![]() Piano exams still have no compulsory chord chart reading component (beyond maybe a perfect cadence in a sight reading exercise) apart from the niche ABRSM Jazz Piano exams, and while theory exams now allow chord symbols as answers a knowledge of chord symbols is not compulsory. ![]() ![]() No one is telling piano teachers they should acquire this skill, at least no one in a professional sense. Eleven years on and that percentage has almost flipped: I estimate at least 75% of piano teachers these days tell me they are perfectly comfortable reading a chord chart, and up to 99% say they understand what the chord symbols mean (even if they wouldn’t be comfortable performing from a chart). In 2000 I started presenting professional development seminars for piano teachers and when I would ask “who can read a chord chart?” maybe 10% of the teachers at the seminar might put up their hands. Needless to say I found the fuss rather ridiculous and just wanted to get on with making music. To be fluent reading a ‘chart’ while also being able to play the Pathetique seemed to be about as musically transgressive as it was possible to be. degree and I could still read a chord chart. ![]() It shook the foundations of many a musician’s world that I had a B.Mus. A cliché I used to find myself confronting as a young musician in the mid-late 80s and the 90s was the idea that the world of pianists divides into the classically trained and those who can read chord charts. ![]()
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