Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum How to "force" expression in a student??

Hannah, teach her how to improvise! This will quickly get to the root of the problem and open up self-expression.

The thing is, she's perfectly aware of the way she plays. She knows she's stiff and robotic, but has a good sense of humor about it. In fact, we both joked that she played the Sonata Pathetique like it was the Sonata Apathetic.

She is also aware of the fact that this needs to change, although I'm not sure that she realizes its importance. She is very diligent and seems to be preoccupied with note accuracy and memorization. Not that this is a bad thing.

She has a good, broad taste in music and enjoys both classical and modern styles. She is constantly exposed to great examples of good, expressive playing, so it's not like she doesn't know what it sounds like. In fact, her father is a guitar teacher at the same studio I work at, and he is one of the most emotional, expressive players I know!

I'm starting to think that this is something that will just come to her in time, and all I can do is encourage her and make her aware of the changes she will eventually accomplish.

Too bad gyro's comments are extreme (or at least expressed that way), there is a modicum of truth, I believe, to the contention that there are those in the piano world that favor technical abilities over musicality (I've observed this first hand). Not everyone obviously, and maybe not even a majority, but they are out there and they do occupy important "seats".

Back on topic, question for the teachers, is anyone of the opinion that there could be changes in technique that can help the student actually express musicality at the keyboard. This is assuming that the student can "sense and feel" the musicality, but just isn't able to then transfer that to the physical realm. Or is this not the case and the issue has nothing to do with technique?

Hey, your student sounds like me.

I do agree only time can solve her problem, not use of "force."

Isaac Stern tudors a student from China during his early visit featured in his film from the 1970's "From Mao to Mozart." The young girl plays a violin solo which he hears with lack of expression and asks her to sing what she just played, and she sings it with more feeling. Finally he says "play the way you sang it," and she played it with much more feeling and expression.

Josef Hofmann talks about his lessons with Anton Rubinstein. Playing with expression is more innate if the student knows the character of the piece:

"... is it dramatic, tragic, lyric, romantic, humorous, heroic, sublime, mystic--what? (Josef Hofmann, "Piano Playing with Piano Questions answered" p. 61)"

I feel that just being aware of these elements is the first step to expressive playing which will come with time.

Maybe your student will like Prokofiev. Sarcasms. Visions Fugitives. Or those Shostakovich Preludes. Dry, sarcastic, "dead pan" music.

I don't teach piano, either, but I'll admit to being one of those students who had no idea how to make music when I was a teen taking lessons, but I had pretty good skills otherwise.

I didn't start making music until I started playing dance music, and playing with other musicians on other instruments. To this day, anything classical that I play is pretty dead.

So your student may just not "feel" classical when she plays it, but will find some genre some day that really is hers. I don't have any idea - but that is what happened for me.

I do think that musicality involves technique as well as "sensing and feeling the music." Things like phrasing, accents, fast tempos, etc, all took time for me to learn how to produce, even tho I knew what I wanted it to sound like. And learning to produce what I want it to sound like is a never-ending job, apparently

It may be that working specifically on phrasing, or dynamics, or rubato, accents, or whatever, in order to have the tools to make the music happen will wake up the musicality for classical music in her. But it may also be that boogie-woogie, or blues, or contra dance music, or as ed says, improvisation, will really be the key for her. Who knows? Everyone has something that will touch them. I suppose it's possible that eventually she'll take the music background she's gotten from piano and use it to learn another instrument, and *that's* what will wake up the musicality in her.

But at least she's aware of it, and you're doing a good job of helping her to be aware of it without making her feel like she's a total doofus, so she can keep playing/experimenting, and will probably some day find what works for her.

That's my experience, any way.

Cathy

Some people play notes. Some people play music.

I've gone to many concerts that were entirely comprised of technical accuracy, and nobody in the hearty audience of clappers seemed to notice but me.

I've heard two sisters with Doctorates in Music play duets for an evening. One sister never played a "note"; all was music. The other never played music; all was notes.

You might try all the above suggestions--and they were excellent suggestions-- but still she might never become a musician.

Alright, so give her Mozart to play instead (Jeez, am I ever gonna get it in the neck).

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Well, you said you'd get it in the neck, didn't you.





Careful there, Steven.

Oh dang.

I didn't mean to imply that being a contributor who isn't a teacher is necessarily a bad thing, and certainly didn't mean to imply that I'm a teacher! It's well-settled that non-teachers have a place here, and I don't think it's problematic at all unless a poster also happens to satisfy the other condition as well ("(1) contributors who routinely offer 'extreme conclusions' and bizarre, off-topic responses to trumpet certain predictable soapbox issues").

Steven

That's why there was a push to have all teachers include in their sigs that they were teachers. I was reluctant to do it at first but I understand why some people think it's necessary!

I'm afraid King of Greece will just have to do.

Audio and/or videorecord them, and have them see for themselves! And then ask them to change one thing about the way they play their piece!

Or have them learn an instrument where the repertoire is Romantic and 20th/21st century. Lots of rubato required in some of them.

Meri

A Soprano On Her Head (one of my favorite books on music) talks about this sort of thing too. The teacher tells the student to play as if they were someone who played with too much "emotion"...bad acting and over-dramatization. Probably the first thing that the author of that book would suggest, though, is telling her to actually play like a robot and NOT use any feeling...to hopefully discover that she does add a *little* bit of musicality to things...

Some students simply need some musical "rules" to follow.

Crescendo to the long note.
The quietest note in the phrase is the last one.
Arrive on the tonic 6/4. It's a musical magnet.
Short notes go to long. It moves the line forward.
Musical shape is determined more by harmonic tension than anything else.
Never play any repeated ideas exactly the same.

Start using these kinds of guidelines (there are plenty more!) and see if she improves. She may just be more analytical/cerebral and need that kind of structure.

Just having some fun yanking your chain, Steven. That's all.

Hehe, I know. But the way my post was worded, it could have been inferred that I'm a teacher. I thought I should err on the side of caution and clarify.

If it ever becomes an issue in sig lines, mine will have to say I am not a teacher, nor do I play one on the Internets.

Steven

Agreed. Ironically a huge percentage of expression has something to do with one rule or another. It's also important to note chromatic clashes against harmony. Suspension and release is vital to expression. At least 90% of the time it needs to be strong-weak to illustrate the interest returning to normality. If it's not just felt, it needs to be analysed first. Intervals are also important. Wider intervals require more time than small ones, to emulate vocal difficulty. It should often feel hard to reach the highest notes. Playing an interval with one finger (before returning to normal) is an excellent way to physically experience the sense of distance. The most chromatic intervals in a chord are also the most important to display- note things like major 7th and minor 9th especially. It's always a point of interest. Also, notes which change are generally interesting and those which stay the same are generally not. This is particularly true of such things as Alberti bass-lines and chordal passages. Often the inner parts are far more interesting than the top. Look what moves around.

In order to teach that which supposedly cannot be taught, these kind of principals are vital. Once they sink in, even students who had played like absolute robots can start to play with some degree of expression. I'd spend plenty of time actively analysing recordings by great pianists. You can't exactly analyse to the point of being able to play like Cortot, but you can gain a huge amount, if you aim to understand the principles behind that which might seem like mere 'feeling'.

LOL love it