Episode Overview

In Episode 8 of the Piano Pedagogy Podcast, Arianne and Jackie have an in-depth discussion about phrasing and how to teach it. They discuss how piano teachers may teach phrasing most effectively, when it is appropriate to introduce the concept of phrasing in a student’s journey, how the teaching of gesture may differ according to the age and level of the student, and what kinds of explanations, analogies, and pedagogical tricks to use in teaching good phrasing. They share philosophical musings about the relationship between gesture, physics, kinesiology, and even the world of film and animation, as well as concepts from educational psychology, helpful instructional apps, and personal trials and tribulations from their own experience with gesture as piano students and teachers. Join them as they hash it out!

Watch it on Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcasting app.

Episode Notes

Introduction to Phrasing

• Defining Phrasing: Discussion on the essential concept of phrasing in piano pedagogy, highlighting its significance for pianists and the challenges it presents due to the piano's unique characteristics. 
• Early Introduction: The importance of introducing phrasing early in a student's learning process, with various methods for different ages and levels.

Teaching Strategies and Concepts

• Techniques and Tools: Strategies for teaching phrasing, including demonstration, explanation, and the use of analogies and educational tools.
• Understanding Through Analogy: The effectiveness of analogies in teaching complex concepts related to phrasing, like the use of physics to explain dynamics and the impact of gesture on sound production. 
• Student Agency and Interpretation: Encouraging student independence through choices in phrasing and interpretation, and the role of creativity in the learning process. 
• Age-Appropriate Methods: Adjusting teaching methods based on the student's age and maturity, with specific techniques for engaging young learners versus adult students.

Talking About Technique

• Bloom's Taxonomy and Learning: Applying Bloom's Taxonomy to the teaching of phrasing, stressing the importance of moving from basic comprehension to creative application.
• Gesture and Physicality: Discussion on the significance of physical gesture in achieving effective phrasing, and the integration of kinesiology and physics into teaching.
• Learning from Teaching: Insights gained from teaching experiences, emphasizing the continual learning process for teachers in refining their pedagogical approaches.
• Adapting and Evolving Methods: The necessity of adapting teaching methods based on student feedback and evolving pedagogical research.

Episode Recap

This episode delves deep into the art of teaching phrasing in piano pedagogy, bridging
theoretical knowledge with practical teaching strategies. The hosts explore the multidimensional aspect of phrasing, encompassing technical skill, emotional expression, and theoretical understanding. They discuss the importance of early introduction, student agency, and the use of technology and creative assignments to reinforce learning. The conversation highlights the nuanced approaches required for different age groups and the integration of concepts from educational psychology, physics, and kinesiology to enhance teaching effectiveness. 

Show Transcript Jacqueline: Alright, welcome back to another episode of the piano pedagogy podcast, I'm Jacqueline Beckoff. I own a successful music studio in Southern California as well as Defined Music Teacher. With me, as always, is Arianne Lakra. She is also the owner of a successful music studio in Southern California. What's been going on in your studio lately, Arianne?

Arianne: Oh, you know, I'm just planning the recital for now. It’s gonna be June first. I thought it would be in May but we switched to June. It's going to be at a nice college chapel. I'm very excited, and we're just trying to figure out what each student is going to work on for the recital at this stage, also getting the word out.

Jacqueline: Yeah, I think that's great. You know, setting up independent recitals is such an awesome milestone, you know, because you have control over everything. Right? And that's such a that's such a huge thing for you. That's great. I'm also getting ready for my recital. My recital is in a few weeks. It's on April twentieth. I didn't realize that it was going to be on the fourth month of the year, on the twentieth day of that month, if you get what I mean. But it is on April 20th, and my students are getting ready. All of our workshops for this month are over, so that means that the next workshops on the thirty first, the seventh, or the eighth, maybe, and then the date week. After that we're gonna be doing our mock recitals. Which is super super exciting. Yeah. But other than that, not not too much going on in in my in my studio I had another  and a half year old reach out and

Jacqueline: I don't want to teach a 3 and a half year old. So I said…in a year and a half. You know that  year mark is where I'm comfortable with. I used to do…I tried once, I should say I tried once to do music lessons for for babies from the ages of to like ; I hated the experience. It was the worst thing I have ever done. It is all of the least. It’s all of my personal, least favorite things about music teaching, with none of the the fun stuff like phrasing. By the way, our topic is phrasing today. So phrasing, you know, what an important concept for pianists because we are at such a disability on our instrument for phrasing specifically compared to wind instruments and stringed instruments. And I think that's so interesting because our piano, the piano was so much more versatile in so many ways. But, you know, sustaining a note is our one weakness, right?

Arianne: Yeah. You know, with phrasing. One would think that because the piano is literally named after the fact that it can be louder and softer—piano forte, you know, fortepiano, pianoforte—that phrasing would be a cinch on piano, and in ways it can be as long as you have pretty solid technique and lots and lots of experience, knowing how to phrase things as a student. So as music educators, piano educators, it's our job to kind of help build that sense of what phrasing works, what might not, you know, build that sense of what balance between the hands sounds like, what articulation is what it means to express dynamics in a way that's a little bit more involved than just the loud and the soft of it.

Jacqueline: Yeah, it's so interesting. I always like to explain that that little fact to to students when I first introduced them to piano and forte, that it's literally where the name of our instrument came from. But it is definitely not an easy task, you know, and it certainly requires developing an ear for things right. You have to have a strong musicianship element to be able to listen to the decay of notes, to be able to handle phrasing. What's the earliest you've ever introduced a student to phrasing like, what's the youngest you've ever introduced a student to phrasing?

Arianne: Oh, It's possible to start it off immediately, even with a kindergartner they get it. Even if you can't explain it totally in verbal terms, if you demonstrate it and you model it, I think any student can kind of catch your drift.

Jacqueline: Gotcha. Yeah, you know, II think that I'm I'm perhaps too heavy on the explanation part of things. But I so I certainly don't introduce them until they've learned legato because in that whole primer first book that I use. It's all I don't ever talk about articulations until the very last chapter, when I'm

Jacqueline: starting the preparation stage learning for what's coming in the next book? But I focus basically on dynamics. And don't talk about articulations. And there really is no balance between the hands to speak of at that stage, cause they're not playing hands together from the music that is in the book. But I think that maybe I should try to lean less on the the explanation side of things, and and try to be more—What's the word—demonstration based. But I want my students to be able to understand the principle behind what they're doing, you know. So I think the first time I introduce phrasing is when they're in the First level of the for kids in the level. On piano adventures they introduce the slur, and they introduce a technique gesture called the wrist float off. Are you familiar with the wrist float off? And then I just give a simple rule at that point. The last note of a slur, unless we're told otherwise, should be the softest note of the slur. I think that's the most basic way I'm able to explain phrasing. I don't really talk about the nitty gritty of it yet, but with the last note being the softest, it's it's I mean, that's to me the most fundamental part of phrasing the easiest way to introduce it. How do you talk to kindergarteners about it?

