RANT: Fingering charts, etc.

[iiipopes]

The run through it so I can hear it is probably with us to stay, due to everyone, including me, having started learning rock n roll off the radio, with no such thing as tabs or reliable transcripts, and the desire to sound, "Just like the Record." Even my church band director sends out CDs with the music so we can help the vocalists by doing just that.

The only solution is to emphasize the basic foundation of sight singing & ear training, or is that sight screaming and ear straining, so that we are teaching the students to play music and not just notes.

Of course, I am lucky. I had a great piano teacher; I started when I was eight, and by the time I was old enough to be in school band I already knew all my basic theory as to clefs, key and time signatures and major and minor scales, not that I could play them, but I knew what they were and how to listen for the intervals: minor second, as close as you can hum, major second, do-re, etc., again, not perfectly, but at least I had a clue about where to go and what something on the page might sound like.

I must digress: When the movie the Sound of Music came out, I was very young, and absolutely enthralled. I took my little toy piano and tried to play the Do Re Mi song. But I vividly remember the frustration that for some reason I could not get my little eight note toy to sound like the song on the movie, with, of course as I found out years later, was because of the secondary modulations V/V and V/vi. Fortunately, my folks recognized this for what it was and got me going on lessons.

When someone asks me what does this sound like, I don't answer either. I start asking them the review questions: what key is it in, what time is it in, what are the notes of the scale of the key, what is the starting note, if not the tonic, what is the relation to the tonic, where do you go for the next note, are there any rhythms to watch for, etc., to make them think about the music.

[Chuck(G)]

The only solution is to emphasize the basic foundation of sight singing & ear training, or is that sight screaming and ear straining, so that we are teaching the students to play music and not just notes.

Thank you!

It used to be that a course of solfege was part of a musical education--and I think this is one of the small distinctions between the old timers like Bell, Jacobs, etc. and today's young players.

There's nothing quite like hearing a quintet or other ensemble putting their instruments down and singing their parts in perfect harmony. The playing always goes much more smoothly thereafter.