Examining Piano Playing Proficiency among Selected Music Students in a Ghanaian Public University

Piano instruction—composition, arrangement and tutoring has been a pivotal part of music education. Several countries across the globe have encapsulated it into curriculums and syllabi. Its benefits span several genres of music. It has been part of music education at the tertiary level in Ghana but has not received enough attention and is also faced with several challenges. The study sought to examine the piano playing proficiency among tertiary students within the Ghanaian context and the various factors responsible for the challenges faced and propose contextual interventions to address the issue. The study made use of the qualitative methodology. The instruments used for data collection were semi-structured interviews and participant observations. It was evident that piano playing among tertiary students needs rapt attention in terms of tutorials, well-equipped studio space and competent personnel to handle the tutelage. It is recommended that stakeholders shift the focal lens to piano playing proficiency in music education students as one of the requirements for graduation.

Role Playing in Piano Instruction

The article presents innovative forms of work with musical texts during piano lessons applied in work with beginning students in all conditions of teaching: in the academic educational process, as well as in private teaching practice of self-employed specialists. The reader shall be acquainted with concrete methodological elaborations of role playing which may be useful for the teacher in his or her practical work. The elaborations are carried out within the framework of one of the leading contemporary directions developed by the academic school of practical musical semantics. The presented homework assignments may serve as specimens for the creation of analogous elaborations by the teacher himself with substitutions of the musical material and with consideration of the pupils’ age-related capabilities. The author of the project, Liudmila Nikolayevna Shaymukhametova aspires to draw attention not only to new approaches to work with the musical text and to practical semantics as the most important direction in teaching music, but also to the question of what the contemporary textbook for the beginner musician should look like. The materials are addressed, among others, to upgrade training courses and professional retraining of teachers of schools, methodologists and teachers of general and professional education, as well as for application in practical work of private school teachers

METODE PEMBELAJARAN PIANO DI PURWACARAKA MUSIK STUDIO PADANG

This study aims to describe how the piano learning methodsare used in Purwacara Music Studio Padang. It is seen in terms of objective, material, method, and evaluation. This research used a Qualitative approach which produced descriptive data about Piano Instruction in Purwacara Music Studio Padang.T he data were collected through observation, interview, documentation, and interactive data analysis consisting of data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion drawing. The results show that the piano learning process in Purwacara Music Studio is in accordance with the determined curriculum whose learning objective is students are able to play piano in right fingeringand sitting attitude. In the learning process, the methods implemented are lecture method, questions and answers, demonstration, drill, and assignment. Meanwhile, thelearning materialsare divided into two materials: music theory and music practice. In addition, evaluation is always held in every course meeting, and final evaluation as well as a test for improvement levelis held every 6 months. To get more tangible and use fulbenefits, based onthe results of research and discussion about piano instruction in Purwacara Music Studio, forming a special team for designing piano learning materials in an guidebook is a suggestion the writer gives. This is due to the fact that available materials are not neatly arranged in a guidebook. Thus, the existence of the arranged materials in a guidebook can further enhance the process of learning.Keywords: method, learning, piano

The Effect of Computer-Assisted Instruction on Piano Education: An Experimental Study with Pre-service Music Teachers

This study investigated the effect of computer assisted teaching practices in piano courses in Department of Music Education of Faculty of Education on students’ success, piano playing skills and to what extent they provided permanent learning. The research was carried out with the pre-test/post-test research design with a control group, one of quasi experimental designs. In the study, the experimental group was provided computer-assisted piano instruction, while the control group received the regular curriculum instruction. There were 7 female and 6 male students in the control group and 6 male and 7 female students in the experimental group. A computer-assisted piano instruction program was developed for the experimental group. Instruction in the experimental and control groups lasted for 10 lessons. Piano Achievement Test and Piano Observation Form were used as data collection tools. Mann Whitney U test was used to test permanent learning and the success and piano skills of the groups. The results of the research show that computer assisted piano instruction applied in the experimental group is more effective than the regular curriculum instruction in increasing students’ course success and permanent learning. However, no significant difference was found between the post-test levels of the experimental and control groups in terms of piano skills.

