I'm learning G1 piano pieces, not necessarily for an exam, but because they're around the right level for me. I've really been struggling with one of the pieces though (Trudging). It has an ABABA structure. I can play A very well. I can play B less confidently but not bad. But try and play the piece through and I get completely lost in the score because it's so disjointed.

So I've cut it up and stuck it back down in accordance with the structure, ie 5 lines of 4 bars (ABABA). I've also highlighted in colour some of the notes to give me signposts. The score now looks neat and tidy and eureka - now I can play it!

Is this cheating or bad practice though? If I get used to reading it this way, and I decide to do the exam and use this piece, could I play from this cut-up and highlighted copy as long as I had the original to hand? Even if I don't do the exam, is it bad practice not to learn how to follow the score no matter how it's laid out?

On the one hand, there's no such thing as cheating - only alternative solutions.

On the other hand, is it bad practice not to follow the score as writ? Possibly but don't worry about it. What matters is whether you make music or not.

We all . . . well, lots of us (some of us anyway) do things like this when learning a new piece - anything that helps get the notes under the fingers and into the brain. Your way is a new one to me (though I doubt if it is truly a novelty) and undoubtedly counts as a practice method on the grounds that it works. I suspect that once you have got it really well grooved you may not need the score at all, at which time you may wonder why you ever had a problem with it. Eventually you will get the habit of reading from score more easily but at grade 1 (or 2-8) don't put extra pressure on yourself - if your way works I cannot imagine any examiner taking exception to it.

I'm a big fan of modifying the score by whatever means necessary to get the message across. I regularly photocopy pieces and cut out the difficult bars for isolated practice for students who find it difficult to focus, or who insist on playing all the way through every time. I also like little tiny see-through coloured post-it type stickies - great for highlighting particular features (and you can even colour code them for fingering, dynamics, articulation etc) and easily removed once a problem has been corrected.

Its your score - you can do what you like with it! The examiner might well be intrigued...

I have several pieces for which the keyboard part has many difficult page turns. Some of these can be improved by writing, below the last stave, a few bars from the following page; for some of them a photocopy of the following page copes with the problem; for some more drastic measures are necessary. For the first movement of the Bach B minor flute sonata, I transcribed the keyboard part into Finale and printed it at about 2/3 reduction, then stuck the pages together in such a way that I can have three pages open on the rest and the page turns coincide with the two places in the whole movement where I have a hand free.

Thanks Rob, Sue and kenm - I'm glad to know you think it's not an unacceptable practice. I've tried playing it again this morning and it's really worked for me. I wish I'd thought of doing it sooner as until yesterday, playing the piece through hadn't improved significantly since my lesson two weeks ago but I think with a bit more practice off and on today, I can make a reasonable attempt at my lesson this evening.

Hi Skylark, even thought I don't totally understand the cutting up of the score part, I put stickies all over my score and even directions like extend thumb, squeeze hand together, I highlight notes with marker pens and all sorts. Go for it!

Most Jazz tunes are in multiples of 4 bars, and most Real books display them with 4 bars to a line. I find it quite disconcerting when I'm presented with charts that have been produced using Sibelius or the like that have different numbers of bars to a line, and I always make sure that charts I produce stick to the 4 bars a line rule. I don't mind so much reading the dots, but when I'm improvising I tend to feel where I am in a tune in 4 bar sections and it's so much easier when you can glance down and pick up exactly where you are without thinking about it. The worst is when you get 12 bar blues written as 4 lines of 3 bars each - I mean, why!

On jazz courses, the vocalists often have to transpose things into a different key. They're taught how to transpose the chords (even if not the dots) so that they can produce charts in "their key" to give to the rhythm section, and any horns they want to play with them (meaning they have to deal with Bb/Eb transposition too). They're also told that to make life easier for instrumentalists who might either be reading an unfamiliar tune, or a familiar one in a different key, that sticking to 4 bars a line is a good idea.

Skylark, I think this is a great idea and if it works then it's not bad practice; in fact I think I may adopt it for some of my pupils. I often find that they'll play the first section through okay, but when it comes to the repetition of that section further on in the piece they'll struggle. It hadn't occurred to me to cut it up to make it all easier to read.

I also like Sue HM's suggestion of photocopying and cutting out isolated bits of the piece for pupils to practise - another one to try I think. .

I'm not so sure about using highlighter and marker pen on the original copies though. Any marks I make on pupils' copies are always in pencil, and I expect that if they mark the copy then it'll be in pencil too. I like to be able to rub out marks once the problem's been sorted.

