This is a skill I picked up reading choral music from the gospel tradition that had both written out keyboard parts and chord symbols. After articulating the uncompromising nature of pulse, Carter moves to discussing keyboard patterns. Plus, if you have your students tap the pulse (written stems-down in the exercises) with one hand and tap the rhythms (stems up) with the other, you’re really developing steady-pulse actualization in your students.)īack to Carter. If you need more rhythm exercises for your students, consider investing in a copy of Robert Starer’s Basic Rhythm Training (Hal Leonard, 1986). Most teaching methods introduce dotted quarter-eighth rhythms this way, but perhaps we should be teaching more rhythms in this manner. Rather than a triplet in isolation, perhaps a triplet followed by a quarter note or two, so students hear immediately how the rhythm works in context. What can we do to actualize steady beat in our students? One thing we can is to insure we teach all rhythm patterns (whether new or familiar) within a pulse. Many of us, however, don’t have that training, and haven’t set up our studio situations with it in mind. Do I really spend enough time focusing on pulse, teaching my students to not only hear a pulse, but to also actualize it in their playing.ĭalcroze Eurhythmics works a lot on actualizing rhythm within the body – feeling the rhythm, in essence. I’m challenged by Carter’s tenacity on this point. And yet, if we examined our student populations, what is one of their greatest universal weaknesses? Steady tempo. She references various stable pulses in the natural world (heartbeats, etc.) and even goes so far as to talk about “listening for the universal pulse.” Perhaps this redundancy (and esoteric verbiage) is overkill. While this is obvious, she goes to great lengths to state and restate this point. First, pulse is constant and must not be violated. (Her other 3 volumes are no longer in print and quite difficult/expensive to obtain.)Ĭarter’s books, regardless of what texture or style they are addressing, follow a couple of key principles. The two most easily available of these books are Sight Reading Homophonic Texture at the Keyboard Elementary Level (Walker Publishing, 1998) and Sight Reading Hymn Texture (Walker Publishing, 1993, revised 2006). Much of what I later incorporated into my own class piano teaching came from my brief interactions with her.ĭuring her lengthy career at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Professor Carter published five books on sight reading that thoroughly outline her philosophy on the subject. During the two days I was with her, Professor Carter exhibited more energy than most teachers half her age, as well as a keen desire to see her students succeed. At the time, I was new to teaching class piano and desperately looking for ways to make my classes more productive and interesting. Her enthusiastic style and expertise at teaching sight reading had become known to me through a few mutual friends and I was excited to see her in action. I had the great honor of meeting Patricia Carter (Zagorski) during the 2010-2011 school year, when I invited myself to observe some of her class piano teaching.