Comparing Method Books, Part 2

I’ve already written a comparison of three major piano method books, level one, and today I’m continuing on. I’ve dropped covering Bastien’s because I don’t have any students who have come to me from beyond the first level.

The way the different series number their books is a bit confusing. I would love it if they all just started with book one and then moved on to book two. But they don’t, so this comparison is between Alfred’s Level 1B and Faber Level 1. (Faber started with a Primer Level.)

The major difference here is that by the end of this level, Alfred’s students have the conceptual basis for major scales, but not chords, while Faber does exactly the opposite. That aside, I’d say that overall a student at the end of Alfred’s Level 1B is playing more complicated music than a student at the end of Faber Level 1.

To view the part two comparison, click here.

Comparing Method Books, Part 1

I teach with the Alfred’s Basic Piano Library series of method books, mostly because they are the series I used as a kid. I have other reasons for preferring it as well, but that’s a different blog post. For today, I’m just commenting that I often have students transfer to me, and they’ve often used other books, and it’s hard to know exactly how to transition them to Alfred’s. It would be just as hard in the other direction, so I have put together this table of concepts and skills taught in the first level of Alfred’s, Bastien’s, and Faber’s to make it easier to see what is taught and when.

The basic takeaway message is: While all the books are roughly the same length, Faber’s moves slowly and covers much less than the other two. Bastien’s covers the most, but in my opinion throws in several huge topics right at the end without a lot of explanation (e.g., triads, damper pedal, eighth notes). Alfred’s is the happy medium. Go with Alfred’s.

You can see the page by page breakdown of the skills and concepts here.

Generic Composing Challenge

Continuing our theme of composing activities, here is a composing challenge that I use with multiple levels of students. I have sometimes given this out on the first or second lesson. I’ve also given it out for much more advanced students. The real difference is what elements you tell them they must include in their song. Do they need a certain form? Key signature? Intervals? Chords? Articulation? The most beginning students are told only that they need to think about speed, hand position, and dynamics. There’s no limit on how complicated you can get with the more advanced students.

Happiness on the Music Floor

Happiness on the Music Floor I’m sure it’s never happened to anyone else, but on occasion my daughter is a trifle upset during music practice. She’s actually quite good about coming in the first place, but sometimes she’s mad at me because I asked her to do something she didn’t want to do and sometimes she’s mad at herself because she isn’t automatically perfect at everything and sometimes she’s mad for no discernible reason at all.

I’ve tried various tactics to deal with this, but the one that’s currently working is this handy little poster.

I’ve laminated it and posted it on the wall by our piano. Every day after music practice, I update the number of days of happiness. if we’ve made it through without an argument, it goes up. If we haven’t made it through, it goes to zero. When she reaches 20 days, we have a Mommy-Daughter date to the dessert location of her choice, which we have done. If she can reach 20 three separate times, we’ll go out to dinner at the restaurant of her choice, which we haven’t managed yet.

As a side note, I’m always somewhat interested (and depressed) at how parents manage practice (or fail to manage practice, as the case may be). There’s more than one way to do it, but here’s what works for us. My daughter is 8 right now, but we’ve been doing this for several years.

We practice in the morning before school. Yes, that means I wake her up early. There are no exceptions. If it’s a school day, we practice. If it’s a week day but there is no school, we almost always practice anyway, though I don’t wake her up early for it. We take weekends off.
Theoretically, we practice for 50 minutes, roughly split between piano and cello. We alternate days on which instrument goes first. In reality, we’re often a little late getting started and the end time is fixed by the school bus schedule, so no wiggle room there.
We do lots of games, improvisation, composing, etc. to keep it interesting and to spend at least part of that 50 minutes standing up or moving around.
I always, always, always spend the entire time there with her. I have never sent her to go practice by herself. That day is coming, but not at age 8.

I have often wondered how much progress my other students would make if I could convince their parents to maintain a schedule like this. I do realize it’s harder if you have more than one child or if you’re not a natural morning person or if you have very little musical knowledge yourself.

Even so, practice really does work.

Silly Composition

Piano blogs are full of composition exercises for kids, but most of them include lyrics that are so inane, I’m too embarrassed to use them with my students. My kids are capable of appreciating a slightly higher level of literary quality. Silly is good. Clever is good. Insipid is bad.

For our earliest composition attempts, I give the kids a choice of texts. They are all very short so as not to overwhelm anyone.

Ice Cream
Six Slippery Snails

I also offer The Catsup Bottle and The Duck by Ogden Nash. He’s a great poet for this. He’s brief. He’s witty. He’s brilliant. Unfortunately, he’s also under copyright. So I have not included the texts of these poems, but they’re quick to create yourself. You can find the text of the “The Catsup Bottle” here and the text of “The Duck” here. I use only the first half of “The Duck.”

(The graphics come from http://thegraphicsfairy.com/ and https://pixabay.com/)

Method 1:
The kids write in finger numbers in the circles above the words. (We don’t worry about rhythm. They improv that.) If they are up for a challenge have them add a chord in the left hand.

This method is the easiest for kids who aren’t totally confident with note names yet. It’s also really great for kids who are learning different key signatures or positions because then you can have them transpose it into all the keys or positions they know.

Method 2:
The kids write in note names. This is better for reviewing those note names, but not as good for transposing.

*** This post originally appeared on my older site here.