I know the feeling. I've done the same with some pieces we play in band. There are sometimes so many repeats, dal capo, al segno..etc that I get lost very easily.
I once asked my teacher if it was okay for me to use blue and red crayons to mark piano and forte parts and draw winding black arrows showing where I had to go back to and was told that as long as it sounds correct I could use all the colours of the rainbow!

Some of my scores now look like scrap paper from an infants class.

But at least I can play them! ....I think!

Steve

Do whatever works, and I hope you don't lose this initiative, as it's a great thing to have!
If you can't get over it you've just gotta go around it, but the main point is to get to the other side. The more experience you gain, the more little quirks you might come up with, and others will go by the wayside when no longer needed.

PS - I do like kenm's way of dealing with a common problem; I hadn't actually thought of that!

When I can't get a pupil to observe dynamics in the early stages I colour things red and blue for loud and soft, and it works well. I think anybody else with suggestions as to how to constructively sabotage a score should share too!

I know one should be able to pick up from any point after a stumble, but I've thought about (but not actually tried yet) highlighting points which I could easily pick up from, esp. just after a point where I need to look at the keys rather than the score, and then sometimes struggle to find my place back on the score again. Inspired by Skylark, I think I'll give it a try!

In the early days I used to put extra (superfluous) sharps and flats immediately next to the relevant notes in cases where I kept forgetting them, then (well, to be honest, now) I just put an asterisk by the note to remind me ... (subtle huh?). Sometimes (well, occasionally) I rub these out once I've cracked it. Those small Post-it stickies sound a good idea. I use them for other things but hadn't thought of them for this; great idea.

I just wonder about the photocopying and chopping up if you intend to use the photocopies in an exam. Seems the ABRSM is very hot on this (dire warnings on every page) and although you are clearly not doing the composers / publishers out of their rightful earnings in this case, I wonder if the examiner would feel obliged to follow the party line and comment? It could be off-putting for you in an exam situation. Might be worth the extra just buying another copy to cut up (your teacher may have ones that have been used by his / her other pupils, and not everyone is sentimental about keeping these things).

PatC

Don't forget that different editions of the same piece are not always set out in the same way (i.e. number of bars on each line), so there is nothing inherently wrong with rearranging the piece in the way you describe.

Yes, being able to follow a score without amending it is of course an important skill, but you don't necessarily have to learn it with this specific piece!

I'm increasingly becoming a fan of asking pupils to make their own markings on the score. That way they are more likely to notate in a way that they understand, and are also more likely to remember the points being addressed. It also helps them to learn how and where to mark symbols such as crescendos.

I would tend to use pencil, but occasionally pupils like to use colour and this seems to work for some people. It's just worth making sure the music doesn't get too cluttered with markings which would defeat the objective.

I also wonder about this. When I did Grade 8 piano I found one of the page turns impossible, so I photocopied the preceding pages so that I could have the whole piece sans turns. In my book this would come under fair use, but IANAL.

Edward

I cut, copy, stick, highlight, use Post Its, draw diagrams and little pictures. None of this is cheating. It is quite simply inventive teaching. One device I frequently use is to draw road signs - red triangle for the bar where the pupil goes wrong because they never see the danger coming, skid marks for scale passages out of control, red traffic light for the forgotten pause - you name it anyone can invent it.

We also practise heel on the floor like the accelerator pedal in the car and "quatre quatre" (French for 4 wheel drive) for the right hand fingering of F major on the piano.

Go ahead skylark - anything you find helps you to produce what you are aiming for is quite legitimate!

Don't be a purist over anything - except the end result.

Thanks everybody - all very reassuring!

I should have said that the reason I was worrying about highlighting some of the notes is that I now read certain repeated chords as "green" or "pink" instead of reading them as music This seemed a bit like writing in the note names - in both cases you're using a "prop" instead of reading the music correctly....

I don't really see why anything should be considered as cheating or bad practice if it works for you. At the end of the day we all want to play our pieces well and musically sound, surely we should be able to use any aid we can to do this.

Well done Skylark

For LGSMD I played a bit of an atrocity of a piece, called Fragmente - one of those avant-garde ones in which the musician is given short snippets of music which can be played in any order, providing certain ground rules are obeyed. Even just to decide on an order, I'd had to copy the whole thing, chop it into bits and reorganise it until I was happy with the result - but because this is a piece which can be played in so many ways, it would have been daft to do this with my original copy. I then stuck the resulting arrangement together in order of playing, mounted the lot onto stiff card to avoid any page turns or bits of music drooping off my stand at the edges (there were four sides of it), and played from my be-doodled, stuck-up version . I gave the original score to the examiner, and programme notes giving her the order of the fragments in the performance, which also ensured that I kept her on the hop whilst playing 'orribly difficult music at her, hehe . I was awarded the diploma in the end so think that it must have been an acceptable compromise. You're not supposed to perform from copies, but morally if you own the original and if the copy is only made for your edification, then it surely has to be a valid way round the problem of not wanting to spoil your music...