Arianne: I use a lot of—what’s the word I’m looking for?—Onomatopoeia. It's kind of like onomatopoeia and gibberish combined into one with a lot of goofy facial expressions. So one thing I do a lot in my lessons, whether we're talking about phrasing or anything else, is that when I want to model something, and I want them to hear it in the original register that the repertoire calls for, I'll have them switch places. Say, you can sit in the teacher's spot. I will sit on the bench, and I'll show you exactly how this needs to be done. And I'll look at them, and let's say that it's a sequence with groups of  notes, staccatos that are going up stepwise, so it's a pattern like CDE. I don't know if that's really a C. I'm sorry for all the people out there with perfect pitch, by the way. But I'm gonna assume this is C,

Arianne: CDE, DEF, EFG. But I won't say the letter names. It'll be like [singing] and and and I'll be looking at them with these crazy eyes and instantly, without saying a word I have conveyed to them that this sequence is growing in intensity and and perhaps volume and they're able to replicate it because I'm gesturing so overtly and almost in this extra kind of way to make it really clear what is wanted.

Jacqueline: Interesting, you know. I think that this is such a fascinating topic, cause it sounds like you and I have very different approaches to it. So I'm I'm loving that we're talking about this. But you know that is such an interesting ear-first approach right? That's such an ear-first approach, and I perhaps should try to modify my approach to be more ear-first. I mostly talk about it when I get into the nitty gritty with that phrasing which is usually with adult students, because they're able to. I I love my adult students because we're able to have those in depth conversations at such an earlier stage in the lessons. II you know, if I had and that you know

Jacqueline: Oh.

Jacqueline: we've talked about how the different age group are are, you know, they're just so different. Right? And I love my teen students. I like some of my younger kids. But I have a hard time getting as invested as I do when I'm speaking with adults because we're able to have those in depth conversations. From such an early stage. I use the concept of energy. I use the concept of energy. That energy needs to be added into the phrase, because long notes inherently lose energy. So we need to add energy as we approach the long note and then, when we we after that long note, the energy is is naturally decreasing, and any notes after that long note need to match the decay of that note. I very much like this energy approach because no one ever taught it to me. I'm not sure where it came from. I think that, you know, after  I finished college in my undergrad and decided not to continue with my Master's degree. There was so much stuff just bouncing around in my head and, you know, having the opportunity to teach it when I had to start teaching phrasing, you know, really in depth, it really forced me to kind of grapple with. How do I translate this into something that someone else can understand? So long notes? There was this, there was this class. I had a professor who no longer works at the college. He moved on. I had that professor. I that professor, and you know exactly who I'm talking about, too. I'm not gonna say his name, but you know exactly who I'm talking about. He was teaching a piano literature class, and the one thing that he has ever said to me that I remember, and because he's a very harsh teacher, you know we we would do our juries, and we would get these jury forms back, and it would be filled with detailed feedback from  out of the  professors, and then he would just be like

Jacqueline: wasn't bad, or needs work and you know, so II don't. I don't like this, Professor, but he said to me, when we were talking about baroque interpretation, he said. Not to the class, he said. That short notes take us to long notes. And I think that that one thing that he said that I've retained helps inform my approach to phrasing, because those short notes build up energy because long notes inherently lose energy. And that is a big part of my approach to the explanation of phrasing. So how do you talk about phrasing with adults?

Arianne: Oh, my gosh! I'm so glad that you brought up that point. That that you learned in that piano literature class, because I remember the I we might have been in the same class.

Jacqueline: Do you remember the day that he yelled at all of us for not knowing enough about the things that it was his job to teach us?

Arianne: Yeah. It was back in my first year of the program. I remember it vividly, and when I had an Aha moment, too, when that professor talked about the fact that smaller notes are leading up to a longer note, and it reminded me of a time when, when I was in boarding school, my other professor mentioned that when you phrase things, try to think of a snowball rolling down a hill, or try to think of the physics of how objects operate in the world according to the laws of physics. And I thought, Oh, my gosh, yeah, totally like, if you have a basketball, and you're just dribbling it, and then you stop dribbling it, and you let it go and do its own thing because of gravity. It starts bouncing high, then a little lower, until it's just dribbling, and then it stops, and you can apply any kinds of things like that, or or like what you were saying was, it reminds me of. When you have lots of small notes, it's like climbing up a hill on a bicycle or a car in a lower gear, you know, but so you have to pedal faster, because you're in a lower gear, and then when you go down the hill. That's the long note. Maybe you need to switch into a higher gear. This is something that in teaching a big schema in your student like an adult student, or or some one who's in their late teens really helps with, because they know the laws of physics, whether whether they're an engineer who's an amateur musician or just someone who's taken a physics class or someone who has lived their life and ridden a bike and played sport, and they know how it works. You can transform someone's playing when you teach them to fish, so to speak, by empowering them with that possibility of thinking of musical phrasing as if it were a physical phenomenon happening in real life.

Jacqueline: Yeah, you know, relating things to students. And this is gonna sound weird. This is something we've talked about in a future episode. Relating things to to students. Real life lived experiences is really valuable, right? Because students of all ages are building a mental model of how the world works right. And a lot of that is, you know.

Jacqueline: they try something and they see what happens right? There's a lot of experimentation involved in that for young children. Adults, as you said, they have a deep understanding of how the laws of physics practically work. They can't explain the laws of physics, most of them, but they they have an understanding of. When you drop something it'll bounce once. It'll bounce twice lower, and then it'll , . It'll get lower and lower, right, as you said, with the basketball, and that ties so nicely into the energy system, the energy, explanation, and the way that I conceive phrasing as being right. And you know, I think that the mountain idea is interesting. But I wonder, do students, because it works on the way up? But like on the way down, they get faster and faster and more energetic. Isn't that kind of like the opposite of what we want them to think.

Jacqueline: Does that ever come up?

Arianne: Sure, I mean it. It depends on what's going on in the piece. Is this an inanimate object? Or could it be maybe

Arianne:  someone, or or or a creature? I mean, if you ever think about, have you ever just watched like really watched Tom and Jerry, the cartoon?

Jacqueline: I know Tom and Jerry, I've seen a few episodes of it, but I don't know if I qualify for someone who's really watched Tom and Jerry.

