Piano by Ear by Lucinda Mackworth-Young
A brilliant guide to turning "book-bound" intermediate students into enthusiastic arrangers and improvisers
For many students—especially older learners who are returning to the piano—aural skills have been neglected. I’ve frequently worked with adults who are competent pianists but whose playing, improvising and composition is really limited by their lack of understanding of harmony and an inability to play by ear. Many of them would identify with Lucinda Mackworth-Young’s own story, as told to Paul Myatt:
I passed my grade 8 ABRSM exam very well, but I couldn’t play anything other than my set pieces with my notation in front of me. It was mortifying. And I thought no teacher, no student should ever be put in that position.
Piano By Ear is Mackworth-Young’s answer to the problem, and it promises to teach students to:
pick out tunes and harmonise them
improvise using an array of keys and chord patterns
accompany songs in a range of styles
understand how music works from the inside out
suitable for beginners through to experienced pianists
It’s a wonderful book: well-structured, easy-to-follow, well-paced, and with high quality presentation from Faber Music.
Overview
The Getting Started section begins by asking the student to figure out how to play “Mary had a little lamb” / “Merrily we roll along” on 4 black keys. It’s well-explained and easy to follow. The next activity requires the student to add a basic accompaniment, and there’s a gradual increase in difficulty until the student is doing a very basic improvisation on black keys in 4/4 time. This chapter is available as a sample on the Faber website, from which I’ve included one page below:
In the next section, Introducing Chords, switches to the white keys, and the student is introduced to C and G major. Tonic and dominant terminology is introduced and the student is asked to pick one of the two chords to harmonise “Mary had a Little Lamb”, transposed to C major.
Later, the dominant 7th is introduced via “Ode to Joy”, then the subdominant F major via “Oh when the Saints”, “Jingle Bells” and “Happy Birthday”. Along the way the student is introduced to what Forrest Kinney calls the Basic Accompaniment Pattern (bass in the left hand, chords in the right), an appropriate accompaniment for singing.
Subsequent sections introduce:
the subdominant chord
playing and improvising in G and F major keys
playing in minor keys, beginning with the pentatonic minor, then moving through A, E and D minors
playing in Modes, with a particular focus on the Dorian, Mixolydian and Aeolian modes
adding secondary chords in major and minor keys
adding alternative chords in major keys, including the ♭VII and secondary dominants
Here are some more preview pages, courtesy of Faber Music.
By this stage the student has an extremely solid grounding in the fundamentals and the final 20 pages of the book, the focus broadens further, with suggestions including other flattened chords, other forms and an suggestion for how to turn a pre-existing classical piece into an improvisation.
It’s a really effective curriculum of learning and Mackworth-Young is a clear communicator. I use the book frequently in my studio and it’s popular with my students.
I’m not alone in this: the book has been around for almost a decade and has picked up a lot of Amazon reviews, almost all of which are positive.
It’s worth mentioning that there are a few critical reviews too. Here are a couple of common themes:
notation size
song choice
feeling overwhelmed
These reviews seem legitimate to me, so let’s take each point, one by one.
Notation size
One review mentions that the notation is a little on the small side and decided to return the book because they found themselves uncomfortably squinting. I don’t personally find this to be problematic, but I am fortunate to have good eyesight. I agree that it’s on the smaller side and perhaps if I were older I would struggle more.
Song choice
Many mention being unfamiliar with a significant number of the songs included in the book. This is something I have also experienced with quite a few of my students. There are a few more recent songs from the likes of John Legend, Jessie J and Coldplay, but the selection definitely tends towards the old. This is worth noting because the method depends on the student’s familiarity with the melody and as a result I often have to look for alternative songs that fit with the pedagogical approach. It’s not a big problem because the harmony taught in the book is so foundational that the chord progressions are ubiquitous, so it’s relatively easy to find alternatives.
Who is it for?
Among the most critical reviews, most seem to be written in frustration. Underlying this frustration seems to be a sense of being overwhelmed by the book’s demands.
I suspect that’s a sign that the marketing was slightly misjudged. Indeed, the back cover blurb says the book is “suitable for beginners to experienced pianists”. More accurately, as Mackworth-Young states in the introduction:
[The book is] for those who’ve played the piano for many years in the traditional way, reading notes, and who long to be able to play by ear and improvise. It’s also for those who are less experienced, but have some note-reading ability, and for beginners working with a teacher. (My emphasis)
I personally would not recommend this book for students working without a teacher, unless the student is very precocious or already fairly advanced (i.e. higher than UK Grade 6).
Conclusion
All things considered, Piano By Ear is a really useful book and I think it belongs in your studio library. The pedagogical progression is extremely well-thought through: everything appears in a logical order and foundational concepts are regularly reviewed and built upon. Skill and knowledge reviews are skillfully and subtly done, with the same concepts presented several times with one component changed, ensuring swift progression. Mackworth-Young is evidently a highly skilled teacher and she’s designed a coherent and effective curriculum.
If you’re an experienced piano teacher who has not not taught creativity before, it would make an excellent book to work through before you first try teaching students to arrange or improvise.
As a method book, it works best with intermediate-level adult students, but with bit of imagination it can be adapted for many other needs. That’s because the pedagogical framework that Mackworth-Young has put together is so well thought through. That underlying structure is an extremely valuable contribution to creative pedagogy.
As such, Piano By Ear is more than a method book; it shows us how to teach better. Recommended.