Dont Touch the Instrument

In my previous post, I started talking about hand positions and Phoebe's creative names. If you missed it, you can go back and catch up here.

The second half of the Friends reference involved Phoebe asking Joey not to touch the guitar until she said he was ready. Joey was very appalled at this technique, retorted with yellow pages of other music schools with children happily holding guitars, and walked off.

Phoebe might be surprised to learn that I heard about a piano pedagogy that does not involve touching a piano for the first 8-12 weeks of learning. This guest speaker was invited to speak and introduced us to this method of teaching that he uses.

First, for the first 8-12 weeks, he doesn't ask his students to play the piano at all. Instead, he takes the time to teach them fundamental basics to promote strong sight-reading skills and music theory. I won't go through the details of how he teaches it, but this is what is expected of his students to master in this "non-playing" stage of their learning, (written in teaching objective style sentences).

1. Students will develop finger muscles through exercises.
2. Students are expected to memorize the letter names of the keys on the piano by recognition.
3. Students are expected to memorize the notation for the 22 most common notes on the staff in both treble and bass clef.
4. Students are expected to understand musical rhythms in multiple time signatures.
5. Students will be able to create small "compositions" of their own using the notes and rhythms they've learned.
6. Students will be able to play notes on the piano in proper rhythms using blunt sticks or the eraser ends of pencils in order to produce the sounds for their compositions.

Objective 6 is basically as close as they get to touching a piano in their first 1-2 months of piano learning. In theory, and hypothetically, this is the perfect way to teach anyone how to learn music and master it quickly. Learn the basics and have a good foundation in music. And then you can pretty much learn and teach yourself any piece of music thereafter.

Obviously it's not completely all-encompassing.  There's sharps, flats, key signatures, accidentals, dynamics, musical styles, and a lot more things that need teaching. But once you nail the rhythms and the notes, it gets much simpler after that in terms of the learning curve.

I think all music majors (who of course, know 15 years in advance that they want to pursue music as their career and means of financial security), should start out this way. However, this technique doesn't work for most people. Why? Because the parents of the children learning to play who are paying the teacher want to see results fast. They want to see their child playing music from day 1 if possible. Most people simply want their children to have a grasp of what playing music means. They don't want to raise musicians.

I personally think this is a fabulous technique for learning the piano. However, I don't teach it. Also because I believe students these days need more than musical proficiency further down the road to motivate them. They want to be able to at any given moment, hop on a piano, play something, and impress someone in some capacity.

This teaching technique also involves a lot of parental involvement and discipline in asking the students to memorize the foundations of music. A lot of parents don't have this time or desire to do so. And young kids lose interest faster than ever nowadays.

There's merit somewhere in the proper context for Phoebe's instructions to Joey. And if you watched the entire clip or are familiar with Friends, you'll agree that Joey should not touch musical instruments. :)