Keys and Cords: A Comparison of Piano and Vocal Teaching Strategies

Renske Luijten

The profession of a music teacher has developed over the past years in a way where teachers are required to be more versitale and not focussed on one specific element. A lot of collegues of mine, including myself, work at a music school where they teach children not only their main instrument, but also a secondary instrument, in my case piano. This brings up interesting challanges as a lot of teaching strategies overlap, but there might also be approaches that differ between various instruments. In this research, we explore how private vocal lessons compare to private piano lessons and what the specific teaching strategies are of these instruments. Following up on this, we analyze how these finding inspire my own teaching practice and how one instrument might benefit from the teaching strategies of the other instrument. This research includes a dive into already existing literature, interviews with Conservatory teachers who specify in vocal and piano pedagogy and interviews with private school teachers. Additionally, observations were made of multiple vocal and piano lessons given by myself as well as the other teachers mentioned above.

1. Introduction

Four years ago, I had my job interview for my work as vocal teacher at a private music school. The person who interviewed me asked if it was alright for me to also teach piano students, apart from my vocal students. My first response was ‘but I’m not a pianist’. She told me that I wouldn’t be teaching very experienced students and would only start with beginners. She ensured me that, because of my bachelor as a music teacher, it would be alright. As Kirschenmann, Overmeer & de Vugt (2022) express in their article about the changing profession of the music teacher, is it nowadays much more normal to not only teach at high schools but also include more options in your teaching practice. ‘Many music teachers organize their own projects for schools or art centers or start their own music or singing school. Some conduct amateur groups or teach an instrument, privately or at an institution. Many are also performing musicians alongside their work as teachers.’ (ibid., p. 128). As the teaching field is broader nowadays, it didn’t feel very weird to accept the offer and to also start to teach piano students.

Now, four years later, I still teach piano students and I am quite enjoying it. I manage to achieve what I want to achieve, and my students make progress. During my Masters, I talked a lot about teaching piano and teaching voice, and while talking about these different instruments I started to notice that my piano lessons sometimes looked a lot like my vocal lessons. This interested me, as I never really learned how to teach the piano. How can I ensure that my piano teaching is correct? And if my voice and piano pedagogies are the same, is this a problem?

I started to talk about this subject with my peers. A lot of them mentioned that they also teach multiple instruments, sometimes an instrument similar to their own, for example trumpet and trombone, saxophone and clarinet, but often their main instrument combined with piano. I got really curious to whether these different instrumental lessons would have similar teaching approaches and strategies. As for my own lessons, it made me wonder if I could improve my own lessons by being more aware of the pedagogical differences and also, if I could maybe improve my singing lessons by looking at piano didactics and visa versa.

Of course, it would be very interesting to look into all the differences between various instrumental lessons, however, this research would be way to big. My main interest lies in researching something close to my own practice. So, for this research I stick to the following research question:

What are the specific vocal and piano teaching strategies of expert teachers that can inspire my own teaching practice?

In order to answer this question, I will first look at my own teaching, to observe in what way my teaching strategies do overlap. My observations will also clarify what elements I need to or can adapt in my teaching. After my observations I will contact piano and vocal teachers at the conservatory, to observe their lessons and ask them questions about the pedagogical aspects that belong to their instrument. Lastly, I will do the same with piano and vocal teachers who teach amateurs at music schools. This last step will be included because of the overlap with my own teaching, as I also teach at a music school.

The sub-questions that belong to my main questions are:

1. What are the strategies of expert teachers regarding vocal lessons and piano lessons?
2. What are the strategies of private studio teachers regarding vocal lessons and piano lessons?
3. How do these strategies differ from each other?
4. What are the differences between conservatoire teachers and private studio teachers?
5. What could be interesting teaching strategies to implement from the other instrument?
6. What can improve my own lesson looking at these strategies?

1.1 Hypothesis

I have been teaching piano and voice for four years now. During these four years, I thought a lot about the differences between teaching piano and teaching voice. One of the things that always comes to my mind when teaching beginners, is the first note of a lesson. In the first lesson of a piano student, the student will, most of the times, sit behind the piano and the teacher would ask the student to press a note. If the student already has some knowledge, the teacher would for instance ask to press the middle C. In the first lesson of a vocal student, a teacher would never ask the student to sing a random note, nor to sing the middle C. If you would ask this to a student, first of all the C would not mean anything to the student, but more important, to begin the lesson with only singing a random note would not create a safe learning environment in the lesson. Because of this difference, the beginning of music lessons always interested me.

Connected to this subject is the vulnerability of the voice. I always feel like there is a big difference in making remarks and comments on playing the piano and on singing. When a piano student plays a wrong note, most of my students don’t really care, when one of my vocal students makes a weird sound or sings a wrong note, they stop singing and are embarrassed. Not handling these weird sounds with care, can ruin the safe learning environment. Another difference that I noticed is the difference in finding repertoire. I always struggle to find the right repertoire for my students. I want to make sure that they like it but that it also fits their learning-curve. Even coming up with the right learning-curve for the student is sometimes a challenge. Every student has a different voice and a different way of using their voice, so no one has the same learning-curve. With my piano students, I never have this problem, mainly because I work with a piano method which includes songs connected to a predetermined learning-curve.

The piano is a visible instrument, and the voice is an instrument in your body, which you cannot see. Because of this fact, I always feel like it is harder to give specific instructions to a vocal student. It is not visible what the students does and thus harder to specify. Moreover, I have the feeling that during my vocal lessons, I work more with metaphors as ‘try to sing it like this’ or ‘can you imagine that you sing it like this’. This is something I don’t use as much in my piano lessons.

Apart from these bigger themes, there are also some smaller noticeable differences. For instance, all my vocal lessons start with a warm-up, while none of my piano lessons do. And I write down less homework in my vocal lessons compared to my piano lessons.

Because of these things, teaching voice feels more difficult than teaching piano, which is weird considering the voice is my main instrument.

These differences are based on observations during my own lessons. It would be interesting to investigate the characteristics of piano and vocal lessons in general to see if my observation can be confirmed and if there are more differences that are interesting to investigate. Thus, for me the reason to do this research.

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