NOTE:
AT THE PRESENT TIME, MY SCHEDULE IS
FULL AND I AM NOT ACCEPTING BEGINNER
PIANO STUDENTS. The following
information is still on my web site to
give parents some idea of what they
should be seeking and demanding from
their children's piano teachers, and
to give piano teachers some
information that they should
introspectively ponder and seriously
consider.
MISSION:
I
give people the knowledge and skills they need
to enjoy piano throughout their lives.
BELIEFS:
1. I believe learning piano can be fun, and
that students learn faster when they are having fun.
2. I respect students' time.
I believe practice time is a finite, scarce, and
valuable resource that should be used efficiently and
effectively to bring fast results.
3. I believe ear training
and learning to read a chord
chart are equally as important as learning to
read sheet music. I think it's ridiculous that
keyboard players who join a rock band can't play by ear
like the guitarist, bass player, and drummer do. I
believe it's a travesty that high school jazz bands
can't find a pianist who can read a chord chart. I
think it's a shame that most accomplished pianists can't
transpose a key signature or improvise on a hymn or play
an original solo line in a song.
4. I believe in customizing
the learning experience to accommodate the musical
interests and tastes of each individual student.
PHILOSOPHY:
Students should enjoy the time they
spend practicing. Students should be taught
songs they like, and should get results fast. When
students are learning songs they have heard before, that
they like, and are able to play big sounding pieces
relatively soon after starting lessons, and when they
receive "ooo's and aahh's" when they play for other people,
they are likely to keep working and improving.
Piano lessons should impart not only the skills to read
classical music, but also the broader musical skill set that
turns them into well rounded
musicians. Students should be given the
knowledge and skills needed to be able to play any genre
that attracts their fancy later in life, whether
professionally or just for fun.
For many students, traditional piano
lessons have some serious drawbacks. The sad
truth is: the vast majority of beginners, who start taking
piano lessons with excitement and anticipation, quit within
a few months or years. Ask them why, and they will say
they hate practicing. Dig deeper and you will learn
they are frustrated because progress is slow, the material
seems hard, they don't like the songs they are learning, and
they feel stifled.
The way traditional piano lessons are taught is not the way human beings naturally learn.
Think about how babies learn to speak. They imitate
what they hear. In other words, they first learn to
speak "by ear." We don't insist that children read
first before they speak. Can you imagine a parent
saying to a one-year-old child, "Quit copying me! You
should only say the words that are in books, exactly as
written!" So why do piano teachers abuse piano
students in this way? That is exactly what they are
doing when they say to students, "Stop playing by ear!
Read the notes on the page!" It's unnatural.
Worse,
traditional lessons systematically drain the creativity out of
students, by teaching them that there is
only one right way to play a song, and that is to
reproduce exactly what is on the printed sheet
music, note for note, precisely the same way it is
played by every other piano student in the
country. Any change to what is written is
called a "mistake". For most styles of music
(including pop, rock, jazz, blues, country,
gospel, etc.), that's just plain silly.
All students should learn
to read music. But students should also be allowed and
encouraged to use all of their senses
-- including their ears -- and all of their brains,
to learn. By forbidding students to play by ear,
traditional lessons figuratively tie one hand behind
students' backs.
Here's a secret that most piano teachers won't tell
you: At the early stages of learning
piano, learning a song by ear is usually faster and
more fun than is learning the same song from the
printed music. (Actually,
to be fair, most piano teachers don't even know this
secret, because they were trained using the same
system/paradigm they are teaching, and thus don't know
how to play by ear.)
METHOD:
Rather
than teaching to only read music, I teach to read music AND play by ear AND read chord charts. I
customize the repertoire
to the interests and tastes of each individual
student, so the student can play
big sounding pieces with which they are familiar and that
they like. I teach all aspects of music theory, including chord
theory. And I emphasize proper
technique but minimize boring scales and exercises.
MATERIALS:
Most people understand the importance of picking a good
teacher (personable, frequent positive feedback, kind but
clear negative feedback, a fun and engaging learning
atmosphere, and instructor enthusiasm for the topic).
Less well understood is the importance of curriculum
(logical topic sequencing, clear terminology, topic
integration, etc.). Unfortunately, traditional piano
books do a horrible job on these aspects of learning.
Technique, theory, reading, and repertoire are "stove piped"
as separate topics that don't relate to each other.
Terminology is confusing and memorization aids (such as
Every Good Boy Does Fine) are not intuitive.
