[Smt-talk] Keyboards for theory classes?

[Justin London]

Dear colleagues,
 
As one of those guitarists-with-no-keyboard-chops (and one of those music-psychology-theorists to boot), there are many things I might say in response to the keyboard discussion so far.  But I will limit myself to two points, which, while I doubt will change anyone’s mind about whether or not to use keyboards in the theory curriculum (and to what extent), I hope will at least get us thinking a bit more broadly.
 
The first has to do with the efficacy of keyboard skills/practice for aural skills, as it has been claimed that keyboard players have better ears.  This may well have been observed—I trust Donna Doyle on this—but not, perhaps, because it is the piano practice per se.  It is well established from studies in musical memory and pitch perception that familiarity with particular sounds/timbres enhances our recognition and reproduction abilities.  I don’t have perfect pitch, but I do have very good pitch memory for E-A-D-G-B-E when played on a guitar, in the requisite octaves (that is, a kind of highly context specific sort of perfect pitch). Similarly, performance in musical memory tasks is better when one hears a melody played one’s own instrument; this has been documented with various musicians on their primary instruments.  So, here’s the rub for aural skills and the piano: if we give our melodic and harmonic dictation tests from the piano (and especially if we play chord progressions in characteristic keyboard voicings), then (a) pianists will have a natural advantage, as they are far more familiar with the sound of the piano and its characteristic harmonies, and (b) any practice a non-pianist has at the piano will enhance their aural skills when they are assessed in this way.  It would be interesting to see if the piano advantage still holds if, for example, one gave all of the melodic dictation examples (both drills and tests) for an entire semester on the violin. 
 
And it may be even more simple than the timbral familiarity of the piano: keyboard harmony is a way of getting students to spend (more) time learning melodic and harmonic patterns and structures, so they will (naturally) tend to do better recognizing those patterns and structures in scores and by ear.  Suffice to say, there are numerous “potential confounds” and “hidden variables” in claims that the various benefits of keyboard skills are simply due to the keyboard itself. 
 
My second point, and here I am in great sympathy with Stephen Soderberg, is that the emphasis on keyboard skills, harmonic praxis, and musical repertoire gives our students a very skewed understanding of how music works.  The piano is a very weird instrument, but because of its ubiquity, we don’t notice that its fixed pitch and temperament, characteristic attack and decay, spectral uniformity, and other characteristics make it unlike most other instruments and instrumental and vocal ensembles.  As a result, broad aspects of our student’s (and perhaps our own) musical understanding (consonance and dissonance, chord voicing, voice leading, articulation, etc., etc.) become warped due to the very peculiar acoustics and ergonomics of the piano.  The piano is a magnificent achievement of 18th and 19th century technology, giving musicians a polyphonic instrument with great tonal and dynamic range.  These days, however, musicians can and do do a lot more, using the full range of technologies available to them when they compose, record, and perform their music.  Might we also think about bringing some of these technologies into our classrooms, and exploit the doors of musical understanding that they can open for our students(?)

Best,
Justin London

*************************************************
Justin London
Professor of Music (and other stuff), Carleton College
Department of Music
One North College St.
Northfield, MN 55057 USA
+1 507-222-4397

Affiliated Researcher, Centre for Music and Science, University of Cambridge
Visiting Professor (2014), University of Jyväskylä, Finland
jlondon at carleton.edu