Arianne: Well, when you listen to the the soundtrack that goes along with the animated characters, and how they run and interact with one another, and their dynamic, the symphony orchestra that plays along with this visual animation is so in tune with what the characters are feeling. They can defy the laws of physics because it's a cartoon. But the music is still so aesthetically, I mean, it's it's so apt to go along with that particular animation that it just calls for you to imagine these different scenarios. So what kind of imagery goes with whatever piece you're playing? I don't think that that's a question that any student of a certain age can fail to answer. Everybody has an imagination, and and if you model a piece for someone, you can always ask them what imagery it evokes, and then have them try to follow that imagery, whether it defies the laws of physics or or not, and if it's a fugue or something something contrapuntal, something classical, with different voices, you could ask, “Who do these voices remind you of when you listen to a recording or a demonstration of your piece.”

Jacqueline: Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm reminded of the word of the term Mickey Mouseing. Have you heard that term before? That's kind of what's happening in Tom and Jerry, right? I love those old, old school animations and old school movies where they're like they're running. Let's make the music sound like it's running right. Let's make it sound like something just broke on screen. Let's make it sound like something just broke in our music. Right? So I love that. First of all, I love that. I think that's really cute. That thought happened. I recall doing
 
Jacqueline: a a composition project years and years ago. It was a cartoon. I don't remember what cartoon. It was an old school cartoon, and it was like a spooky Halloween thing. It was like 5 min long, but the assignment was for the students to write an accompaniment on the piano that goes along with what's happening on screen.

Jacqueline: And you can actually find on the high desert piano, Youtube Page, you can find a playlist filled with a lot of this. I made it a a duet project. Each student was responsible for half of it. And yeah, but regardless, that's off topic. But yeah, physics, right? II like to think you know, this is again off topic. But when I talk about Retardando's with students.

Jacqueline: I tell them that it needs to obey the laws of physics. Right? It needs to make sense right? You can't suddenly be going from this fast speed to a slower one. You're missing all of the in between stuff. And it's the laws of physics, right for adults, I explain. Ritardando is pulling up to a red light in a good way. Right? You're not just driving right up to the red light and then slamming on the brakes. Right? You're supposed to slow down as you get there. And I tell that same analogy with students based off of what their parents do at red lights. But it doesn't hit the same way right? It doesn't. It doesn't hit the same way because they they're not the one in control of that situation. Right? They're not the one in control of that situation. And the worst thing that I find, if it always makes me feel so awkward when I give an analogy to a student, and then they just look at you with those blank eyes, and their their eyes are telling you. I have no idea you're so old. What are you talking about? It's it's awful right? It's it's terrible. But but physics, yeah, I think that that's a great way to think about it. And I also like to think that I also like to explain that phrasing is us hiding the fact that we're just banging on strings with hammers right? Cause at the core. That's what it is with a piano. Right? We're we're we're striking hamm strings with hammers, and that's very different from a violin, from a wind instrument, from stringed instruments, from everything right? It's very different. And I like to call it our, our, our one weakness here, and we need to work to cover that up. Do you all? Do you ever have students sing the phrase as they're trying to play it.
 
Arianne: Oh, yeah, some of them naturally gravitate towards singing the phrase when they're learning it. With others, it takes a bit more coaxing, probably the majority. I have to kind of prompt it first. But as you said in a previous episode, it really helps to just get the students singing from day one so that they know that it's par for the course in piano lessons. And it's pretty effective, because to a certain extent, you know, we all speak so. We all can sing, and we can vocalize. And it's innate. I mean, it. It takes lifetimes of training to become an amazing singer. But, you know.
 
Jacqueline: Yeah, you know, with singing, some people feel really awkward about it. But it is such a helpful thing, because our voice is just…it's so much easier, you know, we do phrasing essentially in every sentence that we speak right. Our voice goes down, it gets softer at the end of a sentence, unless we have an exclamation mark which could also happen in music with an accent or a crescendo, right? So often just getting them to speak it.

And that's why I like that. So many of our method books have words for so many songs, right? So many of our method books. They have words for songs, and I know that some teachers, myself included in the past. You know, they're just like, why are those lyrics there? They're they're useless, right? But students like to sing, and it's so useful to talk about rhythm with those lyrics and use them to help with things like phrasing, right? You teach violin as well, right?

Arianne: I do.

Jacqueline: Do you have any violin students that also take piano?

Arianne: Not of late. But I have in the past.

Jacqueline:  How do they handle musicianship stuff like phrasing, and those kind of things? Do they have an advantage, you think?

Arianne: Oh, yeah, I think there's an advantage. Because any of the skills you learn in violin, you can apply to piano, and vice versa. And okay, not all of the skills, but so many of them are transferable from instrument to instrument. You know we all have linguistic knowledge when we know one language and then our linguistic, our universal grammar and syntax, and all that translates over to when we have to learn another language, kind of in the same way as knowing multiple instruments. But you know what really is my favorite thing. When it comes to phrasing, is when a student has reached the point where they can start to really understand how analysis works like chord analysis, Roman numerals, all that kind of stuff, because then you can begin to notice smaller phrases within other larger overarching phrases. And at that point you can start to predict when to intensify your performance. Based on queues such as when the dominant shows up in a major movement of concert work, you know, or or when the tonic comes back in, when a resolution is there, when you can relax a little bit… Things like that.

