It was apparent that Xuan Chen’s aural skills were above average from a few months into starting her piano journey with me. After learning the basics of how pitch and fingerings work on the piano, she could listen to pop songs, sing them, and figure out the notes to play pretty quickly. And that was when she was around 5+ years of age.
One day, she told me excitedly that she’d heard this piece called Fur Elise, and really wanted to learn it.
I taught her the first few parts of it in simplified form, albeit nervously, because especially since she was only 6 years old at that time, there was a chance she’d find this Grade 3 level piece to be too difficult and slowly give up on learning the piano.
Fortunately, with lots of encouragement from myself and her family, she pulled through quickly. Kudos to her, she was even able to hear the difference between the easier and the original versions, and asked to learn the original, knowing that it was more difficult.
I took it slow for her through the months as the first Covid lockdown in 2020 occurred shortly after. We moved lessons to FaceTime, and taught her other easier songs to play while learning the more difficult Fur Elise. After months of practising through lockdown and after, she did it. She had finished learning Fur Elise, the whole 4 pages of it. It was an excellent achievement, and I saw her graded journey emerging.
She played a few more pieces, and before long, started learning Grade 1 piano. In the matter of a few months, the 4 performance grades pieces had been played, with things like rhythm, tempo, dynamics and tone already put in place.
The examiner eventually scored her a high merit for her Grade 1 exam, with one of her pieces scoring full marks; it’s pretty rare to see full marks. From my point of view, she had worked hard and tried to implement techniques as best as she could, so no matter the mark that she got, the exam performance would still be a wonderful closure for her Grade 1 journey.
As Xuan Chen learns her Grade 2 pieces and improves her techniques along the way, she has also influenced her little brother to join in the piano lessons. They’ve recently played Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer together for Christmas, and I’m sure there’ll be more to come as both of them grow musically along the way.
I hope this post has inspired you in some way. I would like to wish everyone reading this a Happy New Year!! May 2022 bring happiness and sunshine to you all.
