Vision And Music Making by Frank Kowalsky

Paul Harris, an optometrist and well trained musician sent me the article Vision and Music Making. A real gift.
In this article, Kowalsky writes about how he has learned that improving vision skills helps music learning, comprehension and reading speed.
He mentions two trainable skills, I have mentioned earlier, the tachistoscopic ability and the peripheral vision.
The tachistoschopic exercises I worked on with PTS II program (see post 02-07-2010)were the ones I needed more sections to finish. There is no way to train this skill as traditionally done by musicians (at their instruments).
My performance doing the parafoveal exercises, however, was very good. Which leads me to conclude that I have a good peripheral vision. The fact that I have a good peripheral vision does not imply that I am using it correctly or using it at all.
Kowalsky states: "Peripheral vision (sometimes referred to as
peripheral awareness) is another important concept that I had to redefine for myself. It implies more than merely seeing off to the sides; rather, it is an awareness of the entire background – the space to the sides, the top, the bottom, and the depth of field. Peripheral vision is a consciousness of everything that is not the object specifically being attended to".
After reading this, I went for for a car ride and I decided to check my "peripheral awareness". There was none! I was appalled. I then, started being aware of it, which by the way is very easy to do and I could not wait to try the same thing on the piano. Although I and other musicians know the usual rules: count, look ahead, don't correct, bla, bla, bla... It was not enough. I was using the "tunnel vision" Kowalsky describes while driving and while playing.
I went home, put two objects on both sides of my piano and I started sight-reading while aware of those objects left and right and also aware of a closet right in front of me.
How easy! I can hardly describe to you my surprise. As I became aware of my sides and top, my whole score was available to me. My perceptual span tripled and so did my tempo. This is the "tip" I was looking for. I knew my difficulties sight-reading had do be related to my eyes since I am a well trained musician and I do not lack practice.
OVERNIGHT MY SIGHT-READING IMPROVED A LOT. I have been misusing my visual abilities all my life.
I am impressed how sensitive Kowalsky is to be able to put this "perceptual puzzle" into meaningful words and how he was aware of it when millions of good sight-readers can't describe how they do it.
I will keep researching vision and music with Dr J. I am open to more ideas that will make me even better and help other musicians. Who knows, I might have other bad habits that I can fix.
I might be like these obsessive people that collect things compulsively and are never satisfied.

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...

Exercise VI - Visual Sequencing

The ability to retain visual sequences in the short-term memory long enough to recall them is crucial for sight-readers.
A person with problems retaining visual sequences because of a lack of the left/right directional tracking is not able to perceive the order of stimuli in which they appear and switch the order of letters in a word or notes in a music.

According to the PTS II Manual, Visual Sequencing "requires Temporal Visual Processing, Visual Attention, Visual Discrimination, Visual Figure Ground, and Visual Speed".

This exercise calls for you to find the characters presented on top of the screen in the same order in which they are presented. Using the right arrow key, you have to move a yellow box over the "first occurrence of the first letter or number in the sequence at the top of the screen, and then press the spacebar on your keyboard". You continue using this strategy until the last letter or number in the sequence has been found.

Variables are:

- Target Type: numbers, upper and lower case letters;
- Codes: combination of letters and numbers sequential order (i.e., ABCDEF, 12345) or random order (i.e., HDUER, 574839);
- Length of Sequence: number of characters in the sequence varies from 2 to 26;
- Number of Characters: number of characters on the screen varies from 40 to 300.

- Goals: to advance to the next level you need less than 2.5 average errors per trial.

It was easier for me to recognize stimuli in sequential order rather then in random order.
As the sequence of characters became longer, I was advised by the optometrist to memorize as much as I could. In order to do the exercise this way, I was required to find the memorized characters, then move my eyes to the top of the screen, back to where I stopped and then come back down and continue where I left. Exactly the same thing as looking at the keyboard while sight-reading and having to go back to the score to the same spot I was previously looking down to.

Please go to http://www.eyecanlearn.com
On this site you are going to find wonderful eye exercises designed for children. However,they can help you visualize what I have been describing.
Bellow the exercises this site offers offers, there are many interesting links to other eye training activities .

Alexandre Dossin, Tchaikovsky and The Seasons Op.37bis

The Seasons, edited by Dossin and recently published by Schirmer (Performance edition), is a set of 12 pieces, one for each month. Whether you want to play or teach The Seasons, this is the edition and CD.
Dossin makes you wish the year had more then 12 months. His imagination and skill made me hear an orchestra playing (I am a big fan of Tchaikovsky's orchestral work).

The level of the pieces range from early intermediate to late advanced. Although they are not technically challenging, they are part of the 3rd year examination at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory and at the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition.

This edition includes: Historical Notes, Performance Notes and a section About the Editor.

The Performance notes are very helpful in explaining how and who commissioned this group of pieces as well as the origin of the subtitles and poetic epigraphs.
I found the suggestions given by Dossin on how to perform the work as a whole or in smaller groups very interesting.*
There are priceless notes on how to perform and practice each "month".

This edition was based on the composer's manuscript but Dossin added fingering, provided a small range of metronome markings and pedal. Dynamics and articulation are original and suggestions are in parenthesis.

Dossin wrote the fingering for a medium-size hand. It is hard to describe it but the fingering is extremely unique. You have to try it for yourself. Obviously he put a lot of thought on writing them. I like how the fingering helps the phrasing (e.g., April), legato (e.g., April), articulation and even dynamics (e.g., placing strong fingers on accents).
There is a lot of fingering redistribution (e.g., May) in order to help pedaling and suggestions on hands placement (e.g., January, April).

I hope this new edition helps popularize this set. The two well known pianist's guide for repertoire by Magrath and Hinson have small descriptions of this set.
I have taught just about every piece from Album for the Young Op.39 (levels 3 to 8) and I am sure I am not alone. During my sight-reading exploration, I read the Op.40 and I confess I was very disappointed. I could not believe this was the same guy that wrote one of my favorite concertos for violin Op.35 :(

Alexandre Dossin has several recordings. Go to http://www.uoregon.edu/~music/About/bios/dossina.htm to see his complete discography.
My favorites, as a teacher, are the Kabalevsky Preludes and Sonatas and (finally!) a great recording of Kabalevsky Sonatinas.
Dossin is also editing and recording Tchaikovsky Album for the Young Op.39. It will be published by Schirmer this coming March.

*I was amused to read on Hinson's Guide to the Pianist's Repertoire the following description: "Twelve pieces, one for each month. More effective when performed individually". I am sure Dossin will be amused as well. Dossin wrote: "In my opinion, performing one piece at a time works well only as an encore...but not in a recital program. These pieces are very simple and of a small scope, and they tend to feel even smaller when accompanied by other major works".