Hi there Blitzers,
Welcome to the October newsletter. We hope you had a great school holiday break and that you're feeling ready to face Term 4!
How to Get Rid of Mistakes - Part 1
My daughter recently came home from her flute lesson with a great little system for correcting mistakes, which she called 'IRC'.
IRC stands for Isolate, Rhythms, Connect.
Her flute teacher, Emma Sholl (of SSO fame), discussed with her that 'Isolate' means to figure out exactly where the mistake is. 'Rhythms' means to go over and over that spot in different ways, primarily using different rhythms. 'Connect' means to then link that passage back to the rest of the piece. Cool!
I was really pleased to hear about this system, because I do something quite similar with my piano students, although we've never come up with a great little acronym for it. But for pianists, it's usually not quite as simple as the three steps above.
The first problem is that the student sometimes cannot easily isolate the mistake, mainly because they don't know what the mistake actually is.
They can hear something is wrong, so they go back to the beginning of the section (or worse, the beginning of the whole piece, even if the mistake happened towards the end) and try again, hoping the mistake won't happen again. If something does go wrong again, they go back again. And again. And again. Sadly and ironically, by going back and repeating the same mistake over and over, the actual mistake has been 'practised in' or at least given as much air-play if not more than the correct version.
If the mistake does happen to disappear, which it sometimes does, the student then keeps going, relieved to have 'gotten through' that bit!
But how did the mistake disappear? The student has not fixed the mistake. By going back again and again, the student is trying to get the fingers to 'just do it', rather than really knowing what to do. To play the passage correctly now involves a bit of fluking, a bit of luck. And since the relieved student, upon hearing it correctly, charges ahead rather than going over the passage (for fear of the mistake reappearing), there is no knowing whether the passage will be correct next time or not. (Well actually we DO know – most likely not.)
Then there is another type of mistake, one that is often not even recognised as a mistake: the gap. The pause. The interruption to the rhythm that occurs when hands are not ready. The slight hesitation when the wrong finger is about to play the note and is then hurriedly changed (I often call this one a 'micro-mistake'). This type of mistake is hard to fix, because students can't hear it. They are concentrating on getting the notes right, not on getting the piece fluent.
So, how does one isolate a mistake, no matter what kind? It's pretty scary: it involves stopping, listening, reconciling with the notes on the page, checking the fingering, practising jumping the distance between notes and chords. Sometimes the mistake is really in the left hand when you think it's in the right hand. Sometimes the actions of one hand are CAUSING the mistake in the other hand. (No wonder students don't want to do this; it's not nearly as much fun as 'playing through' the piece from beginning to end, which is the common approach at home.)
Correcting mistakes can be more challenging for pianists than for other instrumentalists. For example, most of the above paragraph is not applicable to flute playing, because on the flute both hands are working together to produce the same note, and most notes on the flute can only be produced with one type of fingering. But pianists have ten fingers which can make ten different sounds, sometimes simultaneously, and these same sounds can be created with a huge variety of different fingerings! For this reason, mistakes can be a lot harder to find, let alone fix.
For a pianist to isolate a mistake, he/she must first stop (not just fix it and then keep going), rewind a little bit (not all the way to the beginning of the piece), and figure out where the mistake is coming from (i.e. which hand, which note, which finger). This can be tricky. But now comes something even tricker: to recreate the mistake. (This will be the new 'R'!)
Click here to read the rest of this article, including 5 suggestions for pianists...
Free Grade 4 Theory Teacher Guide
It was only last month that we featured The Grade 1 Teacher Guide as a FREE pdf download (click here for details if you missed it).
Well it just so happens that as of next month the Grade 4 Teacher Guide youwill also become available as a free download. It's another fantastic teacher resource which outlines common mistakes made by students and variations of acceptable answers in AMEB exams. The teacher guide also examines the changing trends of AMEB papers and contains extensive information on many different topics based on my own experience. At the end of the guide there is an excellent 'Preparation Guide' which helps to plan out the last term or so before the exam and gives suggestions of when to give students past papers.
It's available from our Downloads page (near the middle of page 3).
Sight Reading Book 3 is almost ready...
Sight Reading Book 3 is due for release in mid November. It prepares students for the sight reading section in a Grade 5 exam. The stickers are extremely groovy and there are lots of interesting rhythm and transposition activities!
Scales and Arpeggios Pilot Program
Many thanks to all the teachers who responded regarding the scales and arpeggios pilot program in 2012. If you are interested in participating, please send me an email!
Share the Love
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