Please, come home and practice the piano

Ang Lee doesn't expect his children to fully understand his point of view from the beginning. He knows that this is unrealistic.

During the pre-class guidance process, he tried his best to let the children view the melody from the most original perspective.

This simplified process is to subtract, subtract harmony, subtract rhythm, subtract beat, leaving only the pitch connecting lines like an electrocardiogram.

Only by allowing children to see the bare melody lines first can they focus on how the melody changes when other elements such as harmonic rhythm and beats appear.

In other words, how can children avoid the melody being disturbed by other factors when playing a piece of music.

This is a key point in his teaching system, listening.

"Ok."

Ang Lee returned to the piano and sat down, "Now let's go back to Schubert's Serenade, and let's try to find the melody you are familiar with."

After speaking, Li An took off his watch and put it aside. He raised his hands and lowered his fingers with a breath. The prelude of the serenade started. It was still a serenade that started with major chords. The children still felt awkward at the beginning.

However, as the music unfolded, the children followed Teacher Li's words to find familiar melody lines.

In the process of searching, in order to clearly grasp the melody line, everyone gradually became less concerned about the progression of the harmony.

When everyone clearly grasped the melody line, they suddenly discovered that the melody was still so beautiful, even though it was in a major key.

When it came to the major-key part of the original song, Teacher An Li's minor-key harmony made them feel like they were back under the quiet night sky.

When the song ends, the melody remains the same, but the feeling given to everyone is completely different.

"Have you ever experienced anything like this?"

Li An turned sideways, played the piano and asked to the bottom of the podium: "I was playing a piece of music and suddenly my brain short-circuited. It was obvious that my fingers were still moving, and my mind knew what to play next, but I just felt like I didn't know what I was playing. .”

In an instant, all the children raised their hands.

Ang Lee signaled everyone to put their hands down, turned around and played a passionate piece of music.

The children listened with passion, especially in the latter part. I don’t know what chords Teacher Li used, but in short it was just one word - "burn".

Suddenly he stopped and asked everyone again: "I repeated the theme melody several times."

"Twice?" "Once?" "Three times?"

There were various answers, and Ang Lee gave the correct answer, "The theme melody is exactly the same three times. From now on, your attention will be on my left hand and ignore the right hand."

"You're ignoring the melody."

The children suddenly realized that the reason why they didn't know what they were playing when playing the piano was because the melody line in their minds was broken.

"Many times, when a moving harmonic progression appears, we must be careful. Our attention must always remain on the progression of the melody. If the melody line is interrupted during our performance, all finger movements will become mechanical. .”

"The development of the melody must be maintained at all times. To put it more seriously, the progress of music does not depend on harmony. Harmony is just fuel, and melody progression is the engine. As players, we must not be disturbed by the harmony of the left hand, and The sound serves the melody, and we must listen to the melody.”

A wave of green teaching points +1 rose up in front of him, and Li An nodded happily.

“Now remember that first sentence with me, the melody played by the right hand has nothing to do with the chord played by the left hand.”

This time the children completely understood why Teacher Li wanted to kick the harmony out of the melody at first, and how the function of the left hand could be confused with the function of the right hand.

Seeing that the children seemed to be feeling something, Li An became more direct: "Then let's see the rhythm."

When it comes to rhythm, children are very talkative. Even if you don't give examples, we can all imagine that harmony and melody are two different things. After all, they are played by two hands.

But isn’t the rhythm in the melody? ? Although according to what you said, there is no rhythm reflected in the melody line, but, but, you would like to say that rhythm does not belong to melody, so what does it belong to?
Ang Lee certainly knows what the children are thinking, but the way to express rhythm is another topic, and he must first make it clear to the children that rhythm does not belong to melody.

"Come on, come on, why don't I stop playing," Li An stood up and walked quickly to the audience, "In this way, I don't choose anyone, you choose yourselves. Each group chooses a representative to come up and play, and we will let you Play it yourself and let you listen to it, okay?"

How could the children stand this "provocation"? They had to send the best player in their group to accept the challenge!

Soon, each group of children elected their representatives from a distance.

A Bach Squad: Miao Hengrui

Mozart Team [-]: Liu Ziqian

Three Schubert teams: Ma Hao
Four Haydn teams: Che Lin

Five Beethoven Squads: Tang Xiaoxing

Five children got up and stood on the stage. This can be said to be the strongest performance lineup of this summer camp!

