All students working toward an undergraduate degree in music, with the unfortunate exception of pianists, must pass a keyboard proficiency before completing their curriculum and being approved for graduation. Many of these students come to the university with no background in piano and very little background in theory. They are quite accomplished playing their own instruments and have not necessarily thought about the challenge of learning a new instrument.

The piano requirement at UT Austin is one that asks students to focus on functional keyboard skills, i.e. those skills that might actually be needed in other classes, in future teaching, in graduate school, etc. Even in the case of students who have studied some piano previously, these skills call for a different curriculum from the typical "piano lesson."

Frustration runs rampant among students who are already being pulled in different directions - lessons on their primary instrument, music theory, music history and the often-dreaded core curriculum. For group piano, one of the key skills needed by every lower division student is the skill of efficiency. So much time is wasted in a practice room doing what they feel is "practice." Much of the time it is a case of "perfecting their errors." Steady tempos are often sacrificed in order to correct mistakes - rhythm is sacrificed when the student "counts in his/her head" - more time is spent on hands-separate work than on the difficult task of putting two hands together and dealing with the nightmare of coordinating more than one activity concurrently.

If I could clone myself, I would go to the practice room with each of these approximately 150 students to help them be more efficient with their time. I can't do that! But what I can do is develop tutorials to teach them how to practice when I am not with them. I can tell them things time after time in class and they will even agree with me that these steps should bring success. Actually using the steps in a practice room is another matter. Anything less than instant success with the suggested practice steps will probably result in tossing out the new plan and bringing back the old standby. We all know the drill; start at the beginning, play until something doesn't work, then go back to the beginning to try again and … when all else fails, memorize the hands separately before trying to put them together.

Having students involved in the selection of activities on which to focus and the order in which they will proceed results in better odds for success. The tutorials consist of a combination of activities taken directly from their text (public domain only), similar activities to those in the text (giving extra opportunities for drill), and original material not found in the their text. Software used is Finale, PhotoShop, SoundEdit 16, Director 6.5, and Shockwave. At this point, everything has been brought together using Netscape 3.02 Gold (giving editor capabilities) and we are making the tutorials available to students through the School of Music Microcomputer Lab server. The group piano sequence is set up in four semesters. The material for these classes is contained in one text, which the students use throughout the sequence.

The Preliminary Chapter deals with certain "assumptions" made by the authors. Students are given until the end of the second week of classes to have an understanding of the material found in this chapter. The tutorials for the chapter use one- and two-line staff reading examples, alternate five-finger patterns from those seen in the text, alternate clefs from those used in the text, and variations on material found in the text. All of the notation items were created in Finale with sound files recorded directly from a Roland KR-570 digital keyboard through the line level audio input of a PowerBook G3, using SoundEdit 16 by Macromedia. Sound files were saved as AIFF files and imported directly into the Internal Cast of a Director 6.5 movie. The notation files were saved as EPS files in Finale and then converted to PICT files in PhotoShop. Upon completion of a Director 6.5 movie, it is compacted and saved as a Shockwave movie to be imported into Netscape through an "EMBED SRC" HTML tag.

In Chapter 1, technique tutorials were, for the most part, written in alternate clefs calling for use of the opposite hand. Some, such as the one I will demonstrate, are shown with questions I might bring up in the classroom (demonstrate p.27, item 1.a.).

Chapter 3 is the first time students use full triads of the major pentascale to harmonize. At this point, determination of proper harmonies is still a mystery to the majority of students. It is mostly a case of using what "sounds good." The harmonization tutorial gives students some reasons why they might choose certain chords over others. For this example, individual measures serve as a "button" area upon which students may click to send a message through a Director sprite script. The script allows an overlay image to be displayed.

In the Keyboard Theory section of Chapter 7 students are given a particular voicing for the progression V7-I. They are then asked to play this particular voicing after seeing only the leading tone of the dominant seventh as a prompt. Students are given a choice of three activities. Within the different activity choices, additional choices may be determined. Selecting different activities sends the student to a different area within the Shockwave movie. The level of difficulty is the student's decision.

The Reading portion of Chapter 9 addresses the age-old problem of not reading ahead. Through an original piece written by one of my graduate assistants, students are given the option to 1) scan the score as they hear the piece performed, 2) study the score at their own pace, or 3) play the score as written while measures disappear before their eyes! The Keyboard Theory of this same chapter has extensive drills that incorporate secondary dominants found in the text. The students are asked to extend the text exercise and are given several different ways to approach the exercise.

The ii-V7-I cadence is the focus of most materials in Chapter 10. Tutorials give students a chance to work at their own pace or "play along" with a big band.

Materials from Chapter 14 include a tutorial on augmented sixth chords that uses voice-over and a harmonization tutorial using extended harmonies and non-root chord voicing. Again, the materials were developed using Finale, PhotoShop, SoundEdit 16, Director, and Shockwave.

As more and more advancements are made in the ease of using multimedia software, I hope that faculty will investigate the possibilities of enhancing the educational experience of the individual student by using multimedia computer tutorials.