Making theory fun

By Kathryn Page

Teachers who consistently write the letter names of each individual note onto their pupils’ music are doing them a great disservice in the short and long term. It is all too easy to become a member of the ‘wrong-note police force’ as a teacher during lessons. Our aim should always be to give pupils the facility to understand how the music they are playing flows and ‘works’. We all need to ‘deconstruct’ our repertoire and find the basic chords, intervals and patterns that make particular pieces gel and develop.

Of course it is vital for beginner pianists to learn to read notes fluently and accurately, but if you obsess in lessons over whether each individual note is identified correctly, you risk hindering understanding and progress. It is much more productive to show pupils from the earliest stages how the notes on the printed page group together to form triads, scale fragments, sequences and so on. Try to avoid referring to notes by their letter names completely at times in order to enhance musical understanding. ‘Let’s start from the dominant note’ establishes an illuminating context for work, whereas ‘Take it from the G’ just sounds like a random point to play from on the score.

Apart from the fact that there is so much more to talk about with pupils than individual errors, note-police teaching is actually extremely harmful and counterproductive. In order to develop musical awareness and understanding, our pupils really do need to be able to recognise patterns and order in musical notation from the earliest stages onwards. We should regard our pupils’ ability to listen, understand and focus with imagination and insight as the most important things to develop. If they think of each individual note separately and out of context they will be overwhelmed with information and fail to see the wood for the trees. Keyboard harmony is a much-neglected field but it’s also vital for understanding at all stages of learning to play. It is our duty as teachers to show our pupils the basic compositional ‘skeletons’ behind all the fleshed-out passagework in every piece we set in lessons.

'Keyboard harmony should be a vital

and vibrant part of every lesson'

Keyboard harmony is really practical analysis of music. This should be a vital and vibrant part of every lesson on repertoire from beginners’ pieces through to the most advanced recital sonatas. The structural bones of repertoire in the early stages is usually based around primary triads, so it makes sense for our pupils to identify chords I, IV and V in the key of each piece they are playing. They should then circle and label these chords in their scores. They should also be mindful of the cadences at the end of each phrase.

Theory on speed

It is much quicker to do theory at the piano than on paper – but it’s also much more fun. Get students to do all the things at the piano that they would normally do at a slower pace when tackling their Grades 1-5 theory with pencil, eraser and manuscript paper at a desk. Pupils can immediately hear the intervals, chords and scale patterns being taught, and we as teachers can focus their attention on repertoire featuring particular intervals and chords: we can bring the theory to life.

Whatever the level of understanding or accomplishment, the process of analysis remains the same. Once all the chordal focal points are identified and played out loud, turn to the arpeggio, broken-chord and scale patterns. At least to begin with, ask pupils to write down on the music in pencil the names of keys that fragments of music are based on. Get them to understand the overall key structure of a piece, including those keys that are passed over fleetingly towards a significant modulation such as a move to the relative minor or dominant key halfway through a binary movement.

Intermediate players may enjoy ‘crushing’ the semiquavers in Bach’s C major Prelude into a flowing chord sequence. Then try comparing it with Chopin’s Étude Op 10 No 1, which can also be ‘deconstructed’ into a chordal skeleton. Deconstructing music like this can be a lot of fun. Take the first movement of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata and group the RH quavers into three-note triads while playing the LH as written. The result is like an Elton John piano vamp: it should bring a smile to even the most serious of your pupils!

A grasp of keyboard harmony will help pupils learn more quickly. Harmonic awareness has also been a saving grace for many a professional concert pianist who suffers a memory lapse. We are all human and lapses will always be a possibility. But if you can grasp the basic chords for a passage and play those, it is usually possible to get back into the groove and remember the rest of a piece as it was written.