The PianoSeesaw

Videoinnspilling av foredraget som jeg holdt forrige uke. Det var overraskende mange som kom. Da var det ekstra gøy å holde foredrag. Takk for alle som så på og hørte på og takk for alle fine tilbakemeldinger. Det var veldig motiverende å oppleve at det er mange som er interessert i dette temaet og som ta tankene mine med seg videre.

Guest post of Andreas Eggertsberger,

first posted on January 8, 2018 here.

I think this essay is also most relevant for beginner lessons because already in the first lesson the cause for eventual injuries can be founded. Read about the experiences of Andreas Eggertsberger supplemented with invaluable video documentations and conclusions:

Andreas Eggertsberger: My Experiences with Focal Dystonia

Join us on Facebook: Pianists who defeated focal dystonia

Injuries often occur in the music world. Although still a taboo theme, a lot of musicians are suffering from it. While pain is something which is commonly known amongst musicians, there is another injury out there which is approaching something much subtler. It is called focal dystonia. Prominent sufferers in the piano world are pianists like Leon Fleisher, Gary Graffman, Keith Emerson, Michele Beroff, Michael Houstoun or Hung Kuan Cheng. The principal oboist from Chicago Symphony, Alex Klein, has a long story of losing, regaining and losing his job again because of dystonia.[i] Most likely it seems that Robert Schumann was also prone to this devastating condition.[ii]

What is focal dystonia? (more…)

First of all, learning to read music is mostly possible for those students who are also able to learn to read (language). This is true for many children who are 6 or 7 years old, some younger, some older. The following thoughts apply therefore only for students who have reached this stage. For younger students and for some students older than approximately 11 years of age different principles apply.

Many piano teachers think that improvising, reading chords or playing by ear (i.e. free piano playing) is more important than playing from written music. These two methods are regarded as separate ways of teaching – thinking that the students playing freely will lose the motivation to learn to read music while the others who read music will not get the opportunity to be creative and play freely. Experience shows that these thoughts are true in a way. Therefore both methods should be taught equally from the start (ages 6+).

Many think that it is easier for a beginner student to play freely or by ear rather than struggle to learn to read music. These people overlook a very important factor. While playing freely/by ear the student can watch the keyboard all the time and check the position of the fingers which prevents him from developing an awareness of where to place his fingers without looking at the keys (keyboard awareness). When playing from music it is not always possible to look at the keys as the student has to read what is written and in so doing is able is guided to develop keyboard awareness skills. It is an important skill, also when playing freely. Without this skill a feeling of losing control can occur if the student has to look away from the keys in order to read the music.

Haptic orientation – a sensing through touch – occurs at a more advanced level, i.e. when the left hand is playing an accompaniment with many jumps and the right hand has to play largely by feeling its way around. Also, when rapid passages are played, the eyes definitely must (and sometimes only can) aim at some single keys, while the actual control must be transferred to the sensory skills of the hands. These and many other difficulties can arise while playing from memory as well. It could therefore be arguably concluded that the lack of a distinct skill in haptic orientation will always result in many random errors and wrongly played keys, no matter if one plays the piano freely, by reading music or from memory.

Another reason why students are not looking at the music is often found, when they are taught right from the beginning to read the regular music notation system, which unfortunately can not be read intuitively. Most students learn thereby subconsciously that the music sheet does not contain much usable information anyway and it therefore does not make any sense to look at the music at all. To avoid that this negative attitude emerges, the PianoSeesaw tone symbols were developed. These are immediately understandable, and therefore the above described effect is prevented.

(Excerpt from teachers guide for the PianoSeesaw method)

< Musical Notation Transformation (MNT) applied by the PianoSeesaw method >

Musical Notation Transformation is about transforming a simplified notation system back to the regular notation system. The simplification goes preferably this far that the system gets intuitively understandable but not ambiguous.

The PianoSeesaw notation system meets this challenge by assigning simplified note symbols to an image of keyboard keys.*) This system is readily understandable for children and easy to implement. The students just understand intuitively what the symbols mean. There is no learning required because it is nearly self explaining. During several stages the notation transforms smoothly and at the end of this process the notation shows the regular staff with treble and bass clef.

The students learn to read music effortlessly, so to speak, without noticing it.

More videos here.

Take a look at the method’s pieces and the related guide documents here.

*) The first piece though does not provide an image of keyboard keys. It only introduces the PianoSeesaw rhythm notation for black keys.

– Several info text screens are shown at the beginning of the clip.
– The whole piece written with PianoSeesaw tone symbols is shown at once.
(Not only one successive line)
– Fewer things er going on simultaneously.

Hi there! Every music symbol is now related to a specific black key. As you have learned within the first song, squares and rectangles always refer to black keys regardless of wether they are white or black. Black squares are quarter notes on the black keys and white rectangles are half notes or dotted half notes on the black keys. Some songs further on there will be introduced circles and ellipses which will represent the white keys.

The animation with the colored keys and the green moving song position line will not be part of the iOS app because this will distract the student form reading the music.

Some colleagues suggested that in the second part of the video the music should be shown in just the overview presentation size. Must say I agree 🙂

Five months after finishing the previous demo video I am happy to finally present the next one. I had to code 8 different animations in Xcode and then do a lot of editing and composing in ScreenFlow.

This clip shows how to rotate the music in order to change the reading direction from reading top to bottom, to reading in the ordinary way from left to right. The clip also shows the three different presentation sizes.

I also completed a preliminary version of all help-files in German and Norwegian including many tips and suggestions on improvising and composing. After my German colleagues are finished with revising the files I will translate them into English.

For every song of the PianoSeesaw method there is a pdf-guide included which suggests a didactical approach to the PianoSeesaw-notation-system *) and provides additional teaching ideas. The guide also specifies new skills to be learned and comes often with some more exercises which fit into the related learning fields.

Tonight I finished the guide for the first piece. It was a tough one because it was very difficult to determine how much information and what kind of information should be included in the first song. Of course, the over all question was, what do a teachers who are new to the PianoSeesaw method want to know first.

*) Usually children between the ages of 6 and 10 have at first only a limited capacity to visually understand a regular notation system and its connection to the keyboard. This often results in frustration which could have been avoided by starting off with a child friendly notation system. This fact was the main reason for developing a new system that starts off with a notation that is not too different from the ordinary notation but never the less intuitively understandable. After a short explanation about the PianoSeesaw notation system, students readily understand the information which is provided by the notation’s simple symbols and they know exactly how to implement them. The PianoSeesaw notation system which is at the beginning significantly different from the regular notation system, passes through a smooth process of change (musical notation transformation – MNT) during the method. At the end of the method this process ends up using the regular staff with treble and bass clef. The pupils learn to read music effortlessly, so to speak, without noticing it.

Take a look at the method and its teacher guides by clicking here.