<![CDATA[Piano Lessons: The Raw adult beginner]]>I use the term “raw” to describe adult piano students who don’t read music or play by ear. They often come to their first lesson oozing with enthusiasm, but harboring fears associated with success and failure themes. It’s the usual environmental humdrum we all know about that puts the business paradigm squarely at odds with an artistic, self-realizing pursuit. But I’ll table what I previously explored.

In this writing I’m focused on the approach to early instruction and the materials selected.

Over years of teaching, I’d found myself gravitating toward Randall Faber’s Accelerated Older Beginner Lesson Book, though in many instances it moved far too quickly, not providing enough unencumbered opportunities to work on the piano’s singing tone repository. (And it had a built-in primordial prejudice against black notes)

To the contrary, Faber’s Piano Adventures, Primer Lesson Book, that’s supposedly assigned to children at the outset of their music education, worked a lot better with brand new adult students of the “virgin” variety.

Faber Lesson book Primer

The earliest Primer pieces (in both the Lesson and Performance books) are launched on the ebonies, (persisting to advantage) and these attach finger numbers and floating notes. There’s no staff as yet, but the feel of melodic movement as reflected in the preliminary notation, is like pablum to an infant– it’s digestible.

Of more importance, is the musical quality and substance of these black-note pieces that engage both hands from the outset in alternating sequence.

Faber is a gifted pianist and composer. He and wife Nancy have provided good music and lovely accompaniments in pupil/teacher duet format that are doubly enticing for a new student.

With Method books, in general, however I shy away from the addiction associated with them–i.e. an unrelenting march from primer to 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, etc. and into a chasm of so-called fixed positions that are play-by-finger-number crutches.

But if the entree to learning allows the teacher to explore the singing tone without too many notational/staff obstacles, then it’s a great launch pad to diversified content with the eventual cross-fertilization of other sources. (I should add that transposing should be an ingredient of all instruction, and not delayed–so that what a teacher does with instructional materials becomes a clever, creative improvisation, not a prepackaged, beat-a-dead-horse to the ground undertaking.)

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The following snatch of a SECOND lesson with a NEWBIE makes the point loud and clear, that even from day one, the singing tone and how to produce it must be at the fore of the piano learning process.

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LINKS

About Prejudice against black notes

https://arioso7.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/bias-against-black-notes-stopped-me-in-my-tracks-video/

Starting Lessons with a new Adult Student (but not a raw beginner)
https://arioso7.wordpress.com/2013/12/09/starting-lessons-with-a-new-adult-piano-student/

Adult Piano Themes and Issues
https://arioso7.wordpress.com/2013/01/11/adult-piano-student-themes-and-issues/

Are Adult Students Stigmatized?
https://arioso7.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/are-adult-piano-students-stigmatized/

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