My favorite teaching materials
for beginner piano students, published
by the MusicMasterTM
Group out of Salt Lake City, overcome these
problems. MusicMasterTM
books have better topic sequencing
and better ways of explaining things for easier and faster
understanding than any other piano method I have seen.
For example, they employ a visual "landmark" technique for
reading notes on the Grand Staff that is extremely
effective. MusicMasterTM
books are
also more comprehensive and
teach important parts of theory that are skipped, glossed
over, or postponed in other books. I especially like
that the books teach chord theory
and include songs with chord charts, in addition to
traditional music script. Finally, MusicMasterTM
books skip the boring "three froggies in a puddle" type
songs in their elementary music reading repertoire in favor
of more familiar folk songs and classical melodies that students
enjoy playing.
RESULTS:
Most of my beginning students
progress in music reading at about the same pace as their
peers who are taking traditional piano lessons. But my
students are typically 2-3 years ahead of "schedule" on
difficulty and quantity of songs in their performance
repertoires. This rapid progress increases self esteem
and joy of playing piano.
Like any other endeavor in life, results vary depending on
1) students' natural talent and 2) their interest, effort,
and practice time. The first is not controllable, but
the second is. Because of the way I teach and the
rapid progress that results from it, many of my young
students gravitate to the piano. Most parents
typically don't have to beg, bribe, or scold to get their
children to practice. Adult students lose track of
time while practicing.
INSTRUCTOR:
Dr.
Irv Nelson has 50 years of piano playing
experience. I play all types of keyboard
instruments, including piano, electric piano,
electric organ, synthesizer, sampler, and pipe
organ. I can read music and also play by ear
(I can play just about any contemporary song after
hearing it once or twice... even when
hearing a song for the first time I can often play
along with the record with 90% accuracy after
hearing just the first two chords.) My
musical experience spans a wide variety of musical
styles, including classical, musical theater,
sacred, and rock. I have been an organist in
my church for 40 years and have written a book for
pianists about how to play the pipe organ.
In addition to keyboards, I play acoustic guitar,
electric guitar and bass guitar, and I played
viola (many years ago!) in high school. I am
a tenor vocalist who has performed with many bands
and in many choirs, as well as on stage as an
actor. I am also a choral conductor. I
have played keyboards in bands for nearly 40 years
and am currently a member of The Fender
Benders classic rock band, Relic
Acoustic Band, and Cristina & Irv
vocal/piano duo. I also fill in with many
other artists and groups on occasion, including
Brandon & Kenzie Lee's concert group. I
am a composer and arranger, whose choral
arrangements have been performed by the USU
Chorale and Chamber Singers, as well as other
prestigious soloists and choirs around the
world. My hymn compositions and arrangements
have received widespread acclaim and are available
for free download at IrvNelsonMusic.com.
I have studied music theory, vocal pedagogy, and
choral conducting, as well as educational
psychology, at the university level. I hold
a Ph.D. and have many years of teaching experience
in a variety of settings. I have published
peer-reviewed, academic articles on how students
learn and how to structure the learning
environment to help them learn better. I
love music and I love teaching, and I couldn't
tell you which of the two is my greatest talent or
which I love more.
Testimonials
from students and parents
FAQ:
Q: Is this Suzuki?
A: Absolutely not! I
teach my students to
read music, right from the
start. In fact, beginning students learn
to read four octaves, from C2 to C6 (four
notes above the treble staff and four notes
below the bass staff) within a few months.
I once had a Suzuki
student's mother say to me "My daughter doesn't need
to read music. You don't need to read in order
to talk, so why do you need to read music to play
piano?" Although I agreed with her that playing
by ear is a good and natural thing, I also told her
that illiteracy is just as much a disadvantage in
music as it is in language. My
students concurrently learn to both play by ear AND to
read music.
Q: Do you teach theory?
A. Yes! I do a more comprehensive job on music
theory than do most traditional courses. Intervals,
chords, key signatures, and rhythms receive particular
attention, because they are the building blocks of being
able to improvise. Students who have been with me
twelve months typically know significantly more about
music theory than do most third-year students in
traditional piano courses.
Q: What about technique?
A: I teach correct technique, including hand position,
fingering, and finger strengthening, although I minimize
time spent on tedious scales and exercises.
Q: Why do you hate traditional piano teachers?
A: I don't. I love them! Most of them are
wonderful, caring, talented professionals. In fact,
this valley is very fortunate to have some of the best
classical piano teachers, and one of the best university
piano degrees, in the country.
