Friday, April 4, 2014 by Hamdani, Laurie | Ideas

My shoulder injury has really got me thinking about balance. In music, balance refers to all of the various parts of the composition maintaining their importance within the context of the composition. This is easily understood in ensemble playing. A timpani and a viola each have their role as a component of the greater composition. Sometimes the timpani produces a pronounced sound and at other times the viola’s voice rises to the forefront.

Balance at its simplest at the piano requires an understanding of melody and harmony combined with the dexterity and capability in each hand to execute a wide range of touch on the keys. We can easily hear when the hands are not in balance in the performance of novice students wherein all the notes in both hands are played loudly with little to no variation in dynamics. Most often in piano repertoire, melody is right-hand dominant, meaning the melody of the composition is most often written to be played by the right hand. Young pianists naturally become fairly adept at ‘bringing out’, or giving more importance to, the right hand melody with just a little practice. 

But, every so often, a composition requires left-hand dominance to execute the melody. Students often have a great deal of difficulty making this shift, which is both cognitive and physical. Due to my injury, I’m preparing a recital piece which is written for the right hand only. This piece is not as technically challenging as some of the pieces I’ve played in past recitals in terms of key or rhythm. But this balance thing? Pretty complex! My right hand must play both melody and harmony within each and every measure. Further, the notes span some six octaves, sometimes within only a few measures or even beats. A brief understanding of the physical properties of the piano may help to illustrate this degree of difficulty. High notes make high pitches because the strings (actually, wires) inside the piano are very thin and short. The higher the note the naturally softer it is when struck, meaning that to play a high note loudly requires greater force from the hand. The converse is true for lower notes, i.e. longer, thicker strings, requiring less pressure to produce a softer sound. So, my right hand must vary its touch on the keys greatly within the span of just a few beats. I must constantly be thinking about melody and harmony and the weight of my hand in order to produce a balanced composition.

One way to think of it is that the very nature of the body of piano literature is out of balance, with melody predominantly written for the right hand. Therefore, making the mental and physical shift to left-hand dominance feels foreign and difficult or as students have frequently commented, “wrong” or “weird”. Perhaps this is a metaphor for life, for not getting so comfortable in the expected, the routine. To that end, I’m rather happy my torn rotator cuff has given me the chance to challenge myself and my views not just of melody and harmony but of what is possible when you look at something from a different point of view.

Sunday, March 23, 2014 by Hamdani, Laurie | Terminology

If you are older than 20, how would you define the meaning of this symbol: #

You probably thought:

Number, as in #10 (when read out loud: "Number ten"), or maybe

Pound, as in a 5# bag of flour (when read out loud: a "A five pound bag of flour"), or maybe

Sharp, as in the raising of a musical tone by a half step, such as F# (when read out loud: an "F sharp")

A friend of mine recently told me a story which another music teacher friend shared with her. A student came to the teacher and inquired, "Miss Smith, what does hashtag G mean?" Well, if you're younger than 20 (or if you have on-line social networking savvy), the first meaning you will likely attribute to # is "hashtag", a Twitter reference. Needless to say this story made me burst out with laughter. And, simultaneously made me feel very old. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, no worries. It just means that on-line social media references aren't your native tongue.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014 by Hamdani, Laurie | Technique

Fingering refers to the positioning of fingers on an instrument. When learning piano, students begin in what is known as a 5-finger position, meaning that the fingers of each hand are placed on 5 adjacent keys. As the students progress, they must learn to gradually move their fingers to keys which are non-adjacent. After all, a piano has 88 keys and the pianist must eventually learn to move their 10 fingers across the keyboard in order to play those keys.

Fingering cues are used in the written music to show the most efficient manner for moving the fingers and hands across the keyboard. Surprisingly, students often ignore this vital information. The pitfalls of this are many. Here are just a few:

The student is inconsistent in their approach to reaching the appropriate keys, i.e. they use a different fingering combination with every performance. This generally causes inconsistent performance with frequent striking of incorrect keys or poorly executed articulation (smoothness, accents, etc). It is a formula for playing a piece with several mistakes, perhaps never fully attaining accuracy.

The student fails to learn technical skills related to fingering which enable them to perform new music successfully. For example, becoming facile in using correct fingering when playing a major scale will greatly improve the student’s ability in executing scale-like passages in new repertoire.

Students naturally favor their stronger fingers (the thumb, index, and middle fingers of each hand) and fail to develop strength and dexterity in their weaker fingers (ring and pinkie fingers). This necessarily limits progress to longer and/or more complicated pieces of music.

Fingering is context specific, meaning it is important to look at the notes or chords both preceding and succeeding a note or chord which has specific fingering noted. When taking the given note or chord out of context, it may not be clear why the given fingering was used. However, when looking for contextual clues (where the hand has been and where it’s going to), the student can usually understand the reason for the particular fingering notation.

When discussing this with a student recently, she realized that reading fingering in context was just as important as taking sentences in context with the greater whole of a paragraph (or chapter), or even taking quotes from people reported by the media within context of the greater story being reported. Context matters!

This being said, I occasionally disagree with the fingerings used in a particular piece of music. This is sometimes (rarely) due to obvious editorial mistakes. Or, it may be that the indicated fingering is for a fully developed hand and therefore won’t work for a hand which is not yet fully grown. In those cases, I work with the student to find fingerings which will work for them.