Piano
Piano
Tutor: John Gormley
Prior experience
Primarily a guitarist, I attended private piano lessons for around two years whilst in high school. My experience on the guitar had equipped me with a good grasp of the fundamentals of music, and my guitar tuition had included a good amount of music theory. My piano lessons were fairly informal – I was never entered for ABRSM exams, and although I enjoyed the lessons, I never considered myself much of a pianist.
Having moved away from the family home, my access to a piano became fairly limited, and my playing became infrequent. I knew this would be an area that required keen attention if I was to reach a comfortable professional standard, and identified as such it in my Personal and Professional Development Plan (PPDP). The GTCS registration standards document refers to a commitment to “lifelong learning” as a “core aspect or professionalism” (p. 6), so I was looking forward to reacquainting myself with the instrument, with the weekly CPS tutorials inspiring a renewed discipline that I perhaps did not have when I previously attended piano lessons.
Tutorial work
John initially provided us with exercises by Hanon and Schumann to improve our fingering. As this video from September demonstrates, my playing was hesitant and lacking fluency:
Almost immediately in these CPS tutorials, I was taken back to how I felt as a teenager attending piano lessons.
After some helpful comments from John, he suggested we find our own material to practise. I was drawn to a piece that we were given in the CPS conducting class, I am a Small Part of the World (click images to enlarge):
I felt this piece was typical of what I might encounter in the classroom – a simple choral piece with a basic chordal accompaniment containing lots of suspensions. The following videos (taken in September and December) demonstrate my progression in this piece (excerpt from bars 19-30):
Although far from perfect, there is certainly a noticeable improvement in the fluency of the chordal work, and I feel much more comfortable playing similar accompaniments.
On Placement
I was eager to gain as much experience of using the piano in the classroom as possible whilst on placement. An opportunity to do so arose with my two S2 classes, who were working on a performance of Pirates of the Caribbean as part of their Film Music unit. A class performance should be led by the teacher on the piano, so after some practise, the unit concluded with a full class performance, an example of which was documented by the class teacher:
Although stressful, I really enjoyed the challenge of organising such a performance. I felt comfortable on the piano – the piece itself was not difficult, but in an earlier performance the class teacher suggested I play with more volume to help some of the less confident students keep to the beat. Overall I was pleased with my efforts, although I am aware that accompanying a soloist at National 5 level or above will be require further development of my skills.
A situation that I did find particularly challenging was when I was tasked with leading an S1 class in Scottish singing for a St Andrew’s Day workshop. I was able to sing and play the piece on piano moderately well, when it came to teaching the students the song (Skyscraper Wean) and then ensuring they were singing along, I found it very difficult to find a balance between multi-tasking the elements involved: singing, playing, teaching the words, checking the students were singing, encouraging them to sing louder… The class teacher made this all seem effortless, so if anything I was glad to see how much work is required in this area.
Christopher's CPS 