The Importance of Pianos in Music Education

Basic piano skills are important for all serious musicians.

The piano is often taught to beginning music students because its versatile. On the piano, all the notes are ready to be played, so the player can focus on other aspects, like large chords and multiple voices. Musicians often are proficient on the piano even if it is not their primary instrument. For others, the piano serves as a springboard to learning other instruments because it ensures a solid foundation in reading and understanding music.

Multiple Clefs

Musicians proficient at the piano learn to read music in the treble clef as well as the bass clef. The right hand plays in treble and the left hand in bass, although each hand can occasionally overlap into the other clef, depending on where it must play on the piano. Playing in two clefs simultaneously conditions a piano player to achieve fluency in two commonly used clefs, the knowledge of which the musician can later apply to other instruments, such as the violin, clarinet and guitar.

Range

The piano has a range of 88 notes, and music written for the piano frequently takes advantage of this array of possible notes, sending the piano player all over the keyboard. This familiarizes students of the piano with reading notes that are far above or far below the staff. In addition to this, music written for the piano trains the player to read notes vertically -- whereas most instruments that are limited in how many notes can be played simultaneously accustom the player to reading music only horizontally -- due to the possibility for playing many notes at the same time. This ability to read music vertically helps students when analyzing harmony and counterpoint.

Versatility

A piano player has 10 fingers available to be played at the same time, which means that up to 10 different notes can be sounded simultaneously -- most instruments do not allow for this many notes to be played at the same time because of structural limitations. Since the piano can be played in this way, one person on the piano can play very large chords and many symphony scores. This allows a student to hear what a piece scored for many instruments sounds like without having all of the different instruments playing.

Hand-Eye Coordination and Pitch

Since the piano demands full use of both hands and frequent pedal usage, which the feet handle, the piano is a full-body instrument. Students can then apply the coordination attained to other instruments. For singers, the piano is used to match pitch, and students learning solfeggio -- singing the music that an instrument normally plays -- often use it.

References

• Children's Music Workshop: Benefits of Music Education