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I play piano fairly well (I have accompanied professionally) but I play very little during rehearsals.  I record my accompaniments with a digital piano and MIDI software so that I have my hands free to conduct and can make eye contact with the students, and I'm not stuck behind the piano.  You can start or stop the accompaniment anywhere in the song if you want to just work on a specific section.  A dig piano is a big investment (our PTA bought ours), but you can do the same thing with any cheapo keyboard that has MIDI in/out jacks, you can get one for under $200 and you can get MIDI sequencing software for pretty cheap as well... you'd just need MIDI cables and a MIDI interface to connect to your computer (also very reasonable).  We only have our accompanist practice with us one time before the concert.   BTW - our accompanist is also our H.S. choir director (we trade accompanying), and although he is an EXTREMELY accomplished pianist, and was a piano major, he also does the same thing with sequencing accompaniments for use in rehearsals.  The kids need to learn to follow your conducting and you need to be able to devote your attention to how they sound, so behind the piano is NOT where you want to be if you can avoid it. 

To teach parts... I'll get the first pitch from the piano, and just sing it for the kids.  Kids will be able to learn to sing better in tune from the example of your voice than from an instrument with a different timbre.  I try to put parts together a capella and make sure the kids can sing them independently without my playing on the piano, before we add accompaniment for a section of a song.  Of course I work with grades 3-4 for chorus and we do mostly 2 part... but if the kids can't put the 2 parts together unaccompanied, they're not ready to do it with accompaniment and they need more practice on that part individually.  If they can learn to sing their part without the help of the piano so they have to rely on their ear and listen to each other rather than the piano, they will learn to sing better in tune.  I also start my students with learning to sing from solfege in general music a couple years before they can join chorus, so I can also use solfege to help them find pitches.  It's better that they learn to hear the notes in their head than have to rely on the piano to hear their part.

I definitely agree with the two posts above - many teachers use the piano as a crutch.  The teacher who taught my position before me did just that.  When I came to this school, his 11th and 12th grade students who had been in choir for 8-9 years couldn't read music and wouldn't sing without the piano.  They thought I was crazy when I asked them to sing without it!  They didn't understand the concept of different vowels and how they affect the sound and tuning of chords.  The sopranos had no idea about vowel modification in their upper range...you get the picture. 

I'm NOT a piano player.  I wish I was...but I'm just not.  I have hands the size of a kindergardener!  I teach a 7th-8th grade choir as well as two 9th-12th grade choirs and this is what I do:
Over the summer (or whenever I find time) I input all of the pieces that I may do throughout the year into Finale 2007 using my midi keyboard.  Because of the keyboard it doesn't take nearly as long as one may think.  This also helps me prepare the pieces, think specifically about certain vocal lines and problem solve before I even enter the rehearsal.  From these Finale files I use the Kontakt player midi sounds (which are alot better than the general midi sounds) and I create .wav file accompaniments.  I burn these onto cds or play them through the computers in class during rehearsal.  But this is not my main crutch!  I use these to give students a general idea of the harmony and basic feel  of the song and I incorporate them into rehearsal only after we have learned our parts and can sing them independently (and not just hide behind a piano...). 

I do ALOT of singing in my rehearsals.  So much that I sometimes go home with a strained voice, but in the end my students get a good idea of a quality vocal tone, how to modify vowels, and pronunciation.  AND...considering how horrible I am at playing the piano, it's nice to let them know that I can sing!  I don't think they would respect me if I couldn't play the piano AND couldn't sing (and I've heard of choral directors who are in this situation...). 

Feel free to email me if you have any further questions about how this works for me!

Last edited by mhauck (2008-04-23 07:52:59)

I can see both sides of this one.  It is possible to have issues from overuse of the piano.

However, I accompany for other teachers fairly often, and I see issues in the choirs where the teachers can't handle the piano parts as well.

The accompaniment is written as an important part of the music in most cases, and when a choir never hears the piece as a whole more than a time or two before the concert, I don't believe they really musically understand the piece.  They know their little part, and then they learn to basically "block out" the accompaniment and sing their part.  A very important part of choral singing/accompaniment is the ebb and flow between the choir and the piano. 

That's certainly not ideal to never really experience that either.

That's the best case scenario.  At worst, I've shown up to choirs that consistently drop beats out of measures (which would never happen if they were used to the rhythmic fill that the accompaniment provides) and other such things.

I look at it as a tool.  Just because I have a hammer, doesn't mean I want to use it all the time.  Sometimes I need a saw, or a screw driver.  But, when I start trying to bash that nail in with a screw driver - - because I've never bothered to go out and get a hammer - - then it becomes a problem.