The friends in the audience were very excited, and the five people on the stage were a little confused. What did Teacher Li want them to come up to?

Li An gathered the five children together and whispered instructions.

ha? Is it that simple for five children to listen to what Xin said?
Ang Lee: "Just repeat it for eight measures, keep it simple."

Simple, too simple.

But none of the five children dared to say it was simple. They looked at each other and I always felt like there was something deceitful about it.

"Come on, each person has a piano, we'll start right away."

The five people sat down in front of the five pianos and waited for the next order.

"Everyone has heard of Canon."

Audience: "I've heard of it!"

Li An turned to look at the five people: "We will follow your grouping order. Miao Hengrui will play first, then Liu Ziqian will come in, Ma Hao will come in, Che Lin will come in, and Tang Xiaoxing will come in. Do you understand?"

The five children on the stage said in unison: "I understand."

Li An stepped aside and the whole place fell silent.

For a moment, "1, 2, 3, let's go."

Following Li An's order, Miao Hengrui raised his right hand and started playing the melody that Teacher Li just told him.

Among the five people, only Liu Ziqian has played the canon, but it really doesn't matter. There are only eight bars repeated back and forth, and it's just one hand. Teacher Li just told them what to play.

A beautiful melody was drawn from Miao Hengrui's fingertips, just one bar later, "Liu Ziqian."

Liu Ziqian joined in, and Miao Hengrui's performance was like a pebble falling into calm water, creating ripples.

"Ma Hao."

The little fat boy Ma Hao joined in, and the sense of integration of the three voices immediately emerged.

"Cherin."

Che Lin joined in, and the four voices created a melodious and ethereal song.

"Tang Xiaoxing."

At the last moment when Tang Xiaoxing joined, the five voices were like a rainbow, independent and integrated with each other, creating a gorgeous and dreamy scene.

The children in the audience were intoxicated. This was the first time they heard such a canon. Although there were only eight bars and no subsequent parts, the infinite repetition was not monotonous at all. Every second had a finishing echo, as if it were a stage. A perpetual motion machine that can't stop.

Everyone was fascinated when they heard the "disturbing scenery" prompt suddenly appeared, "Hey, let me ask, no matter whose performance you use as the melody, do you find that the melody does not seem to change?"

Indeed, Wang Xiaohu's attention has always been on Che Lin's performance, and the melody has never changed, just repeating the eight-bar cycle.

"Listen again, are their rhythms different from the beginning?"

terror!
In the next second, when Wang Xiaohu's attention came to the rhythm, really! ! Why has Che Lin's rhythm changed?

Many children discover this, and the overall rhythm of the music has unknowingly changed from what they first heard.

"stop."

The five children on the stage stopped and the music in the classroom stopped abruptly. Ang Lee asked the five of them: "Let me tell you, are the five of you playing the same content?"

The five children said in unison: "Yes."

The audience was confused. At least a third of the people thought that the five people were playing completely different things!
Li An then asked: "Has your rhythm changed during the repetition?" The five children collectively shook their heads: "No."

impossible! !

impossible! !

The audience went crazy, how could it be possible!

Li An raised his lips: "Okay, I give you a round of applause. You played very well."

"Wow————————"

The five children returned to their seats with applause. As soon as they sat down, they were "questioned" by the friends around them!
In the end, the children were "discouraged". It turned out that the rhythm and melodic changes of the music would also change without changing the melody.

In other words, melody can really be independent of rhythm! And it will also affect the rhythm! ?

There is nothing you can do if you don’t want to believe it, the facts are right in front of everyone.

The live effect that Ang Lee needed has been achieved, "You must want to say that because five people played roulette together, it gave you some kind of hallucination, right?"

The children were grasping at straws: "Yes!"

Li An was waiting for this reply, "Okay."

This time he sat down at the piano and started playing the first movement of the Italian Concerto with one hand.

When the performance reached measures 27 to 30, he slowed down and asked, "Pay attention to the fa-mi-fa in the high voice. Is there any change in the melody?"

Children: "No!"

Ang Lee played it again and again and asked again: "Has the melody changed?"

