Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Piano Guild and the case for memorization . . . .

Gary:

I am in the same boat as you. I have transfer students who take a YEAR to learn one piece. It takes forever for them to learn anything. And when they upload incorrect notes or fingering into their brains, they can't fix/undo their mistakes. It's tough teaching these "memorizers." Of course, they can't sight read anything, either.

Gary, I don't disagree with your statements, I was only trying to make the young lady feel better. Her friend is playing music which is about a year into the future for this girl. In fact, however, she has learned six new pieces this summer and can still play most of her Guild repertoire quite well. I believe there's some kind of symbiotic relationship here.

AZN,

You have just hit upon the reason why I'd rather go through through the challenge of starting students from day one rather than deal with students coming from other teachers.

If MY students don't read well, it's MY fault!

I have a seven-year old instantly memorizes anything. The challenge was not letting that memory take over in the first year so that worked out notes, in slo-mo, then memorized and only got things up to speed, purely by memory.

I think that's the greatest handicap a beginning player develops, and it's VERY difficult to fix later.

Whoa there. Something has to give, for sure, but practice doesn't have to be it. We seem to be juggling AP and practice, so far. We have no competitive sports as a separate responsibility, so the only cost is socializing time and chilling time.



.... and that would be where nasty ol' busybody parents can come in. When repertoire that should be kept at least minimally 'up' begins to slide, I often suggest pulling it out for old times sake. I think that makes the teacher's job a little easier if and when she wants to hear these pieces again.


AZN,

I know you have probably told me before, but is CM essentially the same thing as Federation elsewhere? The 'two piece' festival sounds suspiciously familiar. Does CA sponsor a competition that builds from the festival pieces?

I did the Guild audition once, in my senior year for the HS diploma. During my junior year I switched to a teacher who did the Guild process. I'll admit that preparing a full HS diploma list in a year and a summer was a daunting task indeed. I had to memorize a ton of advanced stuff in a short time frame. I still feel good for having done it. Heck, I still remember some of the pieces I played!

I'm all for any kind of realistic praise that helps get students motivated.

My only point about memorization (and it is consistent) is that it should never be used to compensate for weak reading skills, and this so often happens in the very beginning, when young students wrongfully assume that the fact that remember everything and can play everything from memory, then, means that this will work in the future!

I participated in Guild the entire time I took piano lessons and always did a National Program. I earned the Paderewski award my Senior year. After doing Guild for so long it just became another part of the year. We always included recital pieces and I worked on memorizing pieces throughout the year. I always studied a Baroque, Sonata/Sonatina, Romantic and 20th century style piece for each lesson. So, it was pretty easy to put together a National program based on the pieces that I learned and perfected throughout the year. I remember the memorization portion during my Jr. and Sr. year of high school was a little tough, but understanding the form of the piece really helped verses just relying on finger memory.

Anyway, I still sightread and transpose very easily because of Guild Requirements. The eartraining phases really helped during college theory, eartraining and sightsinging.

Once my daughter starts taking piano lessons I want to find a teacher that is a member of the Guild and participates in Guild Auditions. I really think they helped to make me an excellent pianist.

Could you elaborate more about how not to work out notes purely by memory?

I think my son can memorize a new piece easily, but I don't know if he just works out notes purely by memory.

CM is Certificate of Merit. It's an exam system with a ton of theory thrown in. Kids play 2, 3, 4, or 5 pieces for the test, depending on the level. Most kids don't go beyond level 4 (6th or 7th grade at school) because they either lose interest in piano or the theory becomes too time-consuming. Very often (especially for kids who DON'T do their theory homework), half the lesson time is spent on teaching/re-teaching theory. I really wish kids would learn more theory at school. They need the drill-and-kill practice, especially on simple concepts like key signatures, intervals, major/minor scales, chord progressions, and dominant 7th chords.

Federation is different. Very very few teachers here do Federation. Some teachers do Guild, but the great majority of piano teachers in the state go for CM.

Okay, let me rephrase...

Wait until he takes FIVE AP classes. That'll put an end to his practice time.

