Ever heard of the U of Iowa Piano Pedagogy Project?

ShiroKuro · 2024-12-23T12:21:36+00:00

If you’ve ever tried to find a video for a pedagogical piece, you have probably heard of the Univeristy of Iowa Piano Pedagogy Project. Here is their YouTube...

keystring

I've gone there a number of times when a piece I was working on was featured by them. One of the pianists there is a PW member who used to post a lot in PW under a pseudonym. I think I remember his name is Jason Sifford, and I especially like his playing. He seems to hit the sweet spot in making it musical but allowing students room for creating their own interpretation.

ShiroKuro

iternabe the quality recordings like those from U of Iowa are indeed a truly valuable resource.

they certainly are!!

@keystring I didn't know about the Piano Pedagogy Project when I was still active on PW, too bad! I would love to tell the two gentlemen how fantastic their project is. I'm sure they know though, what with having 34.5K subscribers!!

Stub

It has been around for a time. I listened to some pieces back when I was doing method books. It's kind of a no muss, no fuss presentation, which is fine for the purpose.

What I wondered was if they simply sat down and played the pieces, almost the equivalent of sightreading them, or if they did several takes. Probably some of both.

ShiroKuro

Stub Probably some of both.

That would be my guess as well.

I’d love to know more about it though.

pseudonym58

ShiroKuro
There are some pianists, such as Jenő Jandó, who are able to record an astonishing number of compositions (as in "The complete piano music of X") for several composers. I have no idea how they find the time to learn all that music. All I can imagine is that they have an amazing athletic ability to translate what they see on the page to the keyboard with a (relative) minimum of practice. I wouldn't know; I'm on the opposite end of that continuum! 😁

iternabe

pseudonym58 All I can imagine is that they have an amazing athletic ability to translate what they see on the page to the keyboard with a (relative) minimum of practice.

Like this?

ShiroKuro

pseudonym58 All I can imagine is that they have an amazing athletic ability to translate what they see on the page to the keyboard with a (relative) minimum of practice.

That would be my guess. Kind of the top of the top of sigh reading ability.

@iternabe thanks for the video link, I’ll give a listen when I get home.

Ithaca

pseudonym58 All I can imagine is that they have an amazing athletic ability to translate what they see on the page to the keyboard with a (relative) minimum of practice

iternabe Like this?

FWIW (not much), I think to do something like the U of Iowa project, you need to be much better at sight-reading than what Poon is showing in the video. (I'm not saying anything about her actual ability, merely what's in this video.) From what I see, she's average for a really solid piano teacher. At least compared to the piano teachers I've observed casually in person, which really isn't that many - maybe 10? So to be fair, small statistics. 🙂 The thing with people who are professionals is that they seem to be freakishly good at sight-reading; I haven't yet come across one with skills that are noticeably worse than what Poon demonstrates here. I think it goes with the territory - if you want to make a living teaching, you have to have the skill set to briefly squint at any piece that you put in front of a student and make a reasonable go of it.

An aside: is it just me, or is there something weird about the way she holds her fingers? I watched the video 3x and kept trying to Zoom in on her fingers, and it seems as if when she's in "neutral" some of them straighten out and even curl up a bit at the last joint. That tendency seems very newbie-like. (I just googled her; she's definitely not a newbie 🙃, so now I'm wondering if she's coming back from an injury or something - I can't recall ever seeing these sorts of finger-flares in people who played seriously.)

I'm not knocking Poon - I don't know her at all, and certainly she blows me out of the water - but I think you might find that in 5 years you can sight-read "To A Wild Rose" as well as she does here. (The Ravel may take you longer, though you're very quick, so who knows.)

sweelinck

Iowa City (location of U Iowa) also has a strong early keyboard music community:

http://iceks.org/

Ed Kottick is an early music musicologist, and one of the agents of Zuckerman Harpsichords who one can have assemble and finish one of their harpsichord kits. He was in the music dept. at U Iowa for many years until his retirement, and has been a part of the early keyboard community through his work in early music and harpsichord building.

iternabe

Ithaca Tiffany Poon's sight reading video came to my mind because it's the only one that I have come across that's showing someone sight reading brand new material. BTW she is not a teacher. I also don't recall she mentioning any deliberate effort to target her sight reading ability. So my impression is this is just what a talented professional pianist of her age range can do.

Annique Göttler did some 1 minute, 10 minute, 1 hour challenges on pieces she never learned, but those are popular pieces that she must have heard and be familiar with.

