the idea of using other daily habits to prompt the one she often forgot. Ultimately, she ended up placing it in a cupboard next to dishes she used daily.
I thought this was brilliant, so I tried the same thing, and it worked well until it didn’t. I was placing them in our drink cabinet but on the right side rather than the left side, which is the side I opened up to get the drinks. Eventually, I decided to place them on the countertop in the area of the kitchen where we do coffee and drinks, and that has all our dishes, but I keep them on a decorative 8” square plate. When people come over, I just take it into the pantry as it feels too personal to leave out.
This is working great for me now, but I’ll bet you $100 in a year I’ll get tired of seeing it on the countertop, and I will probably try something else – most likely back into a different cabinet.
Another tip is that I take a daily probiotic that must be refrigerated. Taking my daily vitamins at dinner time isn’t enough for me to remember to open the fridge to take that one, so I set an alarm for 12:30 every day because I know I’m always in the kitchen doing lunch around that time. The alarm goes off, and I take my probiotic. Voila.
Do what you have to do, people, to keep those good habits going!
If you’re interested in thinking about building more good habits in the new year, take 15 minutes to listen to episode 52 Think Again a Mindset for Getting and Staying Organized and 101 ReThink, ReAdjust, Renew.
If you’d like to follow up with anything I’ve mentioned on today’s show, including links and a full transcript, head over to pianopantry.com/podcast/episode103.
Wait! We’re not done yet – I have a big announcement – I’m excited to announce that my friend Joy Morin and I are teaming up to bring you a special event called Organize Your Digital Life Using Notion. This 2-day online workshop will be held on Friday and Saturday, March 8 and 9, from 10:30am to 1:30pm Eastern time. More details and registration information will come in the next few weeks, but for now – just save the date. That’s March 8 and 9. There will also be a bonus follow-up session available on March 22 for those who want to take it a little further. We hope to see you there!
