ABA Style Piano Lessons

Transcription

1 The Young Method Innovative Piano, Inc. By Jeffrey Young Book 6 ABA Style Piano Lessons Innovative Piano Inc.

2 Book 6 Balloons...23 Ode to Joy Exercise 3 (Playing with Both Hands) O Where, O Where? Hopping First letter only Spinning Clementine 3mpp...37 Row Your Boat Yankee Doodle Sand Castles Alouette Up and Down...44 Aura Lee Riding...46 Exercise 4 (Playing with Both Hands) Twinkle, Twinkle Tisket Song Ring, Ring London Bridge... 54

3 Produced and Distributed by: Innovative Piano, Inc Westbrooke Dr. Salisbury, MD Patent Pending All rights reserved. Excluding data sheets, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

4 Teacher s Syllabus *This section is intended to be removed by the teacher for assistance in lesson planning with Book 6 1) Some professionals using these manuals will notice the use of a different system of introduction and fading of various prompts. While it is unlikely that the order and speed at which fingering numbers and note letters are faded here will be ideal for every student with special needs, I feel that these manuals have been written to include all students. With that spirit in mind, songs in Book 6 will include more or less of these prompts. To a large extent, you will find the difficulty of the song determines how many or how few of these prompts are included. Balloons (pg 23) and Ode to Joy (pg 24) represent two familiar and less difficult pieces and therefore less prompts are included. 2) One of the main goals of Book 6 is to have your student begin to play with both hands. The two exercises found on pages 25 and 47 are meant to help break-up Bass and Treble Clef songs so the student can be successful. O Where, O Where? (pg 30) is a less demanding song that puts these skills to the test. Students will stay in Treble Clef C Position and Bass Clef E Position for the entirety of this piece. 3) On page 37 the song Clementine is another less challenging two handed piece. It includes eighth notes which are an optional element to cover. Students doing well with the concept of timing may be good candidates to cover this with. Sand Castles (pg 41) has a hand position exercise you can challenge your student with. If the have difficulty immediately recognizing the correct position, have them place their corresponding finger on the key shown and direct them to the read the key that their thumb is on. This number one fingering key always tells us the current position letter. 4) In our next song, Alouette (pg 43), students stay in the C Position in both Treble and Bass Clefs. The previous rule about eighth notes applies here as well. On page 47 you will find the slightly harder two hand exercise we spoke of earlier. This version of Twinkle, Twinkle (pg 50) is a Treble Clef song that shifts from C to which position? See if your student picks up this little discrepancy and be sure to change the F to the correct D position. 5) The song Ring, Ring (pg 53) is more of an exercise in fingering and critical thinking. Have the student fill in the correct fingering number for each note listed. Our final piece, London Bridge (pg 54) begins in the D Position and changes to the E Position right before the end. We are introducing the sharp here as well. Sharps have all been clearly marked and this should be a familiar enough song for the student to pick up the dissident F natural if it is played. The Young Method Innovative Piano, Inc. 2009

5 otes *This book represents a step in a series of piano instruction material which is individualized to the student s performance based on several factors. Using this or any other book in The Young Method series without properly addressing these factors through Innovative Piano, Inc. can be counterproductive to the student s progress and is not recommended. Any behavioral modification suggested in this manual should be reviewed by the student s behavioral professional before inclusion.

6 Introduction Welcome to Book 6 of The Young Method piano instruction system. Congratulations on all your hard work and dedication! Starting with Book 6 we are beginning the process of completely fading the previous prompts introduced in Books 1 through 5. The goal of The Young Method system is to help students transition into playing typical style piano instruction material. I have found that after students complete the seven books in this system, they are prepared for any early typical piano instruction books. It may be that they are even ahead of the game when starting certain instruction series! Keeping this in mind, while students may be playing sheet music at a level comparable or even surpassing the relative level of instruction they are currently using, it is imperative to pay close attention to any special requirements they may still have. These may include; behavioral challenges, a reinforcement system that attends to their specific needs, satiation issues, environmental issues, and/or a continued individualized lesson plan. In other words, even though they are doing very well at the piano, continue to pay close attention to their special needs. You will notice that all songs in this book now include sporadic note letters and fingering numbers on the pages. The first note of each song will always have fingering numbers and the letters in the notes to act as a guide. This will increase the difficulty of each song, so adjust your reinforcement levels as needed. Since the act of playing with both hands and playing Bass Clef notes are still relatively new, you will see more prompts when these techniques are required. Book 7 will be requiring your student to play songs with only the first note revealed as a guide, so make sure that they are comfortable here (Book 6) before moving on. Remember, if your student has challenges playing the notes without the letter prompts, use the boards or flashcards included with the manuals to help them. If fingering seems to be tricky for them, you can focus more on hand positioning. To help students play new, fun, and familiar songs in this book, certain songs make use of different hand positions during play. Whenever there is a change in hand position there will be multiple prompts provided to help the student be successful. First, look for an initial position indicator directly above the first note of the song. This tells you that the student s fingers will stay above C, D, E, F and G until otherwise indicated. If there is a change in position in the song, it will always be made clear by a fingering number and will have a written description here as well (see below).

