The Use of MIDI Demonstration Library in the Teaching of Digital Piano Group Lessons in Higher Teachers

Dehua Yang, Yuxiong Chen, Department of Art, Xiaogan College, Xiaogan, China

This paper discusses the feasibility and necessity of using MIDI demonstration library in the teaching of digital piano group lesson from the aspects of hardware, software and the establishment of MIDI demonstration library in the teaching of digital piano group lesson in the high school, and explains that the use of MIDI demonstration library will be a scientific solution to the demonstration problem in the teaching of digital piano group lesson from the acoustic point of view. The use of MIDI demonstration library can make the teacher's demonstration teaching colourful and assist the students to practice the piano in various forms, so as to improve the students' interest in the piano and learning efficiency, and greatly enhance the teaching effect.
Keywords: MIDI library, digital piano, group lesson, teaching, application.

With the rapid development of electronic science and technology and the continuous improvement of education level, digital music teaching means as a kind of auxiliary teaching method, widely used in the