I also watched and collected some very good video on how to sight read, or how to build the skill to sight read, but they don't contain demonstrations.

ranjit

Ithaca An aside: is it just me, or is there something weird about the way she holds her fingers? I watched the video 3x and kept trying to Zoom in on her fingers, and it seems as if when she's in "neutral" some of them straighten out and even curl up a bit at the last joint. That tendency seems very newbie-like. (I just googled her; she's definitely not a newbie 🙃, so now I'm wondering if she's coming back from an injury or something - I can't recall ever seeing these sorts of finger-flares in people who played seriously.)

This was a very interesting observation, and I've been thinking about it. In short, I think a large part of the reason why she does that here is because she's playing really easy, lyrical music. Often, when I play really easy music, I move my hands in ways that are not "perfect" just because it's fun and more relaxing that way, and beginners mistake that for me being unable to be more efficient, when it's more like how you sway from side to side when taking a leisurely stroll. 🙂 Also, what she's playing here is all lyrical stuff, and she's kind of "preparing" the key press, almost massaging the keys. That extra air time of the fingers followed by a more deliberate press can give you more control and allow you to play with a better sound. Also, I do think that people's hands and fingers are different and people have harmless "quirks", sometimes you end up practicing a certain thing a certain way for 5000 hours and by that point it's more convenient to just let it be than to fix it (for example, fifth finger raising and so on) because you only have so much time and it's not really getting in the way. Her fingers are rather high for neutral and do bend backwards maybe a bit more than they should, but it's hard to tell from a video like this one. A lot of Asian schools emphasize more high finger action, which also might be playing a role here but it's hard to say.

What I recommend is looking at videos where the pianists are actually tasked with something technically difficult, because that forces them to be as efficient as they can be. Here's Tiffany Poon playing a more challenging piece. Do you see the same things you saw in the other video?

Ithaca

iternabe Ithaca Tiffany Poon's sight reading video came to my mind because it's the only one that I have come across that's showing someone sight reading brand new material. BTW she is not a teacher.

For your entertainment, here's someone (who probably teaches at a higher level than most), sight-reading pieces of increasing difficulty:

Rationally I know that he's just very experienced in reading music - not unlike adults who can read Shakespeare aloud fluently with good inflection - but at the same time, his ability to read the stuff at the end of the video seems like black magic. If someone gave me that music to read, I would just turn the pages face-down so I didn't have to look at that notation. 😖

iternabe I also don't recall she mentioning any deliberate effort to target her sight reading ability. So my impression is this is just what a talented professional pianist of her age range can do.

I think you are right; i.e., what she is demonstrating is par for the course for professional pianists. But I have also seen many mid-teens amateurs (who will never, ever be able make a living via the piano) sight-read difficult scores. I think playing a broad variety of musical styles + focusing particularly on developing sight-reading skills probably is key for most normal-ish people.

iternabe

Ithaca That was indeed entertaining to watch. I recognized the 2nd piece from the French movie “Amélie” - one of my favorites.

ranjit

Ithaca For your entertainment, here's someone (who probably teaches at a higher level than most), sight-reading pieces of increasing difficulty:

Yes, that is one of the most impressive demonstrations of sight reading ability I've seen online. Tiffany Poon said she's not a good sight reader in one of her videos, and while I envy her sight reading ability, she's correct imo that it isn't special compared to her peers. However, her ability for imagining the sound, for audiation, seems to be extraordinary, which also relates to memory.

pseudonym58

Being largely self-taught, and having started playing more seriously only later in life, I find that my hands don't naturally fall into shape or positions based on the music in front of me - certainly not the way a true advanced pianist's hands would.
That's one thing that good sight readers rely on, and also the ability to read ahead quite a bit and yet not lose track of where their hands currently are.
Maybe someday I'll get closer to having just a little bit more ability in that area....

ShiroKuro

Ok I finally had a chance to watch those videos — they were both great! To me, that’s sort of the “dream” of sightreading, to be able to sit down with a score the way Tiffany did with “to a wild rose” and play it, having never heard it before, and at the end, say “oh that’s really pretty.” IOW to have sightreading be a way to discover new music to play. Or, like pleasure reading (i.e., text, fiction etc)

At the same time, it was very relatable to see her look at the Bach and talk about how hard it is to sightread. I am sure there are people who can truly sightread Bach (but I will never be one of them)

Also, with the guy’s video, I was reading along with the score so I didn’t notice, but I really noticed with Tiffany’s video how her eyes are on the score probably 100% of the time.

The other thing I wanted to know with her is just how far she’s looking ahead in the music.

Keeping my eyes on the score (not looking down) and reading ahead are two areas that I think I need to improve on when sightreading.

Well and also musicality. As @ranjit noted, Tiffany’s playing was very musical, even just when sightreading, and that, to me, is really the goal.