I don't have a lot of patience for people who spend a 30 year career just saying, "I don't have one of the skills needed for my job.  Oh well."  Honestly, I've had fifth and sixth graders capable of accompaning over the years.  Definitely by High School, many can handle it and handle it well.  So - - by about the tenth year of a career you should be able to DEVELOP the skill even if you did not already have it before.

That doesn't mean you have to use it every minute.
But I think we should be ABLE to when we want to.

mhauck wrote:

I'm NOT a piano player.  I wish I was...but I'm just not.  I have hands the size of a kindergardener!

I have small hands too (maybe not the size of a kindergartener!  But probably close to a typical 4th grader).  There is a lot of music that I am unable to play note for note (I might be able to if I had 8 hours a day to practice octave scales and stretch out my reach!) because of the large stretch required for octaves.  I can JUST barely reach an octave.  But I have learned - just out of necessity with all the accompanying I have done since I was in high school - to be able to quickly adapt and modify music so that I can modify it by sight.  If you have really good practical theory skills you can scan each beat of the music for its most important elements - bass, chord, melody - and leave out what's non essential. Take out octaves, play smaller inversions of chords so you don't have such a big stretch, keep things all in one octave for one hand instead of jumping octaves when it's written that way (sounds really cool if you can play it well and/or have time to practice, but it's not absolutely necessary for a school choral accompaniment to sound good).  Stuff that requires playing runs in parallel intervals - 3rds/6ths/octaves, etc. - just play the note that is on top if you don't have the practice time or technique to be able to play it accurately note for note.  The key is to just keep going in steady tempo, don't play anything that will clash with what the students are singing (so if you are only playing one note w/your RH and one note w/your LH, but they are notes in the same chord, that's better than flubbing up trying to play it exactly as written), and play expressively in a style and dynamic level that fit the piece. 

Expressive playing - I will tell you from experience - can take you pretty far as a pianist even if you don't have the massive hands and intricately developed technique.  I know high school students who have much better playing technique than I do - but I have gotten (and still get) plenty of work as a pianist (not just accompanying but also for weddings, parties, I even played "cocktail piano" for 5 summers at a restaurant) because the way I play is expressive and enjoyable to listen to and accurate as far as there are few "accidental dissonances."  Of course the ability to do this takes practice and experience just like learning finger/hand technique, but it is technique more of the musical brain and ear than it is physical technique, and you can learn it on the job rather than needing a lot of EXTRA time outside of your teaching time to do it.  Of course I do need to practice sometimes, because I can't sight read everything perfectly and I don't want to screw up my HS teacher's choir concert or someone's wedding ceremony music!!  But if you're talking about playing well enough to accompany or just basic piano skills that can give you other opportunities such as playing for a friend's wedding, good theory/ear/expression skills can take you pretty far in and of themselves.

Something kind of interesting regarding playing piano with small hands but a little off topic - I saw a TV special a few months ago (I can't remember what it was called - might have been on PBS or Discovery Science Channel) about musical prodigies and musical intelligence.  There was a 7-year-old boy who was a piano prodigy, they showed footage of him playing some EXTREMELY technically difficult music when he was even younger than that, I think about age 5.  But it was stuff that required fast use of the fingers (like early Mozart sonatas and some Schubert impromptus) rather than big stretches (like Beehoven sonatas and Brahms piano music).  His teacher - who I wish I'd had as a teacher when I learned piano as a kid! - chose music that pushed his musicianship and musical development but were appropriate for his physical development.  When his hands had grown to the point where he could stretch an octave, his family and piano teacher actually had a special celebration - they had an "Octave Day" cake with 8 candles and sang "Happy Octave to you!"  (it was really cute!!)  The point of the program I think was that musical achievement is both the product of nature (genes), nurture (environment), and disposition.  The boy's mother had immersed him in music from the time he was born, although she herself was not a gifted instrumentalist she was very musical and enjoyed music.  He started playing the piano by himself, picking out songs she had sang to him on the piano on his own.  He was extremely interested in doing music and would do it on his own without encouragement, so that's also part of the reason he was so successful so early.  BTW, his playing even at age 5 from what I heard was very expressive and mature sounding, which I found very surprising.  Anyway, sorry to go off on a tangent, but I thought this was very fascinating and wanted to share it since it popped into my head.  If I can figure out what show it was I will post it because it's something that I'm sure some of you would be interested if it comes on again as a repeat.  I think it may have also included a segment about an autisitic musical savant.

Last edited by Christine Nowmos (2008-05-10 11:08:29)