I have received some feedback on the clip presented in the previous post. By the way, feedback is greatly appreciated!
According to some colleagues the clip did not explain clearly enough why the pianist (that would be me) is doing what he is doing. To address this I added some text bubbles in the clip. Hope this helps. Comments?
Here is a clip which explains how to play the first piece of the PianoSeesaw. The animated symbols just show a rhythm which should be played by using the black keys. Take a look at the clip and you will get an idea of how to do it …
Instructing young students (age below 11) the teacher says at the end of the song either mouse, bear or cat. Depending on which animal the teacher announces the student has to play either some high keys, low keys or medium high keys. Maybe you are wondering what is the goal of this? The “mouse” will replace the word “right”, “bear” will replace “left” and “cat” will determine the middle of something. Why? Because most children are not able to distinguish between left and right. And we need a simple way to refer to the black keys. Instead of saying: “left triplet black key” or “f sharp” (which has no practical meaning to a child and therefor it is so hard for them to remember) we can after a short explanation say: “bear triplet” or “bear triplet key” and the child will always know which key we are talking about. Respectively the other black keys will be named as: “cat triplet” (G#), “mouse triplet” (Bb), “bear twin” (C#) and “mouse twin” (Eb). By the way, before you introduce the new key names you should replace “left hand” with “bear hand” because the left hand is nearest to the bear keys and “right hand” with “mouse hand” because the right hand is nearest to the mouse keys. Now we have child friendly expressions for all things we want to talk about in our first lessons.
But remember never to use these terms with teens (age 11 and older) because they will consider them as childish!
For older students mouse, bear or cat should be replaced with finger-numbers. Then the student has to strike a key with the respective finger of both hands.
The animation of the music symbols will not be part of the app. Animated symbols will only distract the student. During ten years teaching with this piano method every single student understood the PianoSeesaw music symbols within a minute in the first lesson. In this context understanding means easily reading AND playing what the music shows and as a result much fun in the piano lessons and at home. Motivation problems? What was that again?
Here is the sheet music of the first piece:
