Exercise VII - Visual Span

Visual Span is the size of the effective visual field and it is also the ability to remember and repeat a series of visual stimuli. This sounds very familiar for musicians. While sight-reading, we exercise this ability all the time. We see sequences on our visual field, we organize them, remember and reproduce them on the instrument.

According to the PTS II manual, this exercise requires "Visual Sequential Memory, Working Memory, Perceptual Speed, Visual Motor Accuracy and Sequential Processing" and this exercise is recommended for "individuals with memory problems, reading decoding problems, early grade arithmetic difficulty and visual magnocellular deficits".

Here, a sequence flashes on the screen one character at a time. You are suppose to remember the sequence and then type it (play it) on the computer keyboard.

Variables:

- Stimuli length: character numbers in the sequence range form 2 to 6.
- Stimuli size: medium and large.
- Stimuli type: numbers, upper case letters, lower Case letters, codes, (combination of letters and numbers).
- Delay: in some levels, you must withhold the answer while a moving distraction (bird, balloon, fish) appears on the screen. The purpose of the delay variable is to develop working memory*.

- Goals: 70% or greater, correct trials.

I recommend you to read:
The Perceptual Span and the Eye-Hand Span in Sight Reading Music**
Frances E. Truitt; Charles Clifton Jr; Alexander Pollatsek; Keith Rayner
Visual Cognition, 1464-0716, Volume 4, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 143 – 161


* Working memory is a process that involves remembering one stimulus while performing another task. This is extremely important when sight-reading.
** I will write a review about this article in the future.

Sight-Reading Satie

Poulenc once said: "When he (Satie) died, the condition in which they found his (Satie's) piano showed that he hardly ever made use of it". Poulenc always wondered how Satie wrote perfect pianistic music without the help of the keyboard. I now wonder the same thing. I've always liked teaching and playing his pieces because they fit our hands perfectly well and it is just plain fun. Another reason to sight-reading his pieces is the amount of patterns (chunks) you will find. His compositions are covered with melodic sequences, scales and arpeggios, broken intervals and chords, and brilliant chains of chord progressions. The rhythms are a bit static but suitable for younger students. If you are tired of sight-reading classic sonatas searching for "chunks", try Satie. You can also be entertained by his writings.

Two years ago, I performed Sports et Divertissements (1914) for my students. Needless to say, this set of 20 pieces really touch my students imagination.
the musicologist Rollo Myers* said: "These little masterpieces of wit and ironic observation reveal his genius perhaps more convincingly then any of his other works, with the exception of Socrate".
The edition I use is Dover Publications, Inc.,NY and it has the original drawings by Charles Martin, a popular illustrator. Perhaps influenced by the drawings, I like to describe these little pieces as "thumbnails" (a term my art teacher loved using for small sketches). The whole set is graded level 10. However, individual pieces can vary in levels.
The text Satie wrote to accompany each piece, according to Myers, is inseparable form the music. However, Satie has issued the following WARNING: "I forbid the text to be read out loud during the performance of the music. Failure to conform with these instructions will cause the transgressor to incur my just indignation".**
You can find the whole history and description about Sports et Divetissement in Myers book.*
They are ideal for sight-reading because they are very short and usually each of them explores one or two patterns.


The teenager's favorite! Sonatine Bureaucratique (1917)-level 8.
This sonatina in one movement is a parody of Clementi's Sonatina Op.36, #1. Great sight-reading material since everybody HAS once learned Clementi's Sonatina. He wrote it in neo-classic style and all classic patterns are present in a different key (A Major). Half way through the piece, Satie writes: " A nearby piano plays Clementi" :)
This is a fun work not musically interesting.


CHORD PROGRESSIONS


Sonneries de la Rose + Croix (1892-level8) and Le Fils des Etoiles (1891-level 7-8) are good examples of pieces where Satie writes great chord progressions to practice sight-reading. The length of these medieval sounding progressions, the fact that the chords are static and all written in quarter note value and the 'lack of bar lines' forces one to keep the eyes on the page or else, one is lost. Satie alternates these chord progressions with sections where he explores single rhythmic ideas. There are no phrase markings providing a good opportunity to explore this subject with students.

