MAKING MUSIC AT THE PIANO Barbara English Maris Oxford University Press, 2001 ISBN 0-19-512326-3 £20.00

Learning an instrument as an adult is obviously vastly different from learning as a child; by the time we are adults we have employed various learning processes for countless different skills which can provide a frame of reference for the study of music. In this book, Barbara English Maris pulls together strategies for piano playing that the average adult can relate to with mixed success, despite its providing a wealth of useful information. A broad spectrum of issues is covered, from the practical, such as playing an electric piano instead of an acoustic one, to the psychological, such as the vital difference between cognitive learning and kinesthetic learning. Through these, and similar matters (including a brief history of the instrument), the early chapters provide an interesting backdrop to the central matters of lessons and practice.

The second half of the book concentrates more on the practicalities of learning the piano, including useful examples to help students to get to grips with musical notation, and how to relate it to what they hear. This is then complemented with the reproduction of a simple piano piece, together with advice on how to go about learning it. This is possibly the best section of the book, as the reader can relate the discussion to specific points in the music in order to clarify the concepts being put forward.

Unfortunately there are times when the book descends into the worst kind of trans-Atlantic self-help manual, with sections on “Assessing your morale” and choosing which phrases you should use in regard to practice to “create the most positive feelings for you and elicit the most supportive reactions from your friends”. At this point the book also displays other flaws. For example, it advises listening to other people’s practice sessions; surely the point about the vast majority of adult learners is the fact that they have limited time to do their own practice, let alone sit through someone else’s – that is, presuming they know someone who is also learning an instrument and who doesn’t mind scrutiny of this sort. In this respect the book’s outlook is very much Utopian; perhaps a larger dose of realism might have proved more constructive. The section on planning practice time shows a similar lack of consideration; it advises that students should try to divide their practice sessions into precisely-timed slots (one minute for scales, four minutes for “exploring sounds at the piano”, etc.). This is symptomatic of the author’s ability to take a good point to a conclusion that is logical, but which pays little regard to the reality of the situation.

On a presentational scale, the book is on the whole well set out, with extensive examples where the subject matter demands them. However, the margins are littered with sound-bites which range from the sensible (e.g. “Symbols gain meaning when they represent something one already has experienced”) to the irritatingly obvious (e.g. “Select goals that will result in success.”). This is presumably done to try to lighten the style and make the book more readable, although the effect is to distract the reader from the main body of text.

I would only recommend this book to the type of person who enjoys a psuedo-pyschological, deeply analytical approach to learning, and my fears are that a high proportion of students would not be prepared to wade through the excessive amount of unnecessary verbiage to glean the great advice and information that the book actually can provide.

Gavin Meredith