I have several students doing exams this term, grades 1 to 5, and they can all now play their pieces to pass level, but I'd like to know how to push some of them towards a merit or even distinction? A common fault is that their tempo is uneven - I've tried getting them to play along to a metronome which works for some, but others just don't listen to it! I'm also going to get them to record their performances on my digital piano, and listen back to themselves. Any other ideas?

What always impressed me as a student was when I thought I had a piece perfectly "polished" yet my teacher was still able to find at least 10 things which could be improved.

As I got better at listening and studying music I found I was gradually able to do this myself. There's nearly always something you can change to make an improvment as it's almost impossible to hear a "perfect" performance. It just depends on how much time you have/want to spend and how important it is.

The tempo needs to be in place before you then start working on other finer details I think. You can't start to teach someone how to phrase something beautifully if their tempo is up the left. It's good the metronome is working for some and they have the patience to put up with it! For the others, you might just need to point out to them the importance of listening to and feeling the pulse as it may be they don't feel it's important to concentrate on and are just ignoring it, rather than being incapable of keeping a steady tempo? Do they understand the concept of pulse? That's another thing to ask - even get them to explain it. I've had pupils "inherited" who, although they knew something about counting, really couldn't explain properly what pulse meant. They didn't understand that the pulse and the rhythm are not the same thing. If you have no pulse, the rhythm won't be right, so pulse comes first etc...

Play the piece for them and get them to feel/tap the pulse, then play a dodgy pulse and ask them to put their hand up when they hear it?! It might help - I'm sure others will come up with good ways to deal with pulse.

Once that's in place you can get onto the real polishing. I think for a top-class performance you just have to go into every possible nuance. For example they might be playing an entire line marked as soft at pretty much the same level. You can go into how to make it more interesting by having slight crescendos at appropiate places. Often a student will not think of extra elements simply because they are not marked on the score, and this is where you can come in and show them the difference between an acceptable rendition and a truly thoughtful one!

Sorry if that's all obvious to you already - hope it helps a bit xxx

Have you tried getting them to self-assess? Get them to play 8 bars of a piece, saying to them "after you have played, I want you to tell me one thing that you did well, and one thing that you could improve". If they think they played perfectly, play it back to them but slightly exaggerate any errors they made and ask them to listen and say the same one good/one improvement thing. You may have to make BIG exaggerations at first until they get the idea of really listening to what is being played. Some kids have not yet developed the art of listening critically and so will not be able to make improvements until they have developed this skill.
If the problem is with tempo, try getting them to clap the pulse to your playing or chant one-two-three one-two-three (or whatever), and then make some tempo changes to see if they can spot them. Has it got slower or faster? Did I slow down in the hard bit? Did I hold the long notes on for long enough?

Merits and distinctions are also won or lost in the supporting tests - if you played all the pieces perfectly you would still only get 90 marks. For higher marks they need to be comfortable and fluent in the scales/arpeggios. aural and sight reading too.

Hope this helps - good luck with the exams

I had some students who did exams last summer and although they all passed, their overall marks were lower than we'd expected. The examiner's comments for quite a few of them mentioned a lack of expression. Although they found this difficult to understand, I explained to them that very often things like dynamics and articulation need to be exaggerated in order for a listener to hear them. Maybe this would help? Also, you could get them to listen to the exam CD, as this will not only help to give them a good feel for the tempo of each piece, but will probably give them some valuable ideas about style. My only reservation about the CDs is that the faster pieces are sometimes too fast!

Pulse is THE most fundamental aspect to be taught, IMHO - without it you are in dire trouble!

It's why I work on pulse soooo much, not only in the early stages but throughout. Teaching the difference between pulse and rhythm is not easy but understanding the connection and relationship between the two is invaluable.

'Counting' is useless without a good sense of pulse.

*steps off *

Are you sure that an uneven tempo is "pass level" at all???


I think the best way to help with pulse is through rhythm games... I try to build "repeating excersises" (some people call it "echo playing") into each lesson in some way or other... Often I will put a metronome on and then play a short 4-beat rhythm, asking the student to copy, and we will play for several minutes with 4-beat phrases being played and repeated...

An even pulse and appropriate expression are the two biggest areas that are overlooked.

It's why I work on pulse soooo much, not only in the early stages but throughout. Teaching the difference between pulse and rhythm is not easy but understanding the connection and relationship between the two is invaluable.

OH YES.

My small (and medium and large) students know that pulse is essential for music and life!

They also know, since we sing everything, that the rhythm is 'what the words say' and the pulse is 'the beat under the music'. If this is parrotted to begin with, it is learned by the time they have sung/clapped/tapped and slapped their ways through lessons!

Where's the soap box? Can I climb on yours??

*goes to enlarge soapbox*

I have a 12 year old student who seems to have no real sense of pulse and so struggles with almost every piece he works on. Consequently, I have to work on this more than anything else with him, and often feel that I have to "nag" him about it and that he gets a bit downhearted. He's a lovely boy and i don't want to discourage him. Any tips, Cyrilla?

