Top trumps

Every child has played top trumps at some point: let’s face it, so have most adults too. Whatever your favourite theme – cars, superheroes, dangerous animals – they all work in the same way. Each card has a score for certain characteristics, and the highest score wins.

Here’s how a game might sound –
Player 1: Height, 182cm
Player 2: Height, 191cm. I win!
Player 1: Oh no, you’ve got Clark Kent haven’t you?!
[Player 1 is a real geek, and has memorised all of the data on all of the cards!!]

I’ve been thinking lately about devising top trump cards for my piano pupils. None of them are superheroes, or even dangerous animals (!) but they do have a variety of rateable skills. Self-assessed (that’s important and I’ll come back to that), a pupil card might look like this:

My point is this – why is the pupil calling note reading when that’s the weakest number on their card? Surely they’d have a better chance calling on the memory category.

Player 1: Note reading, 33
Player 2: Note reading, 98, I win!
Player 1 (geek): Oh that’s not fair, you must have Mr Bevan!
Player 2: I am Mr Bevan!!

Let’s take an example. A pupil is reading through a piece of music, perhaps for the second or third time, and is still struggling to read the notes. Some are on leger lines, it’s in A major and she keeps forgetting that there are G#s in the key signature. In short, her note reading is pretty weak (33 in fact). Time to draw on a different skill instead. How about memory (90)? After all, having played it through a couple of times now, she ought to have some recollection or either how it felt to play, physically, or maybe visually.

I’m not for a moment suggesting that we ignore reading skills altogether; we should be trying to develop all of these skills all of the time. [In this respect, my analogy to top trumps breaks down, as (hopefully) all of these numbers gradually increase as our pupils progress.] What I am suggesting is that we should be encouraging our pupils to draw on a variety of skills rather than just one. When it comes to learning new notes, I find that it can be a huge encouragement when our pupils realise that they don’t have to rely entirely on their reading skills. Discovering that memory, aural or even guess work can give an additional boost to their reading skills, which in turn may well boost their self-esteem.

For me this has also been a really helpful tool for encouraging pupils to make an honest (if approximate) assessment of their general musicianship skills. There is no harm in getting it out in the open that Susie’s note reading leave a little to be desired – we both know that anyway don’t we? But it’s also a lovely opportunity to let her know that you agree that her memory is terrific, and that we should be looking for more ways to use that, since it’s clearly one of her real strengths.