The ABCs of music study can provide a foundation for a lifetime of success
The study of music is one of life’s greatest gifts. This much I know from my own experiences. Music study at a young age can instill a lifelong interest and appreciation of music. Some young music students pursue a life and career in music. Many progress to wonderful and impressive proficiency, studying music throughout their school years, but moving in a different direction for their life’s work. Many more study music for a limited time, often with their parents’ encouragement, and then decide they would prefer to do other things with their busy young lives. I believe lots of those in the last category regret their youthful decision to “quit” music lessons, as evidenced by the many, many people that have shared with me their regret in not continuing with their music studies for longer than they did. Regardless of the type of music student, everyone can benefit from learning the ABCs of music study:
- Good hand position
- How to best read music
- Understanding note values and counting—counting out loud and using a metronome
- Understanding musical instructions written in a different language
- Correct fingerings and (on the harp) placing
- Discipline
My music studies began when I was 6 years old. I started on the piano, which is really the most easily understood and visually accessible of music instruments. (You can literally see a scale on a piano keyboard.) I did not see a harp until I went to the National Music Camp at Interlochen, Michigan, when I was 14. Regardless of what instrument a student is studying, I know some basic truths.
The first years of music study are extremely important in the growth of a young musician. What you learn at a young age, or when you first start the study of music, will most likely be retained all of your life. I am referring to such elementary subjects as what a time signature means, what a key signature means, understanding note values, and the importance of counting aloud. Carlos Salzedo, in his Method for the Harp, stresses the importance of the “beginner always counting aloud and energetically.”
I was very fortunate in having as my first music teacher a very strict, but wonderful piano teacher. I grew up on a farm near the small town of Marceline, Missouri. There were about three piano teachers in town. One lady was very popular and taught the majority of the students. I was extremely lucky to have the “unpopular” teacher. Her name was Mary Hanson. Right from our first lesson, she taught me the importance of counting aloud, the basics of theory, and good hand position and finger action. She also encouraged discipline in my practice. Without Mrs. Hanson insisting that I learn the basics of music, I doubt that I would have been able to have a successful career doing what I love. I started harp at the age of 15 when I was at Interlochen Music Camp and the Interlochen Arts Academy for my last two years of high school. My strong early music training and my great harp teachers enabled me to have a job six years later as principal harpist of the Indianapolis Symphony. I had two remarkable harp teachers, both former students of Carlos Salzedo. Elisa Smith Dickon at the Interlochen Arts Academy stressed a good hand position, following Salzedo’s fingerings, and careful and methodical practice. She guided me to Alice Chalifoux, my teacher at Cleveland Institute of Music, and my teacher for life. Miss Chalifoux stressed a good hand position, finger action, counting aloud, and practicing with a metronome. All of these things were very basic and practical teaching. Only after mastering all of these basic ABCs were we able to work on the finer points of music—phrasing, subtleties of nuances, general musicality—the things you need to practice in order to be able to express yourself freely in a performance.
In my years of teaching and coaching harpists—some of them quite accomplished—I can share that a surprising number of them do not know the basics of music. Many years ago I had a new harpist who I was just starting to work with in my role as a coach for the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. She was a very accomplished harpist with impressive facility and a seeming knowledge of music. Going over her orchestra music, she was struggling with the rhythm, though it was not a complicated rhythm at all. I was perplexed by her inability to understand what I was telling her about quarter notes and eighth notes, so I asked her, “How many eighth notes are in a quarter note?” To my astonishment she replied, “I don’t know.” I was incredulous that this young, obviously gifted student, who had played the harp for quite a number of years, had no idea or understanding of rhythm. I often wonder how much farther she could have gone in her musical life if only she had learned the basic ABCs early on.
Another basic, but valuable, tool I was taught to use early on by my first piano teacher was the metronome. Once again, very accomplished harp students will be able to play a difficult piece rather rapidly, but struggle greatly to play it slowly with a metronome. Naturally, if the student is playing it superbly I wouldn’t ask them to slow it down and use a metronome. But hearing slight rhythmic inconsistencies, I will request that they do this exercise. Using a metronome in a methodical way helps students solidify and understand the rhythm, and to keep it steady. Slow practice with a metronome is invaluable in mastering rhythm, especially when the metronome is subdividing the beat. For instance, in a 4/4 meter in slow practice, the metronome would beat eighth notes, or occasionally even 16th notes, not quarter notes. Subdivision is a magical way to understand how music is put together. (To say that it is useful for an orchestra harpist is an understatement.) Counting aloud while using the metronome is even more helpful, as the student hears with verbal cues where the beats fall, thus building even more understanding of how the music is put together. Naturally, after you progress to having a strong rhythmic foundation for the particular music you are working on, the metronome should be turned off, as music has to breathe to be alive.
Another basic tenet of learning music is the act of reading the music. A young student learns to read music much as young children learn how to read books. It will become second nature. The younger that you are when you first learn to read books or music, the easier and more natural it becomes. When students do not learn to read music early on, I find that they sometimes do not read it in what I understand to be a correct and easily assimilated way. For instance, when reading blocked chords, it is very helpful to read the chord from the bottom up. When a student struggles in identifying the notes that they are trying to play in a chord, I invariably discover that they are reading the chord from the top down. Starting at the bottom helps immediately identify what the chord is. The top of a chord can often include a melody line that blurs the structure of the chord, thus slowing down the student’s comprehension of what the chord is. And of course, the foundation of anything is always the point from which you start to build.
I share these basic ABCs of music as a simple and fail-safe way for students to develop a basic understanding of how to learn music. It is only the foundation. What is built upon a firmly established foundation is up to the talents and desires of each student. •