Before I play anything I study the score closely, looking for and noting down repeated/similar sections, scale passages and the like.

I like doing this, as sometimes I will be struggling with a difficult part, but knowing that I've already learned what comes afterwards spurs me on a bit and makes it seem like less of a mountainous climb!

Great suggestion. I really should start doing that, I'm terrible for just trying to plough straight in, and ultimately crashing!!

Nah, all my Bach fugues are coloured in (different colours for different voices)...

As someone already said, do whatever works for you. I have a "study" version for many pieces I learn: it's a photocopy in which I write in all things associated with the early stages of learning the piece e.g. a few alternative fingerings, note names for those with more than 4 ledger lines (can't deal with them at sight ), notes on pedalling/tone/interpretation, etc (e.g. a giant "no banging" written in red felt tip pens). Then, the "useful" ones later go into the actual score I play from -- can't have everything or it gets too cluttered! I was taught to do this as a child and still find it a good habit as it helps me to actually "study" the score rather than just sit down and play -- all credits to my brilliant first teacher

I do this with my pupils. When they first see a piece it can be overwhelming - "all those notes, I'll never get it!". I go through it with them identifying repeated passages, and anything that "makes it easier to play" before we start on learning notes. Then they learn one bit (might be only 4 bars) and they realise that if they can play those 4 bars they can also play the same 4 bars later on in the piece. In the lower grades it often means that they only have to learn about 8 bars of a 24 bar piece as there's so much repetion.

I find piano music very scary. I don't remember ever being scared by clarinet music, even when it was beyond my level. I always have to tell myself that piano music is playable, and that I just have to get stuck in, but with a new piece it's always a mental hurdle that I have to overcome.



With Trudging, the original score is written as 4 lines of music with 5 bars per line. Because the structure is ABABA with four bars for each phrase, this means that the B section starts at the end of the 1st line, then starts the repeat in the middle of the 3rd line. Written like this, I find it very easy to lose my place.

I've cut it up and made it into 5 lines of 4 bars so that each section has its own line:
A
B
A
B
A

It's much easier to see the pattern that way, and if you get lost, it's easier to pick up again. I can now play it relatively well, and in fact when I went to my lesson yesterday, I played it at about half the suggested tempo which is what I'd been practising at, and my teacher got me playing it at nearly full tempo which he said would be an acceptable exam tempo anyway. Considering I was really struggling with this a couple of days ago, the new system has been brilliant for me

Once I learn a piece but I still refer to the music, I am not even looking at the notes!!! It's merely a prompt to remind me of what comes next.




Ah ha, now I get it!

This is an excellent idea. I have used this approach on certain pieces before and will certainly do this more often as I tackle harder pieces. I also use lots of small stick post it notes. So yes studying the piece to find all the repeats, tricky fingering, patterns etc is invaluable before you even start.

I've always been told by my present teacher to do whatever I wanted to with the score. If I think anything helps me learn the music and remember it then I should do it!
And as she would say...music is not that bunch of notes you see on a piece of paper, music comes from within!

So I'd say go ahead Skylark! It is NOT cheating or bad practice!

I like the pink and green chords idea, and it's something I might think about adapting for a pupil playing Scott Joplin at the minute. It might all get a bit complicated for Rachmaninov... but with Joplin it's often a case of tonic/dominant/diminished, and the learning process is hindered by having to stop get a headache working out which it is when it's all closely printed.

I don't think I own a single exam pieces book that hasn't been doodled in - arrows, fingerings, asterisks, words (one of my Grade 6 violin pieces had RELAAAX written in large capital letters by the first note), boxes drawn around notes/bars, phrases marked by a big scribbly line through the stave, very occasionally a note name if I keep mis-reading it (though not every single one!), smiley faces and so on. I also stick post-it notes inside the front cover to write down any issues I'm having with a piece that I want to ask my teacher about so that I remember to do so in my lesson.

As for whether these annotations are props, who cares? You could argue that the score itself is merely a prop and that you should be learning to play every piece from memory anyway (I don't think so, but some people might). Highlighting sections of academic textbooks or underlining/doodling in the margins isn't called cheating, it's called studying (as long as they belong to you and not the library, otherwise it's called defacing ).