hopscotch and hanon
Enthusiasm sometimes present well meaning messages heavily.
I’ve experienced this in friends just beginning a new hobby (obsession), rooting for their favorite team (do not dare to choose any other team), or finding Jesus for the first time or upmteenth time. In their shoes, they are dedicated and excited whereas to others, they are a tad bit out of control in their enthusiasm.
A colleague called me to say his student’s sister was interested in piano lessons, that she wasn’t a beginner, was a committed learner and was anxious to meet me. A meeting was arranged and her enthusiasm was easy for any teacher to love. She loves reading new music, is attentive to sensing her false notes and also speaks confidently. I was just as excited as she was to begin our piano lesson time together.
By her second week, I noticed that although her reading and playing time through a piece was improving, her attack of the notes were a bit intense. She is an enthusiastic young person with loads of energy.
How to support her personality and yet grow her sensitivity using the power of her enthusiasm was my fun puzzle.
She was playing an arrangement of “Alouette” like a bombastic march with its running streaks of sixteenth notes roaring and stumbling into melody.
JNET: “What’s the loudest you can play this phrase? I want to know the color of your fortissimo.”
If you can imagine giving a child the freedom to scream their biggest scream, then you can imagine the enthusiasm my student played to demonstrate as her BLASTISSIMO.
JNET: “Very good. Now I want to hear your different shades lighter now of that loudness. Like a crayon box, I want to know your fancy colors.”
D attacks her notes with her mind more and less with finger pressure now.
D: “This piece is exciting and fun.”
JNET: “But what kind of exciting and fun is what we need to communicate. Its a childrens song so we know we cannot be too strong or its a bully theme song.”
Her playing has transformed with the images we came up together to paint the picture of her piece in a short period. Staccatos have turned playful and lighter after thinking of hopscotch. And that flurry of sixteenth notes that formally got trampled on has become her rainbow of notes that flash across in sparkling articulate colors. Its really fun to hear her play and express herself.
Her enthusiasm doesn’t express itself heavy-handed no longer but rather clearer, sensitively and ON PURPOSE.
Sometimes, I think about leaving teaching, romanticizing over a more jetsetting lifestyle of salary and high heels. But listening how my students grow each week and puzzling over how to take them to a different level fascinates me so. So here’s to hopscotch and hanon.
JNET
