Carol Gingerich is Assistant Professor of Piano at the State University of West Georgia where she teaches applied piano, pedagogy, literature, collaborative piano, and keyboard skills. She is a graduate of Columbia University Teachers College from which she received a Doctor of Education in the College Teaching of Music degree. There she studied piano with Karl Ulrich Schnabel and piano pedagogy with Robert Pace. She holds a Master of Music in Piano Accompanying and Coaching degree from Westminster Choir College and an Honours Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Western Ontario. As a scholar Dr. Gingerich's research focuses on French piano style and learning style theory, in particular Neuro-Linguistic programming. She has given presentations on these topics at the European Piano Teachers Convention (Rome, Italy) and the World Piano Pedagogy Convention, in addition to numerous teacher workshops. Her articles have been and are being published in "American Music Teacher", "Clavier", "European Piano Teachers Journal" and "Keyboard Companion". She is active as both a solo and collaborative pianist and has been a guest artist at Catholic University, Columbia University, the University of Florida and the University of Miami. She is a frequent adjudicator for piano competitions and her students have been winners of MTNA sponsored competitions.
Carol Gingerich
Department of Music
Satte University of West Georgia
Carrollton, GA 30118
678.839.6273
cginger@westga.edu
Description
Home Concert 2000 can be played along with any standard MIDI disc, including those that accompany class piano textbooks or personally created MIDI files. The score is projected on the screen as students perform, and a two measure count-off is given. Home Concert files can be stored on a campus wide computer network, such as Blackboard or WebCT, and thus made available to any student with a laptop who can then pull up the files and practice at home. A site license needs to be purchased for multiple keyboards. Home Concert 2000 is both PC and MAC compatible, and both formats are included on a single disc which costs $89.00. The disc also contains one Mozart Piano Concerto, although other concerti can be purchased from the website.
It has three modes: Learn, Perform and Jam. In Learn Mode, the software stops and waits until the student plays the correct note. In Perform Mode, the software follows the player's tempo and dynamics, even including such sophisticated fluctuations as ritard and fermata. Just as in a good performance, it does not stop for wrong notes. Jam Mode does not follow the rhythmic fluctuations of the student, but rather requires them to keep going at a steady tempo. However, the overall tempo and volume of the piece can initially be adjusted.
Drawbacks
Linda highlighted several problems present in the software. On the screen only notes from the original MIDI files appear. Unfortunately, no fingering, pedaling, articulation marks, key signatures or clefs from the original are projected. However, since key signatures are not displayed, you are able to customize and add them yourself. Another issue concerned repeat signs. None from the original are written out, but rather the software rewrites the entire repeated passage so students are forced to perform the repeats. Lastly, Home Concert can only display two tracks, or two hands, and not four tracks or ensemble music.
Applications
Linda gave numerous excellent demonstrations and examples of applications to class piano teaching. All three modes are useful for teaching sight reading, which can be done hands separately or hands together. A student's most recent performance may be recorded so they can play it back and hear themselves. The Perform mode is useful to check for accuracy of pitch in repertoire practice. Spot practice can be accomplished by repeating a small section over and over using the Loop Mode, which highlights the section of music to be repeated. However, the Loop Mode repeats the measures after one second of time, regardless of your original tempo. To solve this problem, if the measures are near the beginning, highlight and include one or two of the count-off measures in your Loop Mode designation, so as to know exactly when to enter. However, this does not work if the measures are not adjacent to the indicated blank count-off measures at the beginning. The developer is working to fix this problem. A new version is coming out very soon which should be able to display the clefs, dynamics and articulations of the original MIDI disc.
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