Jacqueline: Yeah, you know, the analysis is so important because the other form that I explain phrasing in other than this energy. One is tension and release, right? Which is, I mean, that's a natural thing. And when students lack the understanding to understand which chords they're playing that takes out an entire dimension of their knowledge about their piece. Right? I have some adult students who can play well, but their theoretical knowledge is limited, and sometimes it's a very hard sell for me to teach them music theory. Sometimes they're just not interested in it. They'd much rather just do the playing, and I'm also not the best at managing time. Sometimes I will get very into a particular piece, and I'm gonna wanna focus on that. And then we run out of time and things like. And I'm terrible because of things like techniques, scales, arpeggios, chords, things like music theory. Those are the things that I push to the wayside, if I need to, because it just seems like such an immediate thing. You know we're preparing for a recital. We gotta do this. But that's another conversation. But tension and release is so interesting, right? And one lived experience that I use is I ask students: When something is repeated, when something is repeated, what does that do to our tension level? Right? And the example I give them is reality, TV, right? Reality TV, when we get to the commercial break and we're waiting to see which chef is going to get fired out of cannon because they suck at cooking right? They're always like…and the chef reaction shots, reaction shots that's leaving is reaction shots, reaction shots, commercial break. We come back, and then they're like the chef that's leaving is.  And then they say the chef and we're like, what does that do to our attention level. Right? What does that do when something is repeated over and over again? What does that do? Well, we know as human beings. It can't repeat forever right? We know that reality TV can only jerk us around for so long before they tell us who's going to be gone. So we're waiting for that right? And that's how they get us, because they're like, “come back after the commercial.” Not that I have commercials. I don't watch broadcast TV anymore, but you know. Come back and see who's getting launched out of a cannon. Right? So. I talk about the famous bubble bum bum bum, and my singing is worse than yours. So I know those aren't the notes. And I talk about, you know, that's that's Major. That was the. This wasn't the first time, but it was a big deal that he repeated  notes before going down to a different one. Right? Repeating notes like that wasn't something that was really done. I think that was in some literature class. Maybe maybe that professor I don't like taught me that, too. Then sequenced. Bump, bup, bum, bum, bop, bump, bup, right? That we know that it has to stop at some point right? We know that it has to stop at some point. So when we have something that is being repeated or sequenced, it's building tension, and we should do the same thing with our phrasing right, we should do the same thing with our phrasing, we should
build. And then, when that moment finally ends, and the repeated thing, the sequenced thing whatever that is, that's being rep, you know. That's what's getting repetition. Whenever that breaks. That's the moment when our audience breathes a sigh of relief. And you were mentioning cord analysis. So part of phrasing, I think, is giving our students the tools to understand the types of tension that are naturally building in our piece, whether it's harmonic tension, whether it's motivic tension, whether it's music raising up ascending arpeggios, a per ascending scales, short notes going to long notes. There are lots of different things that we can use to help our students understand phrasing right, and some of them require a good deal of theoretical knowledge. And it's important that they get that theoretical knowledge cause. It's you know. One of my adult students was. She was she or he was, or they, whoever they are. I'm not. I'm not naming names here. The student was working on a very difficult piece. It was, it was one of them, the most difficult piece that she's ever worked on. It was essentially it wasn't an etude. It wasn't explicitly written as an etude, but it was essentially an etude for broken chords and voicing over a lot of left hand stuff. And one of the things that I suggested was that she do the harmonic analysis to announce, analyze the chords because there are so it's so heavily chord based, and then she can make herself a memory map with the chords and then memorize it from there. But we realize she doesn't understand the chords. She has no idea what's going on with the chords, and I think that's a travesty when students can play something. But they can't understand it.

Arianne: Do you know about Bloom's taxonomy, Jackie?
 
Jacqueline: I don't believe so. Wait! Say more
 
Arianne: sounds vaguely familiar. right? I it's my favorite thing to bring up. I think. Our Professor Professor Edwards has heard me bring this up in all of her classes, and she's probably sick of it at this point. I learned about it in school before being a music major. It's a pyramid of how learning works.

Jacqueline: Educational psychology.

Arianne: Yes, it's in educational psychology, and it starts off with application. You apply yourself. You do the thing that you are meant to do. You know, you play the piece. The next level is comprehension. You're comprehending what you're playing. You have a base-level understanding of it. The next part of this triangle, this pyramid, is (okay, wait comprehension, application…) synthesis. Then there's analysis and then evaluation. So once you reach the level where you can evaluate something. You can start to actually add your own thoughts on, you know, if you had composed this, what would you have done differently, if anything, or what was the composer going for? You can truly evaluate it, and like write an essay on it that's effective. But it takes a lot of instructional energy to fight gravity and bring your student up through the rungs of this pyramid through the Bloom's taxonomy. And and it's really not easy, which is why we're we're sort of going off topic here. But I also feel it's relevant to phrasing. Oh, yes! Thank you.

Jacqueline: For those of you watching the video version of this podcast, I have a picture on the screen right now of the triangle and it's remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and then at the very top, it's creating.

Arianne: Yeah, there you go, you know. And so that's Bloom’s Taxonomy. And I see it play out in real time after giving students, say, a note speller, so that they can understand the notes of staff. The next step for me is maybe to do Keith Snell's music theory, or maybe Julie Johnson’s Fundamentals of Keyboard Theory. And then students can start to really get to the point where they can do harmonic analysis. After going through all the chord theory, all the you know circle of fifths. And and what do you call the parts of a scale, tetrachords, all that good stuff. And it takes a lot of work, not always in class work. Lot of homework, self-motivated students, and maybe some enforcement from the parents, some flash cards that family can take up after the lesson, you know, in between lessons. All of this is required to really bolster that student's understanding of any piece.

Jacqueline: Yeah, you know, III think that is so important. Right? That once this, if the student truly knows something when they're able to to create something with the concept right? And that stage is at the very, very top. Right? There was. There was another educational theory.

Jacqueline: that Professor Edwards teaches in her her pedagogy course. About preparation. I don't remember the the whole thing. I know it was preparation stage. And then there's the top one, the the highest level one is, I believe, generalization Taking that knowledge and applying it elsewhere. But knowing that your students understand something is super duper, important, right? And I'll toot my horn a little bit. Here I use an app called flip. It's primarily used by K-12  teachers. And some college teachers use it, too. Where students are able to create their own videos. It's almost like TikTok. It wasn't always like TikTok, but they've changed it to be like Tiktok. You can use filters. You can use text on them. You can do video transitions. It's the whole thing. But my students have a weekly flip assignment, and sometimes it is related to a concept that they maybe learned the previous week, so that they've had a little time to play with it like when a student learns forte and piano. Very basic stuff the next week I'll have them do an assignment where they do a couple of things. They draw it for us on a piece of paper, so that they can show us what it looks like. They tell us what it means, and then they they demonstrate it on their piano, and that's that's the same thing for everything right? I recently taught a student the F major scale, and we know what a pain in the neck the F major scale is for the right hand because of that massive cross under right and I had her record a video explaining the notes of the F major scale, and I had her explain why the F major scale is such a difficult scale for the right hand, and then demonstrate how to use alignment to correct or not to correct, but but handle the difficulty that the F major scale presents. And then, if another student is learning the F major scale and they're struggling a bit, I can then use the video that my first student recorded as a tutorial for the later student to use as a reminder. So I've turned them into little content creators right? Some of them get really into it. Some of them use graphics and they write scripts. I have a student who writes a script for her flip videos. So she knows exactly what she wants to say. But it's taking something that they've learned in lessons, and they're having to teach it to someone else. They're having to create something new with it. Right? They're having to take this concept to break it apart, put it back together and demonstrate it for somebody, on a video and the it's it serves a dual function, because not only is it with new concepts, but if I notice that a student is struggling with a concept that they've previously learned like articulations or or staccato, or I had a student that forget forget the difference between a tie and a a slur
and I don't. I don't know why she forgot it, but I had her record a video explaining them. Why, they look the same, giving us examples in music with where there's a tie, and what a slur looks like, how to tell the difference, and then to demonstrate them. And that is such a useful tool for students to have to put those thoughts together and and then say them, you know and demonstrate them.

