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The last few months have seen some huge changes for me. After 30 years of 100% commitment to teaching in independent schools (Channing, Pangbourne, Rugby, Wycombe Abbey, Monkton, Downside), including 20 years as Director of Music, I have decided it’s time to focus on the thing which I have always loved the most – teaching the piano.

It’s also a long time since I added to my blog, but I hope to change that too, starting right now!

It has taken some courage to step away from the security of a salaried job, but it seems I needn’t have worried. Having started teaching my first piano pupil in the middle of May, I now have no fewer than twenty three pupils on my books for September, and the very genuine problem of how I’m going to fit them all in. I have been amazed at how quickly word spreads.

For the meantime I have decided to take the classic ‘peripatetic’ approach, which means that I spend my afternoons driving from house to house around Bath. Time (and petrol) consuming, but actually really enjoyable. From my perspective it does feel like I am offering a premium service, arriving at each pupil’s house at their own convenience, sampling their coffee (a real perk of the job) and above all being able to take the time to give each pupil my full attention. And yes, most lessons run over time, but who’s counting?

I also have the full range of ‘ages and stages’, from a super-bright 5 year old to teenagers working on diploma repertoire, and several adult pupils too. Lots of challenges ahead, including learning some of more advanced repertoire myself, and all of which makes me very happy!

I have been reading a really thought-provoking book by Angela Duckworth, called Grit, subtitled Why passion and resilience are the secrets to success. I have long held the belief that talent isn’t everything, and Duckworth backs me up – yes! The idea which really struck me between the eyes is this – that effort counts twice. Duckworth’s theory is most simply put in the form of two equations:

talent x effort = skill

skill x effort = achievement

“Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them.”

Impressed onlookers often miss the distinction between talent and skill. My personal stance is that we all have talent in whatever particular field. For some people that talent is already at the surface, visible to all, whereas in other cases it is buried and we might need to go digging for it. In some instances, we’re going to need to dig deep!

But however small that talent might be, with effort we can grow it. And with a lot of effort, we can achieve amazing things and we will even surpass the person with more talent but who puts in less effort. Plugging a couple of numbers into the first equation illustrates the point:

talent = 5, effort = 1 yields an achievement of 5

talent = 1, effort = 3 yields an achievement of 9

Now I know that’s a bit simplistic, but my point is that, with hard work, we can raise our skill level. And after that, we’re on a level playing field with the ‘talented’ person, with effort once again being the determining factor as to how highly we achieve.

As a musician I have easily clocked my 10,000 hours, and whether you subscribe to the 10,000 hour rule or not, there is no doubt that a substantial amount of deliberate practice (ie effort) has furnished me with some excellent skills. Am I talented? Well in many respects I just don’t think that’s relevant! I have worked hard, but very few people have seen all of that hard work – they just see the end result and jump to the conclusion that skill equals talent.

It’s a dangerous conclusion to reach. Effort is the critical factor, the one which is going to make all the difference. Many students are far too quick to write themselves off musically; they assume that notation is a cryptic, tricky language, and claim not to be able to sing, but actually the problem in most instances is that they simply haven’t realised that it takes effort.

Fortunately, I’m not interested in teaching talented pupils! Sure, they have a head start I guess, but for me the real joy comes in those lightbulb moments when a pupil realises that the outcome doesn’t just depend on whether they’ve been dealt a good hand, but that actually it is their own actions which are going to make a significant contribution to their future success.

TED Talk – The power of passion and perseverance

ABRSM has announced recently that it will be removing melody-writing from the Grade 5 theory paper. I’m worried.

My first encounter with ‘theory for theory’s sake’ was at the age of 10, when all of a sudden my piano lessons changed; instead of sitting at the piano, we spent several weeks sat at a table in Mrs May’s front room and wrote things down. I remember the front room being very dark, and the whole experience being very strange. I passed the Grade 5 theory exam [just] and things went back to normal, thank goodness ….

I now have a steady stream of Grade 5 theory pupils of my own! Some come utterly clueless, and it is a delight to be able to switch the lights on for them. For others, it’s a question of formalising many of the things which they already vaguely know, and teaching them how to approach the exam in a disciplined way.

I always cover the basics in order: circle of fifths, scales, intervals, transposition, triads. Once a student has mastered these, we’re nearly there – just a few bits and pieces to add, including time signatures, musical terms and clefs.

But so far, all of this stuff is just knowledge. It amazes me how little some students know, despite in some cases having had instrumental or singing lessons for several years; and it’s no wonder, if little or no theory has been referred to during lessons in that time, that the Grade 5 theory exam has such a bad name for itself – there is a lot to cover and it’s a sizeable mountain to climb. Many are asking the question: why, all of a sudden, am I being hauled through all of this, when it’s never been relevant to me before now?

It’s a very reasonable question. Once they are through the other side, of course, they can see exactly why it is relevant. Then the question is why was I never told any of this before now? Scales, for instance, are no longer a mystery. If you don’t understand how key signatures work, scales are a nightmare; twenty-nine seemingly random notes to remember for each [two octave] scale. My goodness, is it any wonder that to some, scales are a punishment? It doesn’t need to be this way!

I digress.

The very last thing which I teach in the Grade 5 syllabus is the melody-writing. At last, a chance to make a connection between theory and musicianship. A chance to demonstrate to the candidate that knowing all of this stuff is deeply relevant to their instrumental/singing studies. And this is the part of the exam which ABRSM is removing.

It’s a theory lesson – no instrument to hand – so we just have to use what we have: ears, voice, hands.

“Ok, let’s sing the part of the melody we’ve been given.”

The response to this is generally something along the lines of I can’t or You have to be joking – but I’m not joking.

Let’s make it easier and just clap the rhythm. In the given example that might mean clapping just quavers initially, having first set the pulse, and then seeing whether the student can work out how the dotted quaver/semiquaver part works. And we even get to talk about 6/8 time, two beats in a bar! And then we sing: it doesn’t need to be great, just accurate enough to pitch the major third, the perfect fifth, and back down each note of the scale. This is such valuable teaching time, and often it is the first time that it dawns on a student that they can read and hear music without their instrument. It can take some working out of course, but even that is valuable learning – sight-singing is not something which you either can or can’t do, but a skill which has to be learned.

We also cover phrase structure, key and modulation, sequence, and dynamics, and how all of these elements combine to make a melody work well. It is always a joy to see the lights coming on as a student makes the connections between all of these things. 

A recent Telegraph article accuses ABRSM of dumbing down. For my part, I can’t see why removing the only truly musical part of the exam “brings musical education into the modern era.” It will just make it easier. It’s a slippery slope, and my worst fear is that having now taken this backward step ABRSM will consider following the lead of other boards by removing singing from the aural tests, using the same kind of criteria to justify their decisions. 

I await the new-look Grade 5 theory paper with trepidation.