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The art of high quality demonstration has long played a central role in education in general and music education in particular. As part of his famous violin method, Shinichi Suzuki required his students to listen to recordings of the great violinists of his time. Even beyond the direct pedagogical impact of music, he believed, as do I, in the deeper value of quality music: “I want to make good citizens. If a child hears fine music from the day of his birth and learns to play it himself, he develops sensitivity, discipline and endurance. He gets a beautiful heart.” The renowned Hungarian music educator Zoltan Kodaly recognized that “No one is more instinctively susceptible to pure art than the child, for as young people recognize in their hearts, in every great artist there is a survival of the child. Indeed the superstition should be reversed: only the best art is good enough for children, anything else will only do them harm.”
With the ascent of YouTube, iTunes, and other music related websites, the Internet has become the main place to listen to music. There are however dangers that come with this luxury. Anyone can post recordings of themselves, with no quality control whatsoever. While educated listeners know how to distinguish between good and bad quality, children have yet to learn to do so. Since students are left unsupervised during the week between lessons, it is very difficult to control what they listen to. When students are encouraged to visit YouTube to watch a video of a performance of their pieces, they will, for the most part, encounter other beginners performing those same pieces. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to find a professional musician performing this repertoire. However, as stated above, the impact of demonstration at the highest quality is enormous. Thus I decided, together with my colleague Dr. Sifford, to embark on this project to provide the entire piano pedagogical community with a video database, which will ensure the highest possible level of pianistic quality at a centrally located place. It will not only enhance the learner’s experience at the piano, but will also support the teachers in their responsibility to provide a quality musical experience.
The above-described database will in the end encompass approximately 9000 video recordings. These pieces are from the Iowa Music Teachers Association’s (IMTA) repertoire list, which all piano teachers in the state of Iowa must use if they are entering their students in IMTA sponsored events. Similar lists are used by other state and national organizations.
The projected tangible result is the video database, which as aforementioned will be accessible to all on YouTube. Furthermore, my graduate piano pedagogy seminar and I are creating a Wiki, in which my students and I will provide one-paragraph descriptions of each recorded piece. The Wiki will also have links to the individual videos on YouTube and thus also serves as an advertisement for the database. Since the piano repertoire is constantly growing, I anticipate that the database will also be a constantly growing entity throughout my career.
We have presented this and other related projects at various conferences, including the 2014 Music Teachers National Association’s conference in Chicago. This project has allowed us to speak on, among many other topics, such diverse topics as “The Impact of Using High Quality Demonstration in Music Education”, “Employing Technology in the Piano Studio “ and “How to Sequence Repertoire” Being the only pianists to have undertaken such a massive project, we will be in the unique position to speak with authority on these topics from a practical standpoint.
While the tangible results are fairly obvious, it is the intangible results which excite me the most about this project. Since coming to The University of Iowa, I have firmly established the piano pedagogy program as one of the leaders in the field. In my opinion, the last missing pieces to the program were in the area of early childhood piano education. This database, which has garnered huge attention in the world of piano pedagogy, along with the recent creation of our pre-college program, has solidified Iowa’s position as a leader in piano pedagogy.
With the ascent of YouTube, iTunes, and other music related websites, the Internet has become the main place to listen to music. There are however dangers that come with this luxury. Anyone can post recordings of themselves, with no quality control whatsoever. While educated listeners know how to distinguish between good and bad quality, children have yet to learn to do so. Since students are left unsupervised during the week between lessons, it is very difficult to control what they listen to. When students are encouraged to visit YouTube to watch a video of a performance of their pieces, they will, for the most part, encounter other beginners performing those same pieces. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to find a professional musician performing this repertoire. However, as stated above, the impact of demonstration at the highest quality is enormous. Thus I decided, together with my colleague Dr. Sifford, to embark on this project to provide the entire piano pedagogical community with a video database, which will ensure the highest possible level of pianistic quality at a centrally located place. It will not only enhance the learner’s experience at the piano, but will also support the teachers in their responsibility to provide a quality musical experience.
The above-described database will in the end encompass approximately 9000 video recordings. These pieces are from the Iowa Music Teachers Association’s (IMTA) repertoire list, which all piano teachers in the state of Iowa must use if they are entering their students in IMTA sponsored events. Similar lists are used by other state and national organizations.
The projected tangible result is the video database, which as aforementioned will be accessible to all on YouTube. Furthermore, my graduate piano pedagogy seminar and I are creating a Wiki, in which my students and I will provide one-paragraph descriptions of each recorded piece. The Wiki will also have links to the individual videos on YouTube and thus also serves as an advertisement for the database. Since the piano repertoire is constantly growing, I anticipate that the database will also be a constantly growing entity throughout my career.
We have presented this and other related projects at various conferences, including the 2014 Music Teachers National Association’s conference in Chicago. This project has allowed us to speak on, among many other topics, such diverse topics as “The Impact of Using High Quality Demonstration in Music Education”, “Employing Technology in the Piano Studio “ and “How to Sequence Repertoire” Being the only pianists to have undertaken such a massive project, we will be in the unique position to speak with authority on these topics from a practical standpoint.
While the tangible results are fairly obvious, it is the intangible results which excite me the most about this project. Since coming to The University of Iowa, I have firmly established the piano pedagogy program as one of the leaders in the field. In my opinion, the last missing pieces to the program were in the area of early childhood piano education. This database, which has garnered huge attention in the world of piano pedagogy, along with the recent creation of our pre-college program, has solidified Iowa’s position as a leader in piano pedagogy.
