If you teach teen piano students then you know that, for some, expressive piano playing comes easily. Their emotions are almost palpable in their playing, their dynamic range is varied and their nuances come from the heart.
You probably also know that, for some, expressive piano playing does not come easily. As long as the notes and rhythms they play are correct, they consider it a job well done. Asking these students to add some expression usually results in blank stares or intense embarrassment.
So, how can we help students who struggle with expressive playing to find the magic needed to take their skills to the next level? With my “Swirl Formula”… which you can read about in today’s post!
How To Teach Teen Piano Students To Play With Expression
I teach a teen boy who is prone to embarrassment. When he makes a mistake, his “thing” is to fling his hands off the piano with an “Ack!” (I didn’t know people actually said that until I met him) and then fire off a string of excuses followed by nervous ticks and “fooling around” on the keys… in an effort to erase the sound of his mistake from my ears.
He’s a very analytical person. He’s not fond of anything that may make him appear emotional or in touch or sensitive. So, as you can imagine, bringing up the topic of expression is a conversation that I didn’t anticipate would go well.
And I was right.
“No no no no no…” was his anxious, head-shaking response after I modelled a section of his piece to demonstrate how to include rubato. Clearly I needed a different approach.
The next lesson I introduced him to the “Swirl Formula”. I didn’t broach the topic of expression at all – simply noting the fact that we would now be adding variations in tempo and intensity to his piece and that the symbols on his page would tell him exactly what to do and where to do it.
It worked like a charm and so I’m sharing my “Swirl Formula” with you today.
The Swirl Formula For Expressive Piano Playing
The Swirl Formula is what I use to describe an “analytic” approach to expressive piano playing that works well when broaching this topic with teen students like mine. Instead of verbally explaining or demonstrating expressive playing and leaving it up to your students’ interpretations, you instead first map it out directly on their music. Here’s how:
- Choose the parts of each phrase where you would like to include either a variation in tempo (rubato) or an increase or decrease in overall intensity.
- Draw a swirl above the note or notes that are involved
- End your swirl with either an “up arrow” or a “down arrow”. An “up arrow” indicates that the variations in tempo and intensity should be moving towards a note that is higher. A down arrow indicates that the variations in tempo and intensity should be moving towards a note that is lower than the note below the swirl.
- When your student reaches a swirl, instruct him to move his wrist in a “swirling motion” while depressing the key and then to “drag” that tempo and intensity toward the note at the end of the phrase (or according to the marking). Eventually these wrist motions will be significantly decreased, but for now it encourages the wrist flexibility needed for expressive playing.
Here’s a Demo Video For All of You Visual Learners
This planned-out approach accomplishes the following:
- The markings on the music help your students identify which notes in a phrase need to be treated differently in order to add an element of expression (without feeling as though they are guessing).
- Your students have a concrete “formula” to follow and therefore don’t feel as though they are “putting themselves out there” while learning to add expression.
- The “Swirl Formula” approach encourages the wrist flexibility needed to play expressively.
- The “Swirl Formula” approach alludes to the overall flow needed to produce expressive playing; the feeling where everything is in motion (even held note values have a “kinetic energy” within a phrase).
As your teens become comfortable with the “Swirl Formula” you can ask them to add their own markings to a page to begin to make their own decisions about expression and phrasing. You can also decrease their wrist motion until you find a degree of movement that is agreeable.
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Another really useful post! Thank you Andrea!
Thanks for reading Garreth
Love this Andrea! This would have been great for me as a teen as I’m a bit of an analytical person just like your student. I’ll definitely try this out this week. 🙂
Would love to hear how it goes Nicola!
I already have a teen in mind that will to this approach! Thank you!
My unexpressive teen student also says she feels really silly if I ask her to move her wrists AT ALL…but since she does like having everything mapped out, I’ll give this a try.
We actually got into a discussion once about whether music needs to convey emotion or not. She wanted it to just be music, not anything that made anyone feel anything. Ay yi yi.
Hope this helps! I have had those students too – they just want to play it “right” but when they get it it’s really magical to watch the transformation!
Just enrolled a 14 year old this week who, as most teen boys, would NEVER want his emotions to show! I will definitely attempt to incorporate this idea. Thank you!
Yes I think it’s fairly common although some of my most expressive students have been teen boys – once they are shown how and given “permission” to do so in a way that makes them comfortable beautiful things can happen!
AGAIN! You give me the right thing at the right time. Have a (boy) student who refuses to play with emotion, playing Moonlight Sonata original score. Perfect post for me to help him. Jeez, I’m going to use this with my beginner students too!
Great Kelly!… although you are so fabulous and have so many students it’s hard to not touch on something you might need 😉
I am an orchestra teacher, primarily 7 – 12. I absolutely love your ideas and site. I have been able to adapt many for use with string students! Thank you for sharing.
This is so cool. Some of us “feel” and therefore we play in a “feeling” way. But this method honours those of us who actually need to experience the physical sensation of expressive playing before we can connect emotion and hand movement.
I LOVED this post. Thanks so much for the video visual. I’d love to see more short videos like this!!
Hi Faith – this one would have been hard to describe otherwise 😉 I’m getting used to being “off script” on video and so as I also learn to not cringe at the sound of my own voice (LOL) we will likely do more videos!
I have a student who does (did) this too! She’s 13 years old and, since September, has gradually lost the habit — with much much work on my part. Every mistake she would make, she’d say “Ack!” and shake her fingers and wrists in the air to the point where I thought they were going to fly off or she’d seriously injure herself haha…
She’s a perfectionist, so we talked a lot this year about how mistakes are not a reflection of our character or amount of practice; sometimes they just happen! Mistakes give us an opportunity to improve!
Thank you for this post, Andrea. I’m looking forward to adding this idea to many scores! 🙂
A fellow “Ack!”-er… Yes it’s quite the habit! I have this one and then another one who says “Oops” after every single (every, every single) little slip or mistake.
Hope this helps with your student!
I’ve been talking emotion to my exam students all week, I feel so sorry for examiners listening to performance after performance of perfectly correct but clinical pieces, it must be soul destroying! I will definitely try this out with my less expressive kiddos, thanks for the timely post!
Fantastic advice! I will certainly use this!
My teens love this piece from “I thought I heard Lions” thanks for creating such motivating repertoire for them, we will definitely be using this swirl technique starting tomorrow!
Hi Sarah – so glad to hear they are enjoying the PianoBookClub book for June! 🙂 Good for you for recognizing where the video example came from already LOL. 😉
I think the shyness about feelings and expressions is not so much as teenage thing as a cultural thing. Growing up in Russia from the early age we were made to memorize long poems and songs and deliver them with expression both at home and at school. In the upper grades at school we even memorized big chunks of prose and competed who can do it with the best expressions. So it was no problem to ask a student of any age about emotions conveyed by music, or create a story for a piece. In US I often encounter embarrassment on that topic, or lack of imagination when it comes to creating a story. But I keep trying. Thank you for raising this topic.
It can be difficult to “pull” emotion from teenagers even though their emotions are like a roller coaster sometimes;)
I am looking forward to sharing this after Thanksgiving break.
So true Dana! Hope this helps – it certainly makes a difference with a lot of my students 🙂
Most of my students are between the ages of 7 and 10. I’m going to give the swirl method a go, but do you also have other ideas to help my target age group?