The children confirmed: "No!"

"Okay." Ang Lee stood up and took a pen to write the score of this melody on the big screen. When the children saw that the rhythms of the two fa-mi-fa were completely different, they were collectively speechless.

But Ang Lee seemed unwilling to let the children go. He came to the piano and let the children look at the score and listen to him playing. After playing for the last time, he asked: "Has the melody changed?"

Children: "No."

Ang Lee: "What about the rhythm?"

children:"."

Even a blind person can see that the rhythms of the two sections of a-mi-fa on the score are different.

Now it is no longer a matter of change for the children, they are eager to know why.

Ang Lee: "Children, music contains melody, harmony, rhythm, and so on."

"But when we put melody, harmony, rhythm, etc. together, can it be equal to music?"

"Why not? Because music is the art of sound, and it always gives us auditory feelings, not vision."

"What you see may not be what you hear. The true nature of the melody has never left our ears."

"Learn to listen to the melody."

"Say the second sentence with me, the melody has nothing to do with the rhythm."

"Melody has nothing to do with rhythm!!"

With another wave of teaching points increasing, Li An felt that he could return to the first question.

"So what is a melody?"

The children were already wide-eyed and ready, but then they heard: "It seems that we still can't give him an exact definition."

The children collectively vomited blood when they heard this sentence and wanted to rush up and surround Teacher Li! !

"But what we can conclude is that melody is something independent of harmony, rhythm, and beat. Does anyone object?"

The whole class shook their heads collectively.

"Okay, now let's move on to the next step of learning, performance techniques."

"Today I will share with you two methods of expressing melody, one is a sound-centered progression, and the other is a direction-centered progression."

"Let's talk about the first type first, which is centered on sound."

Ang Lee sat down in front of the piano to demonstrate for the children, "You must still remember that there was a melody like this in yesterday's Turkish March."

"Dangdangdang-"

The passionate one-handed melody goes up and down regularly like a three-story staircase. "After the progression from here, the melody immediately begins a series of circuitous descents. The #dol at the beginning of the second full measure indicates this descent." Start."

"Have you ever encountered similar sentences?"

Children: "Yes!"

Not only do they exist, but there are a lot of them. There are such sentences in basic scale etudes, such as do-re-mi, mi-re-do.

"Please note here that when we reach the highest note, the melodic turning point here has occurred."

"Let's play a complete scale, do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si-dol-si-la-sol-fa-mi-re-dol, tell me, which note does the descent start on?"

"si!" "dol!"

Two answers emerged in the classroom.

Ang Lee: "It's dol."

"Why, tell me, how many notes does the ascending scale of C major consist of?!"

Children: "Seven tones!"

Ang Lee: "Sing it!"

Children: “do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si!”

As the ascending scale of C major is sung, the children already understand that starting from the next dol, the scale will enter the descending direction.

"In other words, when you reach the highest note of dol, the scale turns and enters a downward direction, with dol as the first note of the downward movement. Can you grasp the key?"

The children talked a lot and were very enthusiastic.

Ang Lee continued to guide: "Okay, when we go back and listen to the scale again, the highest dol is no longer an ascending ending, but a descending ending. There is no problem. Then if we encounter a passage while we are playing, It’s a melody with a musical scale, so where are the phrasing nodes of this melody?”

"Even if it is the first beat of the next measure, does it have to be a heavy beat in the so-called beat?!"

There was a buzz in his head, and the senior child suddenly felt like he had enlightenment.

Xiao Ji felt that she was enlightened! !
It turns out that melody phrases can also be divided in this way!

"Obviously they don't need to be heavier."

Ang Lee once again used a Turkish march to demonstrate. When the highest note came, he only played it lightly and then played it downwards.

Subtle changes like recitation are hidden in the progress, making the whole sentence sound very rhythmic.

"If you add emphasis, it seems to meet the needs of the beat, but in fact it destroys the rhythm of the music itself. Tell me, is there any relationship between the melody and the beat?"

Children: "No!"

Ang Lee: "So the sound-centered melody expression technique is the natural playing method between the smallest unit intervals."

Another wave of teaching points +1 floated in front of him. Li An calculated that based on this situation, there should be no problem with today's teaching point task.

But when it comes to this, it can be said that he has given out half of his core skills.