Arianne: Yeah, it's relatively less time-consuming to design a very intentional assignment like that. Because then you put the student in charge of generating all that energy, that mental energy to jump the ranks, so to speak, in this bloom's taxonomy and it creates something lasting that they can refer back to also their own tutorial video in the future. Very powerful. I always do a composition notebook, especially for those learners who are more visual. Every lesson that I teach, I'll have them write it down in their composition notebook, and this is by no means an original idea. I know so many music teachers who do the same kind of thing. You know. It's just note-taking in class and outside of class, for whatever you feel is a valuable lesson you learned in piano class. But what really drove me to start doing this almost religiously with my students was the lockdown when we had to suddenly switch to zoom. I literally couldn't write on my whiteboard at the studio anymore. So there was no way for me to really transmit information in a meaningful way that would stick in the minds of people who are especially visual in their learning style. And so I was like, you know what I'll just just write it here on my end, have them write it in their composition note notebook on their end, and then there's a lasting kind of account. But what I like about Flip, or or you know, I haven't used Flip, but I'm just kind of going off. What you're saying is is that there are so many more dimensions to making a tutorial video. You know, it's not something that you can just copy down and then forget about later, like, like when you're taking notes in chemistry class or something.
It’s very memorable, because the student has to frame it in a way that they know someone else will be able to understand, not just them.

Jacqueline: absolutely. It is such a powerful tool, because it does wonders for some to originate those unique thoughts because they're not gonna be able to to to use someone else's words for that. They can't just regurgitate my words, because I feel like in the lesson sometimes when we ask them. Well, what is a slur? They'll just, you know, struggle their way through an explanation sometimes. And sometimes we'll even throw them a lifeline right, because it's so painful to watch sometimes, and what I like about this is, it gives them a chance to have their thoughts, edit their thoughts, and then record their thoughts. For the girl who or boy the G or other who records her videos and uses a a script. And I mean. That's that'sI mean, that’s, to me, wow! Right? Like, what an interesting thing that I thought I started using Flip in the lock down because everyone was really bad. I don't think I don't think that Zoom had an original sound button, yet there was so much that was painful to listen to. I often couldn't hear them right. Some people they were just using a phone and phone doesn't have original sound. So they would start playing. Zoom would be like, I got you. This is background noise. I'm gonna nuke it. No more music, no music allowed. And I'm like, I see your fingers moving., but I can't hear you. So I used Flip then, and I had students record their pieces before their lesson that week so that I could listen to them. And then, yeah. And then the flip. I know we're going off on a tangent here. But I have a student working on a on the C-sharp minor nocturne, Chopin, the the posthumous one, and the videos are due by the halfway point in the week. And that's really great, because if I assign a video that has to have a performance that accompanies it like I just did that with a student who just learned about, say, the fermata, and their video assignment was to explain what a fermat is, what it looks like, and then demonstrate it by performing the entire piece that has the fermatas in it in the right. So by forcing that to be by the middle of the week I am helping to mitigate that phenomenon where? Okay, I just have my lesson. I don't need to practice it. I don't practice. Oh, no, it's it's it's right there the lessons right there. Let me practice a lot on the second half. Right? So but my Chopin the my student working on the Chopin nocturne. They've been struggling with the polyrhythm right? Because it's I mean, that is the big thing about the C sharp minor nocturne. It is almost like an etude on poly rhythms without actually being an a tude on poly rhythms. On well, just  versus  and well, there's  versus  at the end, and  versus , so I suppose there's more polyrhythms there, but she's been having a hard time as everybody does. Polyrhythms are. You know there's there's there's things we can say like, not difficult. Right? There's that one you can slow it down. You can mark it out, divide like the beat into  parts, and then mark the the triplet. And but it, I think ultimately it is something that students just have to break through that wall, and once they break through that wall they understand it right. But her assignments for the last couple of weeks has been to play the Chopin Polyrhythm for me by the halfway point in the week, and then I'm able to respond with a video of my own telling her, no, this isn't quite right. There's a pause there, this notes going too fast. So but that's me stepping off of my. It's free. Flip is free. It's completely free. You don't have to pay for it, Microsoft. Yeah. So anyway, I'm stepping off of my. I'm I'm not sponsored. We're not sponsored by Flip, but it flipped once to sponsor them. You reach out and we can come up to an agreement here. But back to back to phrasing. I have no idea. We took a long detour there off of the we talked about the triangle, and then that took us, yeah, yeah.

Arianne: I definitely have another thought on phrasing something that I have thought for many years as a performer and just as a teacher, which is the piano, is one of those instruments, and a especially because I play the violin, too, and I can kind of compare and contrast. Sorry about the train in the background. The piano is there. The piano is not moving anywhere, and so the only thing that's truly in motion, besides the actions of the keys in the piano, is our body. What that means is that we have to reconcile the fact that we cannot pick up the piano and move it around in the same way that we could say a violin or a flute. And that means when it comes to phrasing, a lot of phrasing is dealing with the way that the mechanics of the human body  kind of coalesce with the mechanics of this machine. You know this very soulful machine. And so I like to, especially with my more advanced students or students who are older. We're talking about phrasing, say, especially with with like a piece that uses a lot of pedal, or even pieces that don't, I like to make sure that they feel grounded in that that student feels grounded in each part of their body, so that when they're playing long phrases and passages, they feel like it feels natural enough to their arms, wrists, hands, and and that every part of the body is moving, kind of as as one unified machine, efficient but graceful. And that's where gesture and phrasing both are involved in this. You can't have phrasing without gesture. And here in the US, I don't know if gesture is taught too much. But I have seen some amazing videos about a piano studio, I think it’s in either Australia or New Zealand, that uses really creative methods to teach gesture, such as you know, having the student, you know, when they're when they're doing cross-hand arpeggios or or some cross-hand technique figure where you're crossing over and under and over and under, and then at the end, there's there's a flourish, and the hands go up. Giving the student, the teacher a high five or something, or lifting the hand in an artful gesture in between playing when there's a rest or something like that a flourish for the audience to enjoy, and for the performer to enjoy as well. There are very creative ways that you could teach that.

