Lesson Nine: Half Steps and Scales

From any key on the piano to the nearest key is a half step.

Because all the white keys of the piano are the same width, we get the impression that they are the same distance apart in sound, but this is not the case.

From C to D is a whole step because it skips the black key between.

From D to E is a whole step because it skips a black key.

From E to F is only a half step.

From F to G is a whole step.

From G to A is a whole step.

From A to B is a whole step.

From B to the next C is only a half step.

If you play the eight notes one after the other, CDEFGABC, you will have played the most boring of the twelve major scales. You can create a major scale beginning on any note, as long as you keep the whole steps and the half steps in the order above (half step between the third and fourth note, half step between the seventh and eighth note.)

Only the C major scale will use just white keys. Every other major scale will need at least one black key, and what we call that key will depend upon musical spelling.

The rule for spelling a scale is that the notes must be named in alphabetical order without skipping or repeating a letter.

Now we come to the matter of flats and sharps. Flats are played a half-step below the letter name of the note involved (the flat sign looks like a lower case b with a pointed bottom). Sharps are played a half step above the letter name (the sharp sign looks like the pound sign on your telephone). A natural sign (looks like a sharp with a missing right arm and left leg) cancels a sharp or flat.

My father once made me a brooch which said "Always B Natural" (see drawing).

If we are discussing a G major scale, then, we will spell it GABCDE F-sharp (NOT G-flat) and end on G. This follows the spelling rule.

I once had a pilot student who said “I can fly over the pond (the Atlantic ocean to us laymen) without giving it a second thought, but a G major scale scares me to death.”

Try playing the G major scale to see if it scares you to death. Play it with an F natural instead of an F sharp and see if it doesn’t sound wrong to you.

One last note about sharps and flats: In music notation, the sharp or flat sign comes before the note it effects and must be either in the space or on the line of the note. However, when we are talking about a flat or sharp, we always say the note first and the flat or sharp afterward.

There are lots of different scales besides the major scale. If you are feeling adventurous, try this altered klezmer scale: D, E-flat, F-sharp, G, A, B-flat, C-sharp, D. It already sounds like music doesn’t it? But it is just a scale.

Guilt, Resistance and the Graceful Exit

I have suspected for a long time that my former students who still live nearby hide when they see me coming. I have even been in the same room with a talented piano dropout, and I swear that she managed to be behind a post or a friend or in another room the whole time I was there. Not a word of greeting after four years of one-to-one lessons.

When I did a kind of survey for a piano teachers’ magazine some years ago, I figured that I had taught close to two thousand students, not including my college piano classes or students who dropped out before six months. The average length of study was about 3.5 years; the longest was 14 years; the average drop-out age (which will come as no surprise to other teachers) was 12.

Since many of these potential pianists still live in my small town, you would think I would encounter them on the street or in the stores once in a while, but I don’t. I think the answer is guilt. They think they should have practiced more; they think they should have kept on with their lessons.

“Why did you let me quit piano?” is a complaint parents seem to hear frequently from their children. "Why didn't you MAKE me practice?" I have heard this one from my own brother and mother. "You made Mikie practice piano; why didn't you make me practice?" (Of course, I have to add that Les grew up to be a trombone virtuoso who practices and performs all the time.)

Granted, piano lessons are not for everyone, and I have more than once discussed with a student getting him or her off the hook when the lessons were the parent’s idea and the student really didn’t care for anything about it.

So I have come up with the idea of the graceful exit, something a friend once advised me when I thought the way to stop using a computer program was to turn the computer off. If a student lets me know he or she will be terminating piano lessons, I update their Repertoire list, write down what level they have achieved, and note any special accomplishments or abilities they have shown. I list the beginning and ending dates of their lessons and tell them they are welcome back at any time, whether to study or just visit.

Occasionally, a student given this kind of exit will come back to lessons, but whether or not this happens, I hope it does something to reduce what seems to be piano guilt.

Guilt is not our friend. It is a vain regret. I am really against guilt. The pianist Gary Graffman wrote a book called “I Really Should Be Practicing”, and I have said this to myself more times than I care to admit. Of course, the answer is to get over to the piano and start to work, but many times a former student would rather feel guilty than to practice. In this case, I suppose I must be a reminder of a failure, a kind of Jiminy Cricket (Pinocchio's conscience).

Another dismaying phenomenon in music is Resistance. Pianists hit walls of resistance just the way long-distance runners do. They don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Doubt rears its ugly head. They get discouraged. Very often, this will happen after a big surge in musical achievement.

I think such a wall of resistance is a period where we are assimilating new information. It is a time to review old repertoire, to listen to recordings of our favorite players, to go to the Wiki Public Domain website and download some new sheet music. I have hit this wall more times than I can say. My teacher, Mr. Sheldon, once said to me “You’ll be a good piano teacher, because you will never encounter a problem in a student which you have not had yourself.”

