Second Week of Training

Time is flying, and this is the end of more than two full weeks using the SM program with my students and my own children. I am finding a way to incorporate the software into part of each lesson, whether playing a game for a few minutes, sight-reading a new piece, or checking on the progress of a piece practiced at home (comparing scores from last week).

Do - Re - Mi

My 5 year-old has really taken to the Solfege syllables. He sings them all the time, and finds it absolutely hilarious to sing the names of the pictures midway through singing the syllables. He is such a little clown... so I recorded him doing an impromptu performance of singing the notes up and down the keyboard.

I also grabbed a few pictures from that video. You can tell he is enjoying himself:



I'll attach the video once it is uploaded. Not sure if I can upload it directly to this site. Can I?

My 8-year-old will sing the solfege, but a couple of times she complained that it was making her "forget the letters" - since she is already well-versed in CDEFGABC. I told her it would be okay, and that she would remember the letters, too, after she learns Do Re Mi. It seems to me that this is very similar to learning two languages... it might take a little longer at first, but then she will be fluent in both. For now, I will do only the Do - Re - Mi note names with my children, until it is well-learned.

A Dilemma?

I am not sure what to do with my current students regarding note-naming, especially my first- and second-year students. It seems like it would be unwise or confusing to suddenly shift to Solfege, though I can see the benefit for developing absolute pitch. On the one hand, I've successfully taught CDE for two decades. I also like to use move-able "Do" to help students hear intervals and transpose easily (this is apparently controversial among teachers, as I have found on another piano teaching message board!). On the other hand, I am willing to learn "new tricks" -- if I need to re-evaluate my teaching philosophy on Do - Re - Mi (fixed "Do") versus CDE, so be it.

Hanon

My daughter has been playing the modified Hanon exercise for the past two weeks, though not as consistently as I'd like. It seems the "cobbler's children have no shoes" -- I am too busy teaching other children most days.

However, she has it hands apart with very little trouble, and has even played hands together a few times. She came up with her own way of playing it in contrary motion yesterday. When she lets me record her, I will share the video. I do think this exercise is giving her more confidence, and is good for playing more "notes per minute" than she would just playing her regular pieces.

Student Feedback

Feedback from my students has all been positive or neutral. Some more-advanced students get frustrated that they are not holding long notes enough (or are holding through rests). I think they want to blame the software, but they know that isn't the real issue.

One of my HS sophomores told me that "if [she] had this at home, [she'd] never leave the piano!"

Here is my daughter playing the Hanon exercise hands apart early this evening:



As soon as she lets me record her, I will share her hands-together playing.

Here is my five-year-old from yesterday evening. He played and sang the syllables again on the piano (no stickers!) this morning. Then he played Hot Cross Buns hands together one time, with only a couple mistakes, on the Gentle Piano program. This was his idea, but he only wanted to do it once. That's okay with me!

I believe that the little pictures make it much more fun than having to read letters. He is still learning his ABCs, so that was just added pressure. The Do-Re-Mi pictures are fun, and kids learn through play (even up through age 9+).

Mandabplus3 wrote: Thanks for the progress report. It's fascinating to hear how you are going with your own kids, your students and also with changing the way you think and teach.

Thank you so much! I'm glad my posts are interesting.... or at the very least entertaining. My philosophy in life pretty much boils down to "the more I learn, the less I think I know." My brain never stops going... even when I would like it to please be quiet now (only maybe not in such polite terms, LOL)!

Your dilemma about the solfege and CDE is something I went through also. Both my oldest daughter age 9 now and myself can read notes in CDE, fairly fluently. My daughter ( 8 at the time) had done a year and a half of piano lessons using the CDE format before we decided to use softmozart in do re me.

Yes, this is similar to what my kids have done... they both already know CDE, but we have also always done singing with Do-Re-Mi, so this isn't really something new. Here's something that totally blew my mind the other day:



I was in the other room for a few minutes, and my son got into the felt board materials on his own accord and started matching the solfege symbols with the baskets I made with the regular ABCs... he did really well, matching Do through Fa. I think my kids learn through osmosis sometimes, haha! But seriously, as long as there is a lot of repetition and *play* (aka FUN) then the kids are learning.

For me it was like Learning all over again. I deliberately didn't try to peg a Do with the C I already knew because I didn't want to always be thinking " that's a C so it's a Do" for every note I played. It would just slow me down. So I relearnt them all from scratch, so that the learning would be fluent and automatic. It was to start with really hard on my brain, but I was very surprised at just how quickly I learnt the solfege. Overall I am glad I took the effort, my pitch is much much better then it ever has been before in my life.

Good for you! I didn't learn solfege until college... but picked it up very quickly then, and we used "Move-able Do" -- which is pretty confounding to anyone outside the US, from what I understand. Using the solfege helped me develop my ear as well (I also play horn, so that certainly helped as well), and I would love to have my students using it as well.

My daughter who is having lessons from a non softmozart teacher in CDE format had absolutely NO trouble using both methods at once. She plays in both CDE and DO RE ME in gentle piano at home but is quite capable of playing with unlabeled notes now. She is happy to sing along in solfege as she plays. For her it was a mental block more then a lack of ability to switch. I tell you this as I bet some of your students resist the change. To get a smooth transition I would let them play the games in DO RE ME format for a while first before asking for do re me singing while learning. It'll help build confidence, familiarity and pitch before they need it.
If they have been playing less than a year switch them completely immediately.
Both my girls ( age 6 and 9) have lessons in CDE and play softmozart in DO RE ME with no problems. If they get stuck on a music piece they have two systems to figure it out in, plus they can sing it!

It sounds like your girls are really loving piano. That's fantastic!

I would really like to switch everyone... but want to do it "right" -- you know what I mean? Some kids will go right along. Others will fight it, and I am a little concerned about backlash(?) from parents, but really I am probably just too self-conscious. I have a *wonderful* group of families right now. Seriously, my job is the best in the world.