Jacqueline: You know, that's really interesting, because we focus so much on the sound, right? We focus so much on the sound. But piano performance is also a visual experience right? I always prefer piano recordings on like Youtube that. Don't show me the sheet music. I can find the sheet music. What I need to see is, I need to see the performer because it's a more complete experience, right? And talking about, you know, performances and having good stage presence is all about that right? Because do you sit down at the piano? Do you? Then place your hands on the piano, and then think, and then start, or do you do your thinking in your lap, and place your hand on the piano in the same stroke that you start playing right, which one of those looks more appealing. And it's not always the same for every piece. If it's a slow piece, you don't need to have a big dramatic drop into that first note or a soft piece, you don't need to have it, but if there is a big bombastic opening, then just dropping in and playing at the same time is a much more visual experience. Right music, and your hands start at the same time. And having gestures where you you know, you lift your hands way up off the piano, and you hold your hands in the air when you're done before you put them in your lap, you know, instead of just slopping them down into your lap after you play your first note. Those those things are really interesting, and I think it's interesting that you know, with the rest, you know. If a student is struggling with it. In the past. I've done things because when the rests are introduced. There are only it's not two hands playing  different sets of notes. It's one melody line that the  hands are doing together. I'll have them clap during the rest and then continue playing right funny cause they have to rush to get their hands back on the piano and they think it's funny, because well, they're clapping in the middle of a piano song, but by doing that you are forcing them to take their hands off the piano. They can't hold over that rest. They can't hold that sorry. Hold the note over into the rest because you're telling them that they need to clap. They need to physically take their hands off of the piano

Jacqueline: and you know I have my students religiously tap their music, they're very dedicated about tapping their music before they play, and a rest is palm face up because I tell them that rests need to be made. You need to make that silence in the same way you make noise, make music with the notes. So gestures are completely unrelated to what we're talking about. But I agree that gestures are important, and they can sweep a scale and and show motion as they're going towards a high point in a phrase, and when they're dropping into a note they can use a gesture so I can. I can definitely agree that gestures are important for us as teachers to use with our students. You know that wrist float-off, right. That wrist float-off, that the Faber book one teaches and it's an opportunity to also talk about how the mechanics of the piano work. Because you know, the piano is a big monolith. I mean, it's taller than kids. It's longer than kids. It's heavier than kids. And most kids, unfortunately, have a digital piano. So they don't actually ever get to experiment on their own with the mechanism of the piano right? And how can you have a student do phrasing? How can you have students do phrasing if they have no idea what's going on inside of the piano? I have one of these workshops every couple of years when I get sufficiently enough new students that it would be beneficial where I take the piano action out of the piano, and I take it onto my table here in the studio, and we talk about the different parts and what they do, and then we put the action back inside the piano and talk about the strings and the dampers, and I've only broken a hammer once doing it. That is great. I mean you. You gotta introduce the action and and the different parts of the piano and the dampers and all in the pedal at some point.

Arianne: Yeah, preferably right when they start lessons. You know, I always open up my acoustic upright. And or or if we're at home here, the grand and show them what's what, and and it's very fascinating to to any new
pianist to to see that, and at least get a partial understanding of how it works. I also wanted to go back to when you said that gesture was completely unrelated to phrasing, and say, I definitely disagree because, you know, imagine using isolated muscle groups to try and achieve the same effect that you could, with simply leaning in and using your body weight. Let's say you're playing scale, and it needs to crescendo for whatever reason, because that's what the composer calls for, or that’s what the phrasing calls for. It'd be a lot easier to just put your body weight into it, or or use some aspect of gravity, than to only use a downward force here, we're going back to physics, you know, to counteract the normal force and all of that of the piano and action. So gesture matters, and it can make this activity of piano playing, which requires a lot of endurance throughout a piece, little bit less energy-draining. You can use the mechanisms to fuel you as the player instead of drain you of the stamina that you need to have.

Jacqueline: Yeah, absolutely. You know, with piano technique, we’ve defined it in past episodes. But it's all about how you use your body to achieve a desired sound. Right? If you have an a an alternating octave, you know in in the hand, and you are not having your student rotate their wrist to achieve that sound, then you are doing them a disservice right, because it is infinitely easier to just go like this rather than that. It's infinitely easier for them to do it that way, and that's such an easy gesture. Right? It's I ask: “Can you turn a doorknob for me?” And then I said, " We need to use the doorknob here.” And they're like, Okay, I know what that means. We're gonna use the doorknob here. Right. So gestures are absolutely important, and I think and I agree. It was unfair of me to say that they are unrelated to phrasing, because how we.

Jacqueline: I think my definition of technique is achieving the desired sound in the laziest way possible in the way it requires, the less the the least amount of energy. So if you can lean in and use the weight of your torso and your upper body to help achieve a sound, instead of having to work harder with your fingers or your arms. That's absolutely something that that you should do right, and it also helps us become better performers, because we are more dynamic. We are not stiff as a board, and no one wants to see someone just sit there with their hands moving, and none of the other parts of their body moving. Right? We need to teach that, right?
 
Arianne: Yeah. And I think that, as far as phrasing goes, when you're talking about dynamics, it’s very exponential, I think, you know, just as with something like speed and and ritardando, or accelerando, when you have dynamics, there are so many probably curves involved. If you were mapping out the volume of a certain passage like on a graph, you would see that it was very exponential or parabolic. And so is body weight. So yeah, I just think that it's less discrete and haphazard to use the gravity and the body and the potential energy and the kinetic energy, when you're creating those, because the desired effect is also of that same exponential kind of nature. Does that make sense?

Jacqueline: Yeah, no, I think it is. And you know, this is all stuff that is difficult to explain to a child. Right? Oh, yeah, it's all difficult to explain to child. So I think that when we're when we're when we know this, like, we have high, level understanding of all of the things that we're teaching to our students. And I think that one of the tricky parts is, how do you take this high level knowledge.

Jacqueline: and you you boil it down to something very simple. Right? How do you? How do you get it to be very simple, because we've talked about all of these highfalutin ways to explain phrasing. We've talked about energy. We've talked about tension and release. We've talked about chords. We've talked about
physics, right? And the fact is that a  year old isn't gonna get most of any of that right? I know. Absolutely. Yeah. But you know, some 6 year old. Some kids, you know, they really like to understand how it works, why it works, what are we doing? And it presents a challenge for us, because sometimes the demonstration isn't enough right, it's not enough.

