During my years as a teacher, I have heard (and I keep hearing) comments such as “I find it so difficult to read music”, “I don’t want to learn a lot of theory, I just want to play”, “Sight reading is a problem for me because I see a lot of little dots and this makes me feel demotivated”, “I wish I could read music as fast as I read texts”... And this list could keep growing and growing! I am very sure that I am not the only teacher who has heard these sentences more than once and that a lot of students will relate with this.
To sum up, most of these problems are begging for a method that allows them to read music and understand it in the same way that we understand spoken and written language. But this is totally possible!
In the following video (which is actually my first video talking to the camera omg), I explain my approach towards teaching music as a language to be able to read it and understand it the same way we can read a text in our mother tongue. Very far away from turning music into theory and maths, I aim to share some ideas, experiences, inspiration and tips I wish are useful for piano and music teachers.
Many young musicians lose their enthusiasm for music as their education places more and more emphasis on analytical funcitoning and less and less on the global approach. (Green, 2015)
By emphasizing the importance of such 'global' funcions as spontaneity, creativity, intuition and feeling, and balancing these functions with their analytical equivalents - we can enlarge our approach to the teaching and learning of music. (Green, 2015)
References:
Green, B. (2015). The Inner Game of Music. London: Pan Books
Did you like this content? I was very happy to record this video because this is a topic I find essential in my piano teaching. Let me know what you think or if you would like me to talk about any other topic! Any constructive feedback is well received :)