Coordination and rhythmic awareness
- Play with rhythmic control and security:
- coordinating and integrating a complex right-hand melody and a full range of frequently changing left-hand full-fingered chords
- keeping time with an auto-accompaniment and demonstrating a full command of registration
- listening to and controlling the balance between melody, accompaniment, parts and voicings
- incorporating additional sequenced material
Ensure that learners understand the skills involved in learning and practising pieces in coherent steps, including the preparation of custom styles and sequenced material as appropriate.
Ask learners to evaluate the balance between voicings when they play an independent left-hand part. Introduce suitable exercises to improve tonal control as necessary.
Pieces written for piano may need some adaptation, e.g. transposing the pitch by an octave in order to access the range of written notes. Learners often benefit from playing appropriate pieces on an acoustic piano. It enables them not only to compare the musical effect and technical approach needed, but also gives them greater breadth of experience.
Teach learners to play more complex vamps, e.g. stride, Latin. Help them to maintain the rhythmic momentum against varied right-hand note values, including threes against twos and eventually threes against fours.
Encourage learners to make extended arrangements of pieces, with or without auto-accompaniment. These could include improvisations, right-hand harmony notes, independent left-hand parts, and original composed and/or sequenced material of their own.
Help learners to include changes of registration spontaneously, using their own pre-set registration memories and a pedal as a switch or as a sustaining mechanism.
After listening together to suitable examples, ask learners to consider how articulation and legato phrasing are approached on different instruments, and what these consciously applied expressive qualities contribute to the overall effect of the music, e.g. making a dance movement seem more animated or a melodic piece more song-like. Explore ways for learners to recreate what they have heard in these examples in their own playing.
Listening to other instruments’ means of expression can broaden learners’ musical awareness. Some instruments have a more natural capacity for legato, i.e. through playing several notes in one bow or breath, and non-legato, i.e. through changing bow or tonguing between notes. Internalising different phrasing characteristics through vocal imitation is a good place to start, followed by playing short passages by ear.
With learners, choose an item of repertoire in which articulations, slurs and phrase marks are specified in the text, e.g. a 20th- or 21st-century piece. Ask them to internalise and apply these expressive qualities from the start of the learning process, using the appropriate techniques.
Next, select together an item of repertoire in which articulations, slurs and phrase marks are not specified, e.g. a baroque dance. From the start of the learning process, ask learners to incorporate these expressive qualities, using their knowledge and understanding of musical style, etc., and combining the appropriate techniques with an awareness of phrasing and structure.
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