Fall has blown into New Mexico. Quite literally. Last week the wind ripped and raged every night, which is nothing compared to what it did to our friends in Texas, but enough to cause one to take notice. With this wind has come every sign autumn is coming: the nights and mornings are positively cool; days are gorgeous beyond description; leaves are turning the brilliant yellows and golds that characterize this part of the world; the smell of roasted green chile is everywhere; and the state fair has been going strong. Today is the day that Matt works at the pie cafe at the state fair: an annual tradition in his church office, with all the proceeds going to Albuquerque charities. This means that, for the third year in a row, my student Kristy and I will get pie delivered during our evening piano lesson, now a yearly event we look forward to. "Next week is pie day!" we reminded each other last Monday night.

Over the years, music theory has been given center stage in music lessons, or specifically in piano lessons (I do not see this same trend among our friends teaching other instruments.). Nowadays, every self-respecting piano method has a set of corresponding theory books. There are competitions out there for theory geeks, and students who keep up with theory throughout their piano lessons are told that they might be able to "skip" the first year of theory in college.

Whoa baby.

First of all, there is an assumption here that I don't buy. That assumption is that we are teaching as if college theory was even a goal in sight. as if our reality was that the majority of our students would someday be sitting in a college music theory course. This implies that teaching a lot of theory is a worthwhile goal because it knocks off hurdle kids will someday have to jump. This assumption is way off base in my book. This is right up there with another trend I see throughout our educational system, which is to speed up the pace that we teach everything. College-bound students now routinely take algebra and geometry in junior high, and sometimes have several years of calculus before they hit a college campus. I have a student who is a junior in high school in French VI. Yes, that would be French VI! I spend a lot of time bemoaning the failures of our educational system (My top complaint as of late is that no one teaching problem-solving skills or creative thinking---see the Aug/Sept Marking Time column all you American Music Teacher readers out there.), but I think that we have lost sight of the fact that there are plenty of successful adults that never took math beyond Algebra II, that might not have bothered with physics, that managed their pre-med requirements just fine starting their freshman year of college. Sometimes I look back at my high school years with a shudder; as a top student, I was pushed into a lot of math and science classes ("You'll want these on your transcript."), and steered away from what I really was interested in: drama, art, music, and writing. I hated every minute of math and science; in no alternative universe was I ever going to do anything that needed the square root of pi. I even took calculus in college to fulfill some general requirement; I got an "A"--that's not the point here. The point is that even if I would have decided to major in mathematics, I could have chosen to do so at that time--even without having taken the pre-requisite calculus in high school. Now I am not arguing that we should start systematically slowing down the accelerated pace we teaching the basics, nor am I interested in lowering the bar, but maybe we need to remember that we have a lot more time to teach some things than we act like we do.

Which brings me back to the theory argument. Because I was taking math and science in high school on some career track of my guidance counsellors' making, and because my piano education up until college was rather non-traditional, I went to college without knowing what a V-chord was. (I can sense the piano teachers across America shuddering at this statement.) Now, I should qualify that I had been accompanying choirs and soloists of various kinds for years; I could sight-read anything; I gave a full-length senior recital right before high school graduation that included the Chopin double-thirds etude. In other words, I was no slouch. But not one of my teachers had bothered with theory. I could, and did, zip through all my scales--major and minor--in octaves, thirds, sixths, and tenths; if pressed, I probably could tell you what the key signature was of any piece I was playing, but that is about it. In other words, for an advanced pianist, I was a totally beginning theory student.

It worked out fine. Now I think my story is unusual, and not necessarily to be imitated. However, theory was easy (especially after all that math). I whizzed through it all with no trouble, and, as a result, have taken a much more relaxed approach to theory in the private lessons of pre-college students, than the average teacher.

Specifically, here is what I do: I teach theory in conjunction with technique. In the beginning, this consists of the technique of 5-finger major and minor positions; primary (I-IV-I-V-V7-I) chord progressions and inversions. Later this will be key signatures of major and minor scales and more advanced chord progressions and harmonies. We talk a lot from the very beginning about what "position" we might be playing our pieces in: G major, D minor, A major in the right hand, E minor in the left, and so on. We identify chord positions in our music: "that's a IV chord in D position," or "a I chord in B-flat," which may or may not be related to what key the music is actually in. I don't think it much matters to an 8-year old. If I could rewrite my own history, I wish I would have had naming information earlier so that I would have had a way to identify what was going on in my hands. But the now-emphasized skills that include lots of writing: part-writing, writing intervals, spelling out scales or chord progressions seems to me to be unnecessary for the average student taking piano lessons. Having some verbal identification of what they are doing is a good idea, and one that I wished I would have had earlier. Needing to be able to explain how a V chord functions seems less vital somehow.

I also get some theory in edgewise through my ear-training work. I use the Suzuki Piano Book One for ear tunes, because almost every one of the pieces harmonizes with basic I, IV, V chords. This gives solid ear-training and harmonic work at a very early stage. I do a million things with these tunes that would make the more strict Suzuki teachers among us cringe. My students write out melodic rhythms of their Suzuki tunes, transpose them with different accompaniment figures (blocked chords, Alberti bass, waltz, broken chords), improvise variations on the melodies, and later make up two-hand accompaniments that they can use to accompany a soloist on another instrument. They have then gone on to accompany violin-playing friends, or flute-playing siblings with their accompaniments of "Lightly Row" or "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" in recitals or talent shows.

All this is to say that my students don't, by any traditional definition, do written theory work. Occasionally, I will find a great worksheet that I will copy and use in my group performance classes (I have discovered that having a written activity at the beginning of class is a great way to start when kids are straggling in). Some beginning students who need more work with note-reading besides my exercises with flashcards are sometimes assigned to download a free note-reading game on-line (www.teoria.com/exercises/reading.htm is a good one) and use it daily for 5 minutes or something. Having said all of this, my students have proven (if I could brag a moment) to be really functional pianists in all sorts of settings. (In another post, I'd be happy to list all the problems my students have. Trust me, there's plenty.) Not only can they write their own boom-chick kind of accompaniment patterns in any key with simple harmonies, they have gone on to play in high school jazz bands and orchestras because they had working knowledge of chords and keys. I realize as I write this that this is theory in a nut-shell, but my students would be the first to tell you that they "don't have to do theory" with their piano teacher. They will tell you this as an example of a benefit of taking lessons from me. (Many of them might say this is the only good thing about taking lessons with me.)

Like I said, I wouldn't wish my lack of theoretical knowledge before the age of 18 on any piano student. However, I still think music lessons should be about the art of making music, and that too much paper work or computer time distracts from this. I have also seen too many theory whizzes that couldn't translate this paper knowledge to the keyboard, making me wonder why we bothered in the first place. There is a real danger, and I'll be the first to admit it, that my students couldn't translate their piano-theory knowledge to paper, but I'll take that risk. When and if they major in music, they can get that fast enough.