I took 5 AP classes my senior year. Bad mistake. Calculus BC was the nightmare of my life. I don't know how I managed to learn a concerto on top of the five required pieces for Panel. The problem is: some of my current high-school students are heading down the same path of nonsense. It's like, if you don't take 5 AP classes, you won't get into the college of your choice.

NCLB…

It's all about grades, scores. I've talked before about how I concentrated only on music and was perfectly happy with OK grades. When I said that, I got a lot of objections…

Gary--

You can't blame NCLB for the problem I've described. NCLB is aimed at the bottom 60% of public education, so that these kids are not "left behind" those kids taking AP classes. If you work for public schools, you'll realize that the distance between NCLB kids and AP kids keeps on widening. There is almost no middle ground. In a generation, the middle class will just thin out. Freaky.

You are so literal. My response was a bit sarcastic. My point was not about who NCLB is aimed at—or what students AP classes are directed at—but the general idea that test scores and grades reign supreme and are inevitably used to predict who will and who will not be successful in life.

But as long as I've gone this far, I'll go farther. Every decade the students I talk to know LESS than those from a decade before. And that includes supposedly top students in AP courses.

Students spend more and more time to make higher and higher grades and test scores, and a huge emphasis is on cramming in a way that to me is simply insane.

The scores and grades become the goal, not learning. Our best music students are so caught up in this insane cycle that they have no time left to discover what they could accomplish in music. No time left.

So unless you think your 5 advanced courses and subsequent lack of time to focus on piano was a good thing, I would think you would agree with me.

But very few people in this forum ever seem to agree with me about anything, so I suppose this reply will be no different.

Okay, back to Guild and memorization...

I can see how memorization can help refine playing certain pieces, even polishing them to competition level. But such preparation comes at a cost of not doing much sight reading and/or theory, and not playing a broad repertoire of pieces. I wish there's a happy medium.

First, before I take blame for highjacking the thread, I never mentioned AP classes and related issues. Someone else did.

Furthermore, the amount of time students have to practice/prepare is the real point. The reason the right mix of reading (playing with music) and memorization is so important is directly BECAUSE most students do not have unlimited time to practice.

It's all about time management, getting the most for each minute of practice.

That's why I continue to argue the case for learning as much music as possible, with SOME memorization, and not making memorization "The Most Important Thing".

Gary, I've noticed the same phenomenon, and was pondering it too.

Yesterday, I commented to a student that we really needed to work more on his reading skills. He quizzed me on that statement, wondering why he couldn't read his piano music as well as he reads books. I asked him how many music books he'd read in his life and how many English books. His face brightened and he immediately got the point.

Talking, as I do with most of my students, I find they do not read very much. My parents "forced" me to read in ES and MS, and it soon got to be habitual, so that now I read 40 or 50 books a year (non-fiction, for the most part).

With reading comes language skills, vocabulary, etc., etc. Oops my next student just pulled up. More in a bit.

John, I teach a lot of very young kids. That means that I actually start off with a fairly "level playing field". That means that occasionally my students become excellent music readers but still stumble reading English, and I am NOT talking about children whose parents do not speak English. That's how bad our educational system has become. To find just how bad, read about South Florida.

That's why I want my students to gain the "reading music habit". I keep making the same point: "Bring ANY music, and I will play it for you." That's a challenge to myself, but it also lends credibility to what I teach. Yesterday a student challenged me with the piano/vocal score of "Hairspray". (Don't remember if it is one or two words.)

My message is always the same thing: "YOU can learn to do what I'm doing. Playing anything (reading the music) is no more 'magic' than being able to pick up any book and read it. It's not a mystery."

Also, reading books is also an individual thing. My brother never liked to read. No one has ever MADE me read one single book, John. I simply love to read.

This question is for John Brock.

Am I understanding this correctly? One movement of a sonatina counts as one piece toward the overall repertoire requirement. So if a a student learned a three part sonatina that's three pieces, not one piece for the guild requirement?

Thank you.

Sandimar, I'm not John, but you understand correctly. I have my old Guild report cards to prove it!

Yes, each movement counts as a piece. This is not true for themes and variations.