Hand Position

I just want to say that I am not feeling very enthused about the "ball" imagery that is employed frequently to teach correct piano hand posture. The result among my students is an overly stiff hand with fingers that are much too curved. Additionally, the students bend their wrists so that their and forearm are literally forming and inverted V. Even when I model the correct way, it doesn't achieve the result that I want.

Music for Little Mozart's uses the idea of holding a bubble to achieve a good hand position. The idea being that if you hold the bubble too tightly, it will pop; if the bubble is held too loosely, it will float away. Most of my kids object to this method, saying that touching a bubble whatsoever will make it pop. (It is called pretending, kids!)

One of my little students was playing a piece today that used fingers 2 & 3 for the left hand. I suggested that she pretend that her hands were dinosaur claws when she played. She giggled at the idea and like magic, she played the entire piece with an acceptable hand position. For her, pretending to be a dinosaur made more sense than holding a ball.

Another method introduced in piano pedagogy class involved placing your hands on your knees and observing how the knee naturally curves the hands. I like this idea, but my students have difficulty transporting the feeling from the knees to the keyboard.

I know that hand position is important, and the habits that are acquired at the beginning of study will likely affect the future years of study. But part of me wonders if some of this trouble with hand positioning in young pianists will remedy itself naturally as the student grows up and their hands grow with them. It would be sad for a student to quit lessons because of a their inability to model specifically what the teacher wants right when the teacher wants it. I am still working on balancing this issue in my own teaching!

Repertoire for Young & Beginner Voice Students

When I first started teaching, I often asked more experienced teacher about appropriate general repertoire for beginning singers. The responses to my question often went like this "Repertoire shouldn't be your focus at first. Exercises should take priority." Yes...I understand that...but at some point it is going to be time to assign songs a build on those vocal elements used in vocal exercises. Other responses included "Oh I'm sure you'll figure it out." If was almost as if they were concerned about divulging prized 'secrets.' I am very very grateful to my high school voice teacher for actually giving me some starting points! Joan Frey Boytim's book, The Private Voice Studio Handbook: A Practical Guide to All Aspects of Teaching also contained some very helpful information.

It is true that you learn from experience, but I would have loved a better starting point as a reference. So this is a list of what I am currently using and have found to be helpful! It is by no means a comprehensive list, especially since singers do not all fit the same mold!

1) 36 Solos for Young Singers Compiled by Joan Fry Boytim. Published by Hal Leonard.

This collection includes a wide variety of traditional art songs and folk songs with limited ranges for late-elementary to early junior high singers. The typical range encompassed is D-D, with occasional deviations and alternative pitches for additional vocal customization.

2) The Teen's Musical Theatre Collection: Young Women's Edition Compiled by Louise Lerch. Published by Hal Leonard.

I like this book as a general starter for my teenage singers and even some of my beginning adult students. It has a 33 songs for $14.95 which is a pretty good buy. The songs include favorites from classic musicals and cinema of the 1980's & 1990's. I like the variety of vocal range represented in these songs, which is good since the student is not likely to have a set vocal classification yet. There is a Young Men's edition as well, but I haven't had the opportunity to use it at this point.

3) Disney Solos for Kids Published by Hal Leonard.

I have used this as fun introductory material for children (and even some adults!). It contains 10 songs, and includes songs from some of the older yet classic shows.


Resources specifically for the young male voice:

1) Tales of Land and Sea Compiled, Composed and Arranged by Mark Patterson. Published by BriLee Music.

2) Traveling On Compiled, Composed and Arranged by Ruth Elaine Schram. Published by BriLee Music.

3) Heroes and Vagabonds Compiled and Arranged by Mark Patterson. Published by BriLee Music.

These excellent books were designed the address the specific needs of young singers, especially when a young male voice is changing and isn't specifically a 'tenor' or a 'bass' yet. These books allow the teacher to match the song to the voice, instead of trying to force a young voice to fit into a song intended for a more mature voice. One of my first students fit this description and I was at a loss because he had about an octave range, from about A below Middle C to the A above. I went to our local music store to browse the shelves, and happened upon Tales of Land and Sea, and what do you know, there were two songs that fit that range perfectly! The songs start in a typical range for young, newly changing voices, and the ranges move progressively lower, following the voice change to tenor or baritone.

Two other books in the series, My Heart Sings & Let Nature Sing, follow a similar format for the developing female voice. The songs start with small, modest ranges that expand for the growing and maturing voice.

Sight-Singing Discovery

I was working with a student yesterday that took a break over the summer. We were reviewing solfege hand signs and eventually moved on to some simple sight reading exercises. It was just a short line of abbreviations, such as [d m m s m d r d]. My student was having difficulty with losing visual place in the exercise and pitch memory/pitch relationships (i.e. do to mi was consistently being sung as do-so, and so forth). Despite my patience, the student was acutely aware of his error, and it was obvious that he was frustrated in his inability to produce the correct interval. After several repeated attempts without any success, I had an idea. On the side of the page there was a box that displayed the solfege scale vertically:

do'
ti
la
so
fa
mi
re
do

I suggested that he try pointing to the syllable as it was being sung. As if by magic, he was able to sing the entire syllable line accurately. We were both pleasantly surprised! He then proceeded to finish the page with only minor difficulties (no pun intended). Something about the visual/tactile act of seeing the "distance" between the pitches and physically referring to them cleared up any uncertainly of interval reading.

I am sure this could be viewed as a learning "crutch," but I made me ponder on learning styles and how music instruction ideally should have some variation according to the learning style of the student--even if it takes printing a scale chart and having the student point to the exercise they are singing.

Welcome!

This is a place where I hope to share resources and experiences of my music teaching. I am just starting my second year as a teacher a Sharron Whipple's Music Studio in Amarillo, TX.