What I have issues with is the over-100-year-old paradigm
they are stuck in. It doesn't matter whether they
are using Bastien, Alfred, Music Tree, Faber and Faber, or
or even the old Thompson and Schaum books from which I was
taught as a child. The differences between them are
negligible; they all suffer from the same deficiencies:
- Insistence on only
reading note for note and never improvising or
composing
- Refusal to allow students
to use their ears and minds to help them learn and
play music (only eyes are allowed!)
- "Stove
piping" of topics (theory vs. sight reading vs.
technique are all separate things)
- Ignoring
many important aspects of music theory
- Pressuring students to
prepare for recitals and competitions where they will
be judged against others
- Mono-genre
focus on classical pieces, ignoring students' desires
to play popular music
- A weeding out process
where students who are the most "right-brained" and
thus struggle with the technical aspects of music
reading and piano playing get frustrated and quit, resulting in the most creative minds
with the highest potential to become the best
composers and performers getting flushed out
The
entire system is completely out of touch with today's
Millennial students. Anyone familiar with the social
characteristics of Generation X, Generation Y, and
Millennials could predict that each successive generation
would increasingly grate against the rigid structure, the
lack of individual expression, and the one-way-to-do-it
mentality of nearly all piano methods. It should
come as no surprise, then, that fewer and fewer children
are taking piano lessons, and also that so many of them
who do start piano lessons last only a few months or
years. The reasons are obvious to everyone... except
piano teachers. The paradigm
and the culture are dysfunctional and antiquated.
It is tragic that so many talented children quit piano and
move to guitar and other instruments that allow them to
explore the creativity and the musical genres that they
crave. It's a shame, and it's unnecessary.
There is a better way.
If you want to become a concert pianist and play Grieg,
Shostakovich, Chopin, and Beethoven with symphony
orchestras and compete in national piano competitions, and
that's all you want to do, the traditional approach to
piano lessons will work very well for you. On the
other hand, if you want to play Alicia Keys, Bruno Mars,
Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie, Billy Joel, Elton John,
Carole King, Etta James, etc... or if you want to play
jazz or blues or rock or country... or if you want to
create your own arrangements... or if you want to compose
your own songs... traditional piano lessons do none of
those things well. In fact, in many ways,
traditional piano lessons are antithetical to such piano
goals, and in some cases they actually do damage.
Q: I've never heard of the MusicMasterTM
books. How did you find them?
A: Through the years, I always
thought, “There has to be a better method to teach
piano.” Finally, I found it. I first
discovered this system ten years ago when I saw my 7 year
old nephew, who had been taking lessons for less than one
year, playing songs like Chariots of Fire, Harry Potter,
Pink Panther, Star Wars, Mission Impossible, Book of
Mormon Stories, Fur Elise and so on. If that wasn't
astonishing enough, he could name and play all the notes
on the grand staff and several lines above and below it,
without hesitation. I was even more impressed with
his knowledge of music theory. The child was
extremely excited about practicing piano, and his parents'
biggest complaint was that they couldn't get the kid off
the piano to do homework or to go to bed. This
contrasted with his older brother, whose piano experience
years before had been characterized by his parents using
threats, force, bribes, begging, and nagging to get him to
practice.
I met with my nephew's piano teacher, the late Roger S.
Lewis of Holladay, Utah, and found a kindred spirit.
He was a master teacher who spent the better part of his
life developing a system for teaching piano that combines
a brilliantly sequenced curriculum and innovative pedagogy
with many of the same concepts I had developed on my own
to teach students to play by ear. The result was a
system that helps students learn more, faster, and have
more fun. I was so impressed. (Piano teachers:
You can read more about it and order materials at https://www.themusicmastergroup.com/.)
Q: How should I choose a piano teacher?
A: When selecting a teacher, there
are only three relevant questions: 1) How much does this
person know about the specific thing I want to learn? 2) How
good of a teacher is he or she? And 3) Does his or her
curriculum and pedagogy get good results quickly?
Credentials may give some indication of these three
questions, but they are not foolproof. If you want to
know how good someone is at teaching piano, don't ask what
degrees are on their wall; rather, fist meet with the teacher and ask a lot of
questions, then talk to current students and ask even more
questions. Ask current students to play a song on
the piano for you and ask how many months or years it took
to get to that level of proficiency. Finally,
if possible, talk to former students
and ask about their experiences and the reasons why they
quit.
PRACTICING (for parents
of minor students)
PRACTICING (for adult
students)
SELECTING A GOOD PIANO
IRV'S
STORY
CONTACT ME
IRV NELSON MUSIC ACADEMY HOME PAGE