Written Preliminary Lesson 1

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Please read the overview of Mrs. Curwen’s first five lessons before beginning Lesson 1.

Mrs. Curwen presents a well laid out plan for the first five lessons. This is where she starts a piano student.

Students with past musical training or experiences may move through these first five lessons rapidly. Maybe they’ll be finished with them in a month’s time. Maybe the first five lessons will take an entire term.

You must not rush a student. Move with them and stay where they’re at until the student is ready to move on. Only after these first five lessons are mastered does the child move onto the 1st Step.

Written Instructions

Lesson 1:

Aim of the Lesson: To engage the child’s interest in his new work. To enable him to get first hand – i.e. by experience – ideas about the piano and about those musical facts which we call Time and Pitch.

a) PITCH.

Preparation:

Find out what your new student already knows about the piano. Do your best to get the student talking. Engage with them and listen to their experiences about the piano.

No matter what their prior experiences are, the piano stands in a new relation to the student today. The student is going to begin to learn how to use the piano.

Method:

Technical terms are one thing that the student cannot discover for himself.

If the child knows where to sit, let the student show you. Let them talk about anything else they see on the piano and what it’s called.

If the child doesn’t tell you about the keyboard and the keys, show them to him and define them for him. You sit before the keyboard and the player’s fingers touch the keys. When you touch or play the keys, you hear musical sounds.

Find out where the music comes from.

Open the lid of the piano.
Let the child describe what he sees.

Wires – are they the same? are they different? how?
Hammers – what happens when you push down a key?

What happens when a hammer strikes a thin wire? A thick one? Let the child explore the relationship between the keys, hammers, and wires.

Introduce low pitch and high pitch and middle pitch. “The height and depth of sounds we call PITCH.” Use the word pitch often to ensure the student has a correct understanding of the use of the word.

Below are examples of high pitched sounds:

Below are examples of low pitched sounds:

Below are examples of medium pitched sounds:

Practice:

Ask the student to strike sounds of low, middle, and high pitch. Let them find some of each.

The teacher now plays notes starting at middle C and moving up on the keyboard by step. What happens to the pitch of the notes as I move higher and higher on the keyboard?

The teacher plays notes starting at middle C and moving down on the keyboard by step. What happens to the pitch of the notes as I move lower and lower on the keyboard?

Now let the student look in the piano while the teacher plays up and down on the keyboard. Can the student decipher why the pitch of the sounds grew higher and higher or lower and lower?

“So we find that short thin strings give sounds of high pitch, and long thick strings give sounds of low pitch; and because the high sounds come when we go to the right, and the low sounds are to the left of us, we call the right and left ends of the keyboard the top and bottom of it, though, as you see, it is quite level.” (page 35, 31st edition.)

Even though the piano is flat (or level), going up is the high end and going down is the low end.

If the piano only had one pitch, could we play a tune? The teacher should illustrate. Play one sounds over and over and let the child listen. Would we call that a tune or a song?

Play a simple tune the child may recognize. Something simple like Mary had a little Lamb or Twinkle Twinkle little Star. Was that a tune or a song?

What was the difference?

Let the child ponder and wonder, but he may not be able to put his thoughts into words. Help him. Maybe let him listen again.

Come to the conclusion that to make a tune or a song we must have sounds of different pitch. An instrument that can play tunes or songs is called a musical instrument.

Ear Exercise:

Let the child shut his eyes. Tell him to listen carefully. The teacher should strike sounds of high, middle, and low pitch. Ask the student to say whether they’re high, middle, or low pitch.

b). TIME.

If the teacher is capable, play a song in moderate time. Tell the child to march or clap to it.

If the teacher is capable, play a very slow song. Tell the child to march or to clap to it.

Ask the child why he marched fast for one song and then slow for the other. Many children will need to ponder this. Some will know why immediately. If they continue thinking, repeat the exercise and let them listen again. How come you march fast and then march slow?

If they aren’t sure, leave him this idea to wonder about for the week.

c.) TOUCH.

We know the wires give out different sounds of pitch when we strike them with the hammers. They can also produce loud or soft or harsh or ugly or sweet or pleasant sounds. This all depending on how we touch the keys.

If the teacher is capable, play a piece in a harsh or ugly manner. Don’t use dynamics and play the notes detached.

Then play the same tune in a pretty manner. Use dynamics and phrasing and expression.

Ask the child which one they liked better. Let them see how different the sounds are when you touch the keys properly. This is called playing with a good touch or a good tone.

Summary:

What did we learn about Pitch?
What did we learn about Time?
What did we learn about Touch?

Homework:

1. Let the child tell his mother a bit about pitch, time, and touch.
2. Touch the keys every day until the next lesson. Think about the pitch of the sounds and what is happening in the piano.
3. Find out anything about other musical instruments and tell the teacher about them at the next lesson. Talk with other musicians about their instruments.
4. Play music at home and have the student march or clap to it.

Prepare for the next lesson here: Lesson 2a.