Satie often writes sets of three pieces almost as if he were a sculpture who wishes one to look at his work from three dimension (i.g., 3 Sarabands, 3 Gymnopedies, 3 Gnossiennes, 3 Morceaux en Forme de Poire-4 hands, 3 Embryons Desseches, 3 Preludes Flasques).

Last year, I performed Embryons Desseches (1913-level 10) on Halloween for a group of teachers and for my students. Teachers and students were amused by the parody of Chopin's Funeral March and by the mocking chords who tease the audience at the end of the first and third movements clearly making fun of the Romantic composers.
These pieces written exploring many familiar patterns. They are good sight-reading material. Also, audiences love it.
If you don't have the score, Rollo Myers has a very detailed description of each piece.

This is getting too long. I will write more about Satie's works later on. I will include some elementary sight-reading repertoire too.

* I wrote the name of Myers' book in the previous posting.
** I have been to a concert where the pianist had her husband reading the text before each piece. Satie still hates them :o

Tale About Title, Hen, Sea Cucumber, Octopus and Other Creatures - Part II

If you read the part one of this tale, you know that I can be very childish and sarcastic. I can't help it.
I have this same feeling about Erik Satie. He often comes through as an irreverent, ironic, and rebellious teenager.
If I were a composer, I would be Satie. I identify a lot with his humor. Satie writes descriptive music, just what I was complaining about in the previous post. However, I enjoy the conciseness and simplicity of his compositions. Just like him, I rebel against virtuosity and excessive romanticism.
Satie is to music what Coetzee and Jorge Luis Borges are to literature. They only write essential things. Nothing redundant and unnecessary. Nothing needs to be added or removed.
Satie foreshadowed the Dadaism, Impressionism, Neo-classicism and Surrealism. He was known for saying "I arrived too young in a very old world".
His work can not be ignored by music teachers and students. Poulenc, Ravel, and Milhaud have confessed that Satie was the composer who most influenced them. Stravinky's Sonata for two pianos uses (on the second piano part) chords almost identical to the ones on the first Gymnopedie.

I recommend you to read the first important work published (1948) in English about Satie. It has a very good section about his piano work. It is called Erik Satie by Rollo H. Myers.
The recording I recommend is Satie Oeuvres Pour Piano by Ciccolini.

Even if you don't like this eccentric and humorous composer as much as I do, his music is a great source of material for sight-reading. Young students are usually fascinated by the titles (as most people are) and his writings.
Milhaud has stated that Satie was a miracle who would always remain young and the younger generations would always stand up for him because of "the perfection of his music and for complete and uncompromising sincerity".

My next posting will be a description of several Satie's works and their relevance to sight-reading.

Tale About Title and Hen Part I

I am an Opus number musician. Titles and program music turn me off as soon as I see it. I like absolute music. I don't want to be contaminated by titles.
A former student of mine, was playing for me a piano etude named "Little Flower". He told me - I do not dislike this piece, but I hate its title.
I told him that the composer had not named this set of etudes and in fact, I had a different edition where that same piece had a different title. I then told him to rename the piece to his liking.
A few weeks later, the same boy played the same etude for the state syllabus examination. The adjudicator, having nothing else to tell him, said - Imagine a little flower in your mom's garden... He replied - This piece is now called Page 53 (the page number where the piece had been printed).
Another student of mine performed a sophisticated and abstract Kabalevsky Prelude for a young and talented pianist who had just won an important competition. The pianist, after stating he did not know that piece, told the 13 year old boy to imagine a walk in the park, birds, bla, bla, bla.
I am sure Kabalevsly wasn't thinking about strolling in the park and getting his exercise done. He dedicated the Preludes Op.38 to his teacher Nikolai Miakovsky. The closest thing to a walk in the park was the tempo marking Andante non troppo.
When attending an Oregon Symphony concert, the conductor, trying to be friendly, disclosed to the audience that the Haydn Symphony we were about to hear was named by someone clever "THE HEN SYMPHONY" because the second theme sounded like the "jerky back-and forth head motion of a walking hen". Scary! All I could think from that moment on was... You guessed! The conductor achieved his goal.
Why do some people have the need to name music? What is wrong with Symphony in g minor or Hoboken I/83?
(there is a explanation for my change of tone)

To be continued...