The present Piano Repertoire Collection for Beginner Students has been written to answer a specific need, that is, to provide young children starting to study music and piano with a body of tunes suitable to be sung and played. Of course, a large literature of folk tunes does exist, beautiful melodies from everywhere in the world and from different ages of human history. Nevertheless, we felt that we needed an anthology of pieces, in different modes and tonalities, and with a variety of rhythms, that would adapt to the different stages and individual learning needs of each pupil’s musical development.

 

All the tunes are arranged since the very first in the two lines of melody and accompaniment, to give to the young musician the opportunity to start to hear these two different parts from the very beginning of his development. It is not necessary to play hands together, but it is of paramount importance that the pupil learn to play one hand as he sings the other. We do believe that in this way, it is possible to bridge from the music for beginners to the rich, magnificent piano literature that the great Masters of the past, from J.S. Bach, to R. Schumann and B. Bartók, composed for young pianists.

In order to allow the students to learn this repertoire by rote before even touching their instrument, all the pieces have been recorded in video format. For every single one of them, we recorded a total of four videos: two for the accompaniment line and two for the melody, one using neutral syllables and the second movable DO system solfège. We prefer the video to the simple audio recording because it allows a more vivid impression on the students and because many families nowadays do not possess any CD player. Tablet and PC being more fashionable, we found hospitality for our short musical movies in the archives of Muses Academy, an international online education platform in which we have the honour to teach musicianship and composition courses to international students in China.

Moving this video archive into YouTube with a specific access point, our recordings of Tonal and Rhythm patterns – published in the appendix of the repertoire book – are also included. These pedagogic materials are fundamental to understand the tonal and rhythm structure of the pieces of the beginner collection. The video format, once again, allows the interaction between teachers and students to extend beyond the lesson time, and a more effective usage of practice time on the part of the pupils.

 

Another advantage in using these videos is that the students will never be alone in singing/chanting back the patterns proposed by the teacher, since another voice out of screen will sing/chant the reply with them. The group activity is always the best to learn better these fundamental bricks of musical syntax. Since to form a group of students of similar level of skill and age in a private piano lesson studio setting is frequently problematic, we thought that this solution can help to overcome this obstacle. In addition, the movement of the rhythm patterns, essential to a real development of the feeling of pulse, so vital to any music performance, is made easier when a moving example to imitate is in front of the young
musician’s eyes.

Finally, we would like to remind the reader that ours is a work in progress, that is, we add, expand, correct as the experience with our pupils suggests new problems, new solutions, new needs. Our students are our teachers and we feel our duty to keep on learning from them how to teach more and
more effectively.

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MY (Maddalena & Yu) Pedagogic Team
suonomusicstudio@gmail.com