Hmmm - more difficult with this age - but the answer is always the same - MOVEMENT!!!

Tap, clap, click, sway, nod, walk, pass an object...

For this age I would suggest that one of the most helpful things might be ball-bouncing! Teach different patterns for different metres - BOUNCE, catch for 2/4 (or 6/8), BOUNCE, catch (in one hand), pass (to the other hand) for 3/4 (9/8) and BOUNCE, catch, pass, pass for 4/4 (12/8). Once you've taught the basic 2/4 it might be good to ask him to invent his own ideas for 2 and 3 time before you give him these ideas.

Also walking the pulse. Get him to walk in time with your playing and then add other aspects - eg clap on every strong beat (or jump, or tap your head, or bend your knee, etc) - or to clap the subdivisions of the beat - ie walk crotchets, clap quavers (or walk dotted crotchets and clap quavers for compound time). Then try it the other way round (MUCH harder!).

Or - conducting! This can either be as in beating a different arm pattern for each metre, or just performing a different movement on each beat of the bar. These ideas are all Dalcroze-inspired and I know they have specific 'conducting' movements but I can't remember what they are...sorry .

Hope this helps a bit!

The first thing I work on is pulse. I try to do it gently by clapping the pulse and trying to get the pupil to internalise it.

However I have a particularly annoying little electronic metronome that make the most irritating beep you can imagine. I have resorted using it in lessons occasionally, and now the mere threat that I'm going to get it out normally does the trick.

However pulse should be the first thing taught along with the notes. The polish should be the finer points of phrasing, and the subtler aspects of dynamics.

Pulse is a fundamental.

And to answer the original question...

I think for top marks in exams I tell the kids they need to

- play the right notes at the right time (with the right bowing too for us violinists)

- also play all the details printed on the page ie dynamics, changes of dynamics, accents, staccatos etc

- play all the other musical details we have talked and worked on eg shaping phrases, adding echoes etc

AND all this must be clear to the audience so it may feel exaggerated to the player, taking it in turns to listen and play with others is valuable for understanding this.

I also say it's like the Harry Potter scene where he is grabbing keys from the air around him. Grab the mark for the crescendo! Grab the mark for the rit at the end! Grab another mark for lovely tone!

My teacher has given me some work to do from the grades 1 to 4 exam pieces. I have been cheating and looking at that book called Teaching Notes and trying to do the things they suggest there.

I ended up with an uneven tempo for a grade 5 piece having nearly ending up playing a repeat where I realised I needed to play the final bars instead in La tarantelle and still got 23 but the examiner put it down to nerves because most of it was even and the pulse was there.

The pulse is important in three parts of the exam (aural,pieces and sight reading) so is worth looking at.

Scales need a nice even tempo too if you want to do really well

So pulse is important for everything

Hello,

Just thought I'd add my two-penneth. In my early teaching days I really struggled with polishing pieces (particularly when you have a grade 1 pupils who's 6/7yrs old). However, I've found that talking about the piece in terms of why it was written and getting them to really start imagining the story behind it helps with style. So in one lesson we danced around in 18th Century style. I told the pupil he was the 18th Century DJ and this music was the dance music of the day. That got him really inspired and suddenly his performance took shape.

Hope this helps!

Try playing some recordings of interesting pieces by the same composer or from the same period so that your pupils can really get the idea of the style of music - eg I play Stravinsky's Petruschka to pupils learning his 5 finger exercises - the music is so exciting, it always inspires them and they get the idea about the strong rhythms. It doesn't need to be a piano version - indeed better if it isn't - then you can talk about how to achieve the effect of a violin or a drum etc on a piano - great for phrasing.
One idea for working on pulse - get them to march to a strongly rhythmic piece they know well, turn the volume down for a few seconds and get them to keep going and see if they can stay in time until you turn it back up - works best if they can sing along to the tune.

Two of my pupils and myself had a really hilarious time this afternoon. My very, very slow 12 year old special needs pupil was having trouble with three time - his very simple piece was meant to sound like a bouncing ball, but he kept holding onto beat 3 (marked straccato), so that he was playing in four time. We threw a ball backwards and forwards in three time, he "conducted" - and managed to get the movements right, then we had the "clack squeak orchestra". We used maracas for beat one and a high squeaker for beats 2 and three, swapping round every so often, which he found very funny. At this point my next pupil arrived - a 9 year old girl who is rather timid, very straight faced, and who does things very correctly technically, but doesn't put any feeling in to her playing. I can seldom get a smile out of her. She joined in and soon started to giggle - I've never seen her do this before. When the two of them had got the hang of it I played The Skater's Waltz for them to play along with. We had several tries, but couldn't manage to get to the end because the boy was by this time rolling on the floor unable to stop laughing , while the girl was bent over double with real belly laughing. The tears were streaming down my face too! The boy managed to play his piece correctly straight away (RH only, but that's a big achievement!) and hopefully it has been a turning point for the girl to feel that she can let herself go from time to time. What fun we all had with a very simple idea, and a memorable learning experience!

Wonderful - that's what it's all about!!!