Printing Piano Pedagogy: Experimental Psychology and Marie Jaëll's Theory of Touch

In her 1899 pedagogy manual Touch: Piano Instruction on the Basis of Physiology, the composer and pianist Marie Jaëll (1846–1925) describes pianistic touch as a ‘polyphony of sensations’, a synthesis of vibrations that is both physical and psychical. This article examines Jaëll's recourse to nineteenth-century experimental science, specifically experimental psychology, to develop a theory of pianistic touch. Touch, Jaëll contends, necessitates a pianist's attention to haptic and aural impulses in an elusive, ‘simultaneous and successive’ process that collates the pianist's tangible sensation of the keyboard and the ineffable mental impressions conjured by sound. This braided sense of musical touch can be cultivated in performers and transmitted to listeners. Jaëll makes this assertion using a novel kind of visual evidence: fingerprints. Fingerprinting her students before and after the execution of selected piano études and treating the prints as diagnostic documents, Jaëll posits that isolating and attending to minute variations in touch is akin to attuning to the aesthetic content of a musical work. Jaëll crystallized her methodology in a vibrant collaboration with Charles Féré (1852–1907), a criminologist and one-time student of Jean-Martin Charcot. More broadly, Jaëll's treatise is a striking exponent of the era's ‘graphical method’, pioneered by Étienne-Jules Marey, which sought to supplant scientific rhetoric with ‘objective’ truth, depicted as machine-generated wave forms. The ethos that motivated the creation of such representations, propagated by an array of influential scientists including Ernst Heinrich Weber and Hermann von Helmholtz, underscores a tendency to intertwine physiology and psychology in an enterprise that quantified sensation as a fact of mechanistic causes. Jaëll's emphasis on attention – how thought modifies touch and sound – sets her theory apart from experimental psychology's more determinist premises. In Jaëll's experimental apparatus, fingerprints are not objective; rather, they index the variable haptic and sonic sensations experienced by the pianist. As a nascent theory of embodied cognition, Jaëll's pedagogy bespeaks a fluid relationship between mind and body at the dawn of the twentieth century.

The piano pedagogy scenes in India and the Philippines: An introductory cross-cultural comparison

Categorized as developing nations, India and the Philippines are not generally known as centers for piano study. There has been little research investigating the traditions of piano education in these nations. In this study, I examined a number of issues related to piano pedagogy in each country. Data were collected from teachers in India ( n = 45) and the Philippines ( n = 28), who completed a 29-item questionnaire. Additionally, three instructors from India and one instructor from the Philippines were interviewed to gain further insight. A summary and comparison of the availability of piano instruction for pre-college students were outlined and opportunities for teacher support and professional development were explored. I looked at the current professional practices, the types of pedagogical methodologies and materials used in each country, the quality and types of pianos and keyboard instruments available, as well as the practice expectations and environments of students. How each country’s system of piano education adopts Western influence and observes their respective traditions is also presented. It is hoped that this research will lead to more in-depth investigation about these countries’ teaching practices and provide additional perspectives for pedagogues around the world.

From Carl Czerny’s Miss Cecilia to the Cecilian: Engineering, Aesthetics, and Gendered Piano Instruction

In this article, Carl Czerny’s Letters to a Young Lady on the Art of Playing the Pianoforte (1837) is studied as a machine manual within the cybernetic economy of James Watt’s governor. It is argued that while the young pupil is encouraged to subject herself to a strict discipline of physical deportment at the piano, this activity is in conflict with her own desire to become a self-regulated learner. The key claim made is that although Czerny’s surveillance strategy prevents Miss Cecilia from breaking with the cybernetic ideal and appropriating the pianistic technology for purposes of virtuosic self-expression, she becomes aware of her latent agency and its potentially subversive implications for gendered music making. As such, Czerny’s piano manual addressed to the stereotypical nineteenth-century piano girl anticipates the pianistic discourse associated with the invention of the player piano at the turn of the twentieth century.