Jacqueline: And I think that demonstration alone is not enough to achieve

Jacqueline: true understanding. Like we were talking about with the taxonomy. Bloom's taxonomy right? Because if they've never understood, if they struggle to understand the why behind it, then they're never gonna be able to make that tutorial video about it. Right? So if you're if you're if you're listening and you don't explain the why the how. And you just tell them what to do. That is, I think, a disservice to your students, because they will. They will. They'll never be able to transfer that knowledge into a new phrase that you haven't taught them about right. If you just tell them what to do, but not how. Well, I suppose you probably tell them how, but not why or where, or when. You know. If you don't answer all of those questions. who it's you? No, if you don't answer all of those questions, then you're going to struggle. They're going to struggle to, to ever implement that on their own. And phrasing is so fascinating because it's not something that's written into the music. I think phrasing might be one of the the first purely interpretive choices that that students get to make right, especially if you introduce it before the concept of a crescendo has been formally introduced in a book, or, if you introduce it before, you know that you know. I think Faber waits until 2B. to introduce the concept of phrasing.I think they introduced it as a technique secret in 2B, and that's too long. That's way too long. That is not appropriate right? They can't be writing in crescendos and day crescendos for years without understand why they're doing that right. Phrasing should be able to be implemented without additional marks being put onto the page. If that means that they understand it. They don't need them. They don't need to be told when to do it and where and what to do they understand the principle behind it

Arianne:  you know, I don’t know if this is necessarily the right or wrong way to go about teaching, but, over the years, even as just a student of piano, who is learning from another instructor. You know, someone who really knows what they're doing, who has a PhD or a doctoral degree, or a masters…I find that a lot of teaching involves the art of convincing, you know, and and the way that you convince someone to choose a certain way to phrase something, a certain methodology, a a certain way to play something over another way, to be playing it. You can convince a student in so many creative ways. You could go all Mozart on them, and just kind of play it inappropriately, awfully, with a mocking kind of this sounds awful. But to just mock. You know, like how Mozart mocks Salieri in Amadeus when he was a kid, and he was like pretending to be all ridiculous. You could do something like that, and it leaves an impression on the student without them even knowing really the why of why, it's so bad to play with bad technique, you know. You could. You could convince them using analogies. Analogies were a huge part of Professor Edwards’ pedagogy classes. She encouraged us to use analogies with our students, who maybe may not have been advanced enough or not adults, but they could understand scenarios that had little to do with music inherently that still could apply via metaphor, simile, analogy, etc.

Jacqueline: Yeah, absolutely. I think that that's super important, because children aren't ready for them to understand physics. The physical explo, the physics explanation for phrasing. They're not able to understand that. But II found that one way to check if a student has understanding is to ask them to play it badly on purpose. Can you phrase this terribly for me. Right? I use that when students make a mistake, and then they finally play it right? I'm like, Okay, you've played it right. Can you go back and play it the wrong way and tell me right. Go play it the wrong way, play it the way you were playing it before, and tell me when that's wrong, but with phrasing you can absolutely II don't know if we should mock our students. No, I know. I know. I'm just messing with you, some player.
 
Arianne: some imaginary player.

Jacqueline: Yeah, like, just just present it in a terrible way, and then present it in a good way, and be like what was wrong with what I did the first time. Right? So one way to tell tell if your students really understand phrasing is to tell them to phrase it badly, and then have them phrase it well, and then explain the difference. Right? That is a way to.

Jacqueline: I guess that's a way to to help achieve that full understanding without providing, you know, a full, wordy explanation to it. Right? That's interesting. I've never tried that and my question about that would be, do you ever fear that

Arianne: they might inevitably like, develop some muscle memory and and and like maybe accidentally, learn to play it that way.

Jacqueline: Well, they already did right like if they came back after a week. And they have a problem. They've already built that muscle memory. So we have to break that muscle memory. So by having them play it correctly, and then by having them play it the wrong way, and then tell me what's wrong with it. When they're practicing, they can monitor themselves right? Because if they don't know why it's wrong, and why it's right, and what the difference is, how are they gonna know throughout the week, whether it's good or bad? How are they going to know whether they fixed the mistake or not? Right. So there is a level of trust that's inherent there with a student. Right? Because you do. You do risk that. But I don't usually use this

Jacqueline: when I introduce something right, and I wouldn't do this when I introduced something. But if as soon as it comes back with a mistake, it's already muscle, memory right that that ship has already sailed. So we need to make it, not muscle memory, and one more time playing it wrong is not going to make the situation any worse than it already is. Oh, okay. So they've already been doing. Oh, that's interesting. I need to try that. Hmm, okay.

Jacqueline: yeah. I think that it's I think it's it's it's the first couple of times I did it. I was like this, seems kinda weird. But you know, II find that in my own playing, right in my own playing, if I it, II need to know what the wrong thing is. Otherwise, how am I supposed to fix it right? So by after I've I've fixed it, if I play it the wrong way again. And then I'm like, Okay.

Jacqueline: these are all of the ways that it's better. Now, right? I need to listen for that. I need to avoid that happening again. It it helps right, and it gives agency to them. You know you talked about at some point you talked about

Jacqueline: how to give them choice, right how to give them that responsibility and I do this with with my students who who understand the concept behind phrasing. There's some situations like when a scale is ascending, but it's the last note of the piece. We normally will take crescendo at the end of a phrase at the end of a slur, the end of a musical phrase.

Jacqueline: do you want to do that here? Or do you want to end on a high note literally, and with our phrasing right? And sometimes

Jacqueline: sometimes they make the wrong choice. Sometimes they make the wrong choice, but I allow them to make that wrong choice, because that's not their fault. It's it's it's my fault that they don't have the principles strong enough. So the next time I give them a choice we will have, we will have discussed more about this particular choice that I'm giving them

Jacqueline: without them realizing it. So II should ideally have given the already given them the right answer. Right? So how do you phrase this? Well, it's ascending. It's the end of a piece

Jacqueline: there is, I mean, there's there's you can take it either way. Really, you can end triumphantly, or you can end less right. But the scale as ascending and we usually make those. So maybe this is a thing that we need to add an accent on the end. We need to to to add some some excitement there and I don't stress out about the wrong choice if they’ve misapplied the principles. I don't immediately correct them, because that knocks their confidence down, and it makes them feel like they don't know what they're talking about, and even if they don't know what they're talking about. I don't want them to feel like they don't know what they're talking about.

Arianne: Yeah, I think, like this this kind of brings the whole Socratic method into mind for me. Because you mentioned agency. And, if you're able to facilitate learning such that a student can arrive at a sound conclusion on their own. Something that will be memorable for them, and and make them feel like they had agency in arriving at that conclusion, so that they  do that again and again in similar situations in the future on their own… That's great. And it could be something as simple as, you know, depending on how the student is again and and where they're at, you know. Maybe an intermediate to advance student. You could be like. How do you feel about this? You know? What are your thoughts on that? Do you like this better or that better do a demonstration, and it helps them cultivate their tastes as well. I think that, assuming we don't have amnesia or some kind of thing going on.  inherently aware of what kind of music sounds good relative to other music. And and you can kind of guide that a little bit, but it is innate, and so usually, when I present students with options, they tend to choose the option that sounds best to the majority of people.