Lesson Eight: The Grand Staff

The brace --{--at the beginning of all piano music is probably the most important symbol to observe. It tells us that both hands are playing together. It creates a grand staff with five lines and four spaces in the treble, five lines and four spaces in the bass. Between these two staves are the B below middle C, middle C itself (always written on its own line), and the D above middle C.

Jazz players, who frequently read a single musical staff with chord symbols above it, sometimes complain at having to deal with a grand staff. Players of melodic or single staff instruments (virtually all instruments except keyboards and guitar) often say that they're fine on "right hand" but can't do "left hand".

The reason for the difficulty is that when the eyes are accustomed to scanning left to right the way you read a book, they sometimes have to be taught to look up and down so that they can see both parts of the grand staff. Last year some piano friends and I did an experiment on sight-reading. We all had two pages of written music and a pencil. The exercise was to draw a line on the score showing exactly where your eyes tracked the music. The quickest music sight-readers circled the brace, key signature, time signature, clef signs, then darted up and down, zig-zagging their gaze.

Sometimes I use a pencil to direct a student's eyes up and down.

The brace which creates the grand staff is important to advanced pianists as well as to beginners. In choral music, often there are four staves in addition to the piano part on a single page; the brace shows the pianist where to look. The same applies to piano duet music and conductors' scores. The brace always heads out the piano part.

Vocabulary

Brace: The { symbol which connects the treble (high) staff with the bass (low) staff.

Melody: The tune or easily recognizable part of a piece of music, always one note at a time.

(Diagram from A Workbook for Organic Piano Playing, copyright 1977 by Michaele Benedict)

Lesson Seven: The Beat Goes On, Part Two

When you are relaxed, your heart beats about 72 times a minute and you breathe about 18 times. This ratio of four beats to one breath is connected not only to CPR, but to music, poetry and dance. Musical rhythm is physical.

Take two pencils and drum while counting aloud: One, Two, Three, Four...over and over, without skipping or prolonging a beat. This is called beating “in four” or “in common time.” Then try beating left, right, left, right while counting One Two Three...over and over. If you do this correctly, you will see how uncommon beating “in three” really is. It will take four complete patterns before the first beat falls on the hand which began the exercise. The stresses or accents will shift as you go.

At the beginning of a piece of music, you will see two numerals, the time signature. The top number is the number of beats in a measure. The bottom number is read as a fraction and tells what kind of note gets one beat. This is the subject of a great deal of confusion in music reading.

We would be much better off if we gave various kinds of notes names like “breve” and “quaver” as the English do, but we are stuck with fractions. Just like the song in “Fiddler On the Roof”, it’s tradition, so you have to memorize the symbols.

A whole note is a round open circle with no stem.

A half note is a round open circle with a stem.

A quarter note is a black circle with a stem.

A whole rest or silence is a black bar hanging from the fourth line from the bottom on the staff. A half rest is a black bar usually sitting on the third line from the bottom.

A quarter rest is an M standing on its end.

If the duration of a note was as obvious as the pitch (highness or lowness) of a note were shown spatially, it would be easier to figure out how long to hold it. However, for various reasons a whole note may not take up four times as much space as a quarter note in your sheet music.

As for rests, some modern composers don’t bother with them and Braille music simply leaves a blank space when the beat is silent. However, anyone who has ever played with a school band or bell choir knows how important knowing about rests is. Unintended solos are no fun at all. In piano, though often one hand or the other is keeping the beat, we still need to be confident about interpreting the symbols for notes and rests.

In the 18^th century, during Beethoven’s lifetime, the inventor Johann Nepomuk Maelzel came up with a device he called a metronome to help musicians set the speed of a piece and to stick to the beat. Much music is still marked with M.M. (Maelzel’s Metronome) settings telling how many beats the music has per minute.

Beethoven liked the metronome (the crafty Maelzel also invented ear trumpets to help the increasingly deaf composer.) We believe Schumann’s metronome was broken because of the unlikely tempi he indicated. The brilliant musicologist Charles Rosen said that there were only three metronome indications he took seriously in all music literature, and that all three were in Beethoven.

Vocabulary

Musical rhythm or meter: Notes and silences moving in time.

Beat: A unit of musical rhythm.

Heartbeat: The human heartbeat is about 72 beats per minute, an average rate in music.

Note values: The duration of the musical note, whole, half, quarter, etc.

Rests: Silences in music.

Metronome: An instrument of torture invented in the eighteenth century.

Breve: A double whole note in England. A single whole note is a semibreve.

Quaver: An eighth note in England.

