Surveying the survey

From: David Randolph
Date: Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 3:48 PM
Subject: Re: Help needed for piano fingering study
To: Ivana Bukvich


​I like the term *holistic*. You sound like my kind of teacher.

On trumpet, Hanon goes by the name of Arban. I hate that guy--or at least the first half of his "conservatory method." But I have always assumed that my playing stalled because I couldn't bring myself to master all of his exercises.​ Every time I pick up the horn again, there he is.

Cheers,
Dave

On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 2:44 PM, Ivana Bukvich wrote:


Between 8-11. Teachers use them with all age groups though. My personal opinion is that they are boring and most of the students agree. However, they can very useful. In terms of sight reading they reinforce interval if reading so that is why I like them. Also, for the same reason they are easy to transpose and useful that way. You are correct about the repetitive nature that allows one "not to think" so the motor memory is primarily used. I think that can be useful as well with an average student , but I like more "holistic" approach to practicing .


On Jun 19, 2015, at 2:18 PM, David Randolph wrote:


Dear Ivana:

I am going to leave the Bach out. We will have activities down the road for larger scale manual annotation. These activities should have their own incentives, I think, and deserve an interface with no warts on it. Moreover, we don't want to scare people off with too much work up front.

Can you tell me how old you were when you played Hanon, or, more generally, at what ages it tends to be used? I may add a question specifically about if, when, and for how long Hanon was used by the subject.

And when you say you "use" Hanon, do you mean play it yourself or use it with students? I assume the latter. I am surprised by your using it as "sight reading exercises," as my assumption is that these exercises would be the least surprising (and most internalized) pieces in the canon. They would pose technical challenges more than cognitive challenges, no? I would like to discuss these matters further. I wonder what we could do in the way of simulating a practice regimen or capturing the essence of a player's total experience with their repertoire. If we actually get to the point where we can record people's fingerings as fast as they can play, a lot of options will open up. We are long way from there, but it is fun to think about.

Are there any alternatives to Hanon? Or does it have a corner on the market of such drudgery?

Thanks,
Dave


On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 12:58 PM, Ivana Bukvich wrote:


Well, since I only worked on fragments it took about 15 min, it was clearly an optional activity. Hanon is probably useful as data, but , really doesn't tell you anything about fingering choices as there is only one way to play them. On the other hand,it tells something about how to finger patterns. I find them terribly boring and only use them as remedial sight reading exercises, of course , had to practice them as a child.. I agree on things you can leave out.


On Jun 19, 2015, at 11:49 AM, David Randolph wrote:


​Dear Ivana:

Thanks for the great feedback.

How long did the "Invention 1" annotation take? I expect this to add something like 30-40% to the ​time it takes to complete the survey. Was it clear that this was an optional activity? If we are keeping this in, I will add language to make it clear that this may be time consuming and is purely optional. Or do you think we should just leave it out?

We could also remove one or more of the other fingering exercises. Any thoughts on this?

Also, do you have anything similar to Hanon that you use with your students or use/used in your own studies? The thing is, we have fingering data (in machine readable form) for Hanon that we can just use. I have (vague) plans to incorporate these data as foundational fingering patterns in our models. Are you familiar with Hanon at all? Are you "anti-Hanon" for some reason? What else is out there that is similar? I am just trying to find out if there are any canonical rudiments that might influence fingering choices significantly.

Here are the changes I plan to make. . . .

I will implement the left-to-right, low-to-high fingering input you suggested. This is a good change.

I will investigate using anonymous survey links.

Having to select each of the 24 inventions had to be tedious. I will look for a way to select all or revise how we get at this information.

I will remove the questions about problematic reach between finger pairs. They show little promise of providing us anything useful.

I will add questions about any Hanon alternatives that you think are worthwhile.

Many many thanks,
Dave


On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 9:07 AM, Ivana Bukvich wrote:

I see, it looked like short fragments, but perhaps it was like that because of the fact that I did it on the phone, I have i-phone 5c. The whole survey took about 45 min to an one hour, it is a bit long.


On Jun 19, 2015, at 8:22 AM, David Randolph wrote:


Dear Ivana:

You should have seen the whole "Invention" score with separate input fields for each of the lines. The only problem should have been with missing continuation ties across lines. I will take another look to see if anything is missing. If you say this looks like fragments, then we may just drop this question. I have a plan to update the interface to make this look better, but I don't want to hold up the survey waiting for it.

Did you really do this whole thing on an iPhone? That is really good news. What kind of iPhone is it? I couldn't do it on my dinky little Android phone.

How long did it take you to do this in total? Do you think it is too long?

Thanks,
Dave



On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 10:59 PM, Ivana Bukvich wrote:


I just completed it, Bach Invention w/o score . Did you mean to have only fragments , that's what I got on I phone. I


On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 4:47 PM, Ivana wrote:
Hi Dave, I've just completed most of it ,and had to stop as I was on I phone and it ran out of batteries.I will continue tonight afterI get home. It looks good, small suggestion:for the left hand, when having double notes(intervals) it would be better to enter bottom finger first, then the top as in reading chords one always looks at the root of the chord first then the rest of the notes,same with fingering. I
Also, I will forward the survey to my UIC  students. Grant looks good but I have no idea how to do it really.
Sent from my iPad