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Teaching a student to play with expressiveness is often a daunting task. Most students have at least some innate musicality buried in their souls, and a good teacher can usually find and nurture it. But what is the best teaching approach to use? Robert Woody recently published a study titled "The Effect of Various Instructional Conditions on Expressive Music Performance. (1)" This project compared the effectiveness of three approaches to teaching expressiveness to music students:

* aural modeling (AM)

* verbal or written instructions giving concrete verbal instructions (CM), for example, markings such as crescendo, ritardando, accelerando and so on

* verbal instruction using imagery and metaphor (MI)

Three piano melodies were given to 36 college music students, half of whom were advanced pianists, and the other half were deemed competent pianists. The melodies were given to three expert pianists who recorded their ideal aural models. The concrete musical instructions (notations on the score) were created from these models. Seven music professors were given the melodies and asked to provide examples of imagery or descriptive metaphors for each melody; a panel of 12 experienced musicians rated the best examples for use as the imagery and metaphor models (IM). Three expert pianists performed the melodies as they felt were indicated by the chosen imagery examples. The pianists performed each melody three times, and the nine performances were performed on an electric piano that interfaced with a computer and MIDI sequencer. These data were used to set ideal levels of loudness, tempo and articulation for each melody. These performances were also used for the aural model (AM).

Each student was given an unmarked copy of the three melodies and asked to play each into the sequencer. The students were then given each melody with a different teaching model. They were given time to practice and were encouraged to "think aloud" onto an audio tape as they received the instruction and practiced the melody. They then gave a final expressive performance that was recorded by the sequencer as a MIDI computer file. In the AM instruction the students had an unmarked score and listened to the expert model played on their keyboard. They could listen and practice as many times as they wished. In the CM instruction the students were given a score with all the expressive markings notated on the music. The MI model was an unmarked score with the printed text of imagery or metaphors printed oil the next page. (See Figure 1). (2)

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Dynamics and then tempo were considered to be the most salient expressive properties of Melody 1 ; tempo and then dynamics of Melody 2; and articulation for Melody 3.

Woody found that no one mode of instruction was consistently the most successful in producing a more expert expressiveness, but there were some interesting trends. In an analysis of the students' verbalized thoughts, those who "cognitively translated the imagery into explicit plans for concrete musical properties tended to make greater change in their performance." (3) When working from the aural model the students tended to simply imitate the model rather than using it as a stimulus for their own creativity. The concrete model produced consistently good results, but induced significantly more practice repetitions, and so was somewhat inefficient. The metaphor/imagery instruction produced definite changes in expressivity, but not always in the direction that the experts intended.

Comparing the two groups of students' performances, the advanced pianists' initial baseline performance was more similar to the experts' models, suggesting that they had a head start over the merely competent pianists. Working with the single most salient feature of the melody, the less skilled pianists were able to "close the gap" with the advanced pianists on the final performance. They were not able, however, to incorporate the less salient features as well as the more skilled players had (perhaps subconsciously) included. Woody concludes:

      ... in reality, most music teachers
   use all three [approaches] in
   varying proportions, and in conjunction
   with each other. This
   may in fact be the key to success.
   Certainly a goal of music education
   is to equip students for a
   lifetime of music-making. An
   adaptability to multiple
   approaches to musical expression
   would seem to be part of this. If
   students do cognitively carry out
   a translation process whereby
   they make expressive instruction
   useful for their performing, then
   it is important for teachers to
   facilitate the acquisition of this
   skill. This requires exposure to
   all modes of expressive communication
   and the combination
   thereof. If working with a developing
   musician, a teacher who
   asks for a melody to be performed
   'like liquid velvet' might
   do well to provide a model of
   what that sounds like, then
   explicitly direct attention to the
   salient musical properties of that
   model. (4)

Reflections

Most teachers will use any and every method available to help a student play more expressively. We sing, we conduct, we dance, we demonstrate, we invent analogies, we create images and we mark the score with a veritable rainbow of colors. As this study indicates, some combination will usually work on any particular piece. What I am wondering, however, is if the magic combination is in some way related to the individual student's preferred learning modality? Does the singing, dancing, demonstrating approach (AM) work best with an aural student, and does writing in the score work best with a visual student? Do metaphors work best with kinesthetic learners? It would seem almost self-evident that it would, but this aspect was not included in this study. It would be very interesting and helpful if the study were replicated, and each student also given a test of learning modality preferences, to see if there were any significant correlations.

NOTES

(1.) Woody, Robert. "The Effect of Various Instructional Conditions on Expressive Music Performance" Journal of Research in Music Education, 54, No. 1 (2006): 21-36.

(2.) Ibid., 24. (reprinted with permission)

(3.) Ibid., 32.

(4.) Ibid., 34

Rebecca Grooms Johnson, NCTM, is the director of keyboard pedagogy at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. She is an experienced independent piano teacher and a past president of the Ohio MTA. Johnson holds a Ph.D. degree in piano pedagogy.