7 There are many ways to teach these shifts when helping your student. I find that you should focus on whatever they are most comfortable with. If they are proficient at using the correct fingering, bring their attention to the fingering number over the note indicating a new position. This should help them realize there has been a change since it would be impossible to play an F note with your third finger in the C position. Using the example above, once they use their third finger to play the F key, their other fingers should naturally fall into place (entering the D position). If they are super note readers, consider helping them recognize the shift, and then create a pattern with their fingers covering the D, E, F, G and A keys. Either way will work fine; just try to avoid verbally prompting them to shift since we have all of these prompts on the page to help them out. Another new area we will cover in this book is the introduction of the Grand Staff. Notes can now be listed on the Treble Clef or the Bass Clef. What you see in the Bass Clef of the example below is called a whole rest because it takes up the whole measure. All it means is that the student s Bass Clef hand will rest on the keys (not on their lap), waiting to play. You may see other types of rests in this manual but we will not address them here. In effect, you will be helping your student realize that they will only play when there are notes and they will play the first note listed from left to right. To further illustrate this point, let s look at this example in the measures below. The Bass Clef hand plays first (1) followed by the Treble Clef G s (2) and then the Bass Clef G s (3). I find it unnecessary at this point to teach our students to focus on learning each rest and their mathematical beat value. With simple prompting (i.e. pointing, modeling playing the notes correctly) on your part, your student should quickly learn when one hand plays and the other rests.

8 2 1 3 It should also be noted that we have included eighth notes in some of the songs in this book. Here again, I do not recommend teaching the intricacies of timing, beats or time signatures at this point, therefore the eighth notes should be played just like the previous notes. The goal of this series is not to fully prepare your student for independent playing. Rather, it is to introduce the basics in a way that will help most students be successful and possibly continue on to further, typical style instruction. Even so, I have had the delight of teaching students with special needs that continued to require the prompts included with this style of teaching, and they performed very well. The continuation of your student s piano education will be further explored in the seventh and last book in this series. The last new concept we will introduce here is a sharp or # symbol. This concept will be explored further in the next book as well. In the last song in Book 6, London Bridge, your student will be playing an F sharp in the Treble Clef. Sharps indicate a half step up in pitch which translates into a half step up on the piano keys. The image below depicts a simplified version of this concept, which serves our purpose when first looking into sharps. Our F# in London Bridge would be the black key directly to the right (up) from the white F key. Since this song is so well known, playing a natural (white) F instead of the F# will provide an instantly recognizable error. Explain the F# to your student, model playing it, and if this fails, simply prompt your student s wrist toward the back of the piano when it s time to play the sharp key to help them play the correct note. After a few trials of this, try pointing to the sharp note and not physically prompting him. This way we can quickly fade out that prompt.

9 Data Data sheets have been included with this book but I recommend teachers use discretion when deciding when and if to use them from this point forward. For some students, it will advantageous to use a more typical style of critiquing their performance which is used by most typical piano teachers. This should be done by looking at the overall performance and determining if; the student has executed the desired request, whether they have mastered or feel comfortable with key factors such as playing the Bass Clef and whether the song sounds appropriate. Using this method can be much more effective than requiring each student to play every note and phrase correctly and tends to lead them away from mechanical type playing. That being said, data sheets are still included and can be converted into the more typical style of evaluation by rating each piece on a ten point scale. Both styles are included in Book 6. Date: Song: Book Level: Measurement: Overall song rating +/ X Total Correct: Out of Total Notes: %