Jacqueline: Yeah. First of all, you know. Sometimes when I have difficulty, I had a young brash composer. He was , and he's now in college for music. He didn't like going five one in his compositions, and I understand that  one is not the only thing that you can do, but five one is kind of the foundation of music, right? If you want something to have tension and then be resolved,  five one is essentially it. You can add fours in there you can replace 5 with 4 . You can. You can substitute chords. But ultimately it all comes down to one five one, right? And he just didn't like it. He didn't understand why he had to do that. So I told him that five one is coded into the fabric of the universe because of the overtone series. Right? I explained. We spent time talking about the Overtone series, how it's an octave. It's the first partial, and then the next one after that is a fifth right, and that fifth is the foundation of everything. We don't call the sub dominant the sub dominant, because it's the chord below dominant we call sub dominant and sub dominant, because it's a fifth below tonic. Right? Yeah, it's fit below the tonic. It's literally coded into the way the universe works. Right? So he kinda got it. And after talking about chord substitutions, how we're able to make progressive melodies by following these rules, and you're still able to write stuff that doesn't sound like, one, but still gives us the release. That made sense to him. So that why can be really important. And too, one of the ways that I give students that agency is once they get out of their their primer book or if they're out of their adult level, one book that I use, and they're in the old adult Level  I give him. I give them the option of picking one of those books back there from the level below them, and then each week they are responsible for an independent study piece. I think, Cronister suggested this. Richard Cronister, one of the famous American pedagogues, suggested that students in college and I don't like this in college, but students in college shouldn't be tested on the pieces they're working on with their teacher. They should be separately assigned separate pieces that are in similar informant structure, that they have to interpret and fix and practice completely on their own. And then that's what they get tested on. Because he's not interested, he said. I'm not interested in people mimicking what I'm teaching them. I want them to understand the principles behind that, and then on their own. And first of all, that sounds like a nightmare. I would be so stressed going into a jury after  weeks of not having a chance to show it to my teacher right. But for my students they get a chance to apply their dynamics and their articulations and phrasing, voicing for more advanced students. I have a I have a student that's playing stuff around the level of the B minor Chopin prelude. And she's working on pieces like the wild rider around that difficulty as her independent study piece every week. So every week they get a very short turnaround time on it. They get a week to work on this piece. Whatever state it's in after that week is over, we're moving on from it. So there's a bit of pressure placed on them there, but they have to interpret it on their own. They have to self, correct their mistakes because I'm not going to do it for them.
 
Arianne: Wow! Yes, I remember talking about this Cronister thing in in school, and it is daunting for the teacher, maybe, perhaps, but it it it's a great way to really see, for sure that the student is digesting these lessons and keeping these lessons in their arsenal. For when they can evaluate and create,

Jacqueline: Yeah, I use this app called Meister task, which is a task management app, which allows us to create stuff like checklists, and their practice notes are on there so that they have rich notes. They can keep track of where they are, what they're doing. I can provide links to Youtube videos, etc. But for their independent study pieces I have them. I create the task for them, but I require them to make their own checklist of items that they need to make sure are correct. Soon as add stuff like phrasing, voicing, fix the rhythm and measure , because they know that their rhythm and measure  is wrong. So there, there! It's a really strong independence building exercise for them, and it helps them feel good when they come back. And the response I give them is, that's really good. I love the voicing you did there at the end with the  hands. I love the phrasing, and it's also a motivational tool, because sometimes I'll be like, I really liked a lot of what you had here. I like the dynamics and stuff, but your phrasing kind of fell flat.

Jacqueline: So for your next independent study piece, I want you to see if you can spend more time on on phrasing and make sure that that gets the attention that it deserves.

Jacqueline:  I think it is about time for us to wrap up our podcast episode here. So back, our topic was phrasing, although we mendered quite a bit. What is your big takeaway for phrasing for this episode.
 
Arianne: Well, you know, meandering isn't necessarily a bad thing, and that seems to be the theme of our podcast and I actually quite like it. I don't know about you. So my take away, I would say, in order to teach phrasing, it is a job of helping facilitate the students’ journey from just basic comprehension and application of a piece to getting to the point where they can analyze, evaluate, and and maybe create something in the same vein and it takes it could take a lot of work. But the work can come from the student. What you mentioned about having the student create a tutorial video to to explain certain concepts that are related to this. It's very powerful. And another big takeaway from me is that gesture is involved when we're talking about phrasing because of the physics of things like dynamics. And even just the kinesiology of piano. Those are my takeaways.

Jacqueline: Awesome. Yeah, II agree with you, you know, having the the blooms taxonomy reintroduced. It's a concept II was familiar with, but I kinda forgot it, cause I mean, you know, so long ago, and and really, for a student to be able to do phrasing. They need to be at the top of the triangle right? They need to have that creating, understanding. Use their information that they know to create something new cause. That's what they do with every phrase, right? Every phrase, unless they are having us tell them exactly what to do. they are having to apply what they know about the piano's. You know the piano's limitations in terms of decay, with the the energy increasing, the tension increasing and then being releasing up and down pitch contour. They're having to apply all that stuff. and they can only apply the stuff that they know. So they, you know. Well, if their music starts getting more complicated, like, for example, the Chopin B minor Prelude right? There's a lot of spicy chords in there, and I don't think that my student would be able to label those chords and understand from a harmonic perspective. But I'm sure that she would be able to hear the tension of the chords, and then to know, to to lean into them physically and metaphorically, to to create that build higher tension, understanding, repetition, and the role it plays in creating that tension. These are all fundamental concepts that are related to phrasing and knowing them is one thing.  being able to apply them to their own independent piece, or just telling them on a piece. You guys are working together. Let's work on the phrasing for this first phrase, and then this week I want you to create your own phrasing for the subsequent phrases, right being able to have that a student can't do phrasing if they can't create their own phrasing right? They're just following instructions at that point. And that's not truly interpretation. So I think that the taxonomy, that that the bloom's taxonomy is super important when it comes to interpretation. And that that is why I enjoy working with with adults so much because they can begin reading between the notes and between the lines, and seeing what's not there already, much sooner than children

Jacqueline: can in my experience. But perhaps that's just because I am not so sound forward when it comes to this. So my takeaways are that they need to understand the fundamental aspects of phrasing. They don't need to understand all of the different spects of phrasing right? They can know. They can learn phrasing just by pitch, contour.

Jacqueline: or by long notes and short notes. They can learn it just by that, and then, as they go, they can get introduced to more and more dimensions of phrasing. But for them to be able to really say that they know how to interpret phrases. They need to have true understanding on at least one of the dimensions of phrasing so sound forward and helping them to achieve.

Jacqueline: you know, helping them to achieve true understanding. They don't need to understand all of the mendic dimensions of phrasing. I think it's easy for me to forget that right? There's so many different ways to to conceive of phrasing, and they all go together to create a cohesive thing, but they can just do it with pitch. Contour that. That's all they need at the beginning.

Arianne: Pretty cool. Yeah.
 
Jacqueline: Well, we will see you guys next week appreciate you listening, and goodbye.

Arianne: Bye!