Tempo (plural, tempi): The rate of speed in music, sometimes indicated by metronome marks but almost always with a supplementary Italian term which may also describe the mood of the piece.

Beethoven: Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770-1827.

Schumann: Robert Schumann,, 1810-1856.

Your Brain On Music

Daniel J. Levitin, in his book This Is Your Brain On Music, says "...although many people say that (early) music lessons didn't take, cognitive neuroscientists have found otherwise in their laboratories. Even just a small exposure to music lessons as a child creates neural circuits for music processing that are enhanced and more efficient than for those who lack training." Oliver Sacks' case studies have shown that these neural circuits, whether acquired in childhood or in adult life, are lifelong and permanent and that they stimulate parts of the brain which otherwise may just remain dormant.

Lesson Six: The Clef Signs

The clef signs are basic to reading music because they indicate the exact location on the five lines and four spaces of a particular note. Their practical use, however, has been obscured because the treble (high) sign has become an icon for the idea of music and the bass (low) clef sign is generally ignored as long as possible.

Pianists are fortunate that they have only two clef signs to observe. Cellists deal with three: A treble or G clef fixing the location of the G above middle C, a bass or F clef fixing the location of the F below middle C, and a third clef sign resembling a Gothic B which fixes middle C on the fourth line from the bottom (see cello score).

If you read music mostly by intervals (the distance between the notes), you will not fall into the trap of thinking bass clef is "left hand", a dangerous foreign territory. After all, we only have A-B-C-D-E-F-G, and then we start over. The notes are written on the lines and spaces. From any line to the nearest space up or down is a neighbor note or a second. If you know where one note is located on the music staff (the lines and spaces), it is not difficult to find the others.

Vocabulary

Clef sign: A symbol in written music showing the fixed location of a particular note.

Treble clef: Also called G clef, used for notes from about middle C and higher. The scroll of the sign curls around the line which indicates the G above middle C.

Bass clef: Also called F clef, used for notes from about middle C and lower. The two dots beside the symbol are on either side of the line which indicates the F below middle C.

Staff: The lines and spaces used in music notation.

Illustration from A Workbook for Organic Piano Playing copyright 1977 Michaele Benedict

Lesson Five: Five-Finger Games

Here is a set of five-finger games for you to use while practicing your grasping position at the piano. See Lesson Three or the virtual piano at http://play-piano.org/play_online_piano_piano.html if you need to remind yourself the names of the keys. The white keys are named A-B-C-D-E-F-G, and then we start over.

(Diagram from A Workbook for Organic Piano Playing, copyright Michaele Benedict, 1977.)

Comfort Ye

"Comfort ye my people." Every time I hear this aria, words by Isaiah, music by Handel, I get all teary-eyed. Johann Sebastian Bach, the grandfather of all musicians, said that the only purpose of music was to glorify the Creator or to recreate the human spirit. That is why we don't work the piano; we play it.

J.S. Bach, 1685-1750: In addition to composing thousands of major works, he is probably the inventor of the tempered tuning used in all keyboards today. He was the inventor of modern harmony and is even credited with beginning the use of the thumbs in keyboard playing.

G.F. Handel, an exact contemporary of Bach, is best known for composing the Hallelujah Chorus.

Lesson Four: Getting Physical

"Weight is our enemy."

When after years of piano lessons I finally found my True Teacher, Robert Sheldon, we spent an hour on this concept and I played exactly one note: D.

Mr. Sheldon was not talking about dieting. His point was that it is the speed with which the piano key descends which produces loudness or softness. If the key goes down slowly, the resulting sound is soft. If rapidly, the sound is loud.

Most piano teachers teach the way they were taught, and Mr. Sheldon was carrying on the lessons of his own teacher, the great Egon Petri (see http://www.pianoeu.com/petri.html.) Weight on the keys is largely expended after the key has reached bottom or keybed. Petri and Sheldon spoke of "taking" the key, rather than pushing or striking the key. Applying weight or force to the key produces very little besides a percussive sound.

What this means for you is that you use a grasping motion on the keys. This may sound simple, but it is so different from most piano methods that a description of it on line put me in touch with a teacher in Finland who proved to have the same second-generation Petri lessons I had.

Your position at the piano should be comfortable and far enough away from the keyboard that you have a straight line from your elbow to the knuckles of your hand. You need to adjust this position to accommodate the sheet music you are looking at, your own height, and the height of the bench you are using. The part of the finger which takes the key is the fleshy pad where your fingerprint resides, not the tips of your fingers.

Vocabulary, Lessons Three and Four

Interval: The distance between notes or keys

Do-re-me-fa-so: Note names used in some cultures. In "fixed do", Do is always C. In "Movable Do", the tonic or beginning of any scale is called Do.

Percussive: A struck sound, like a drum.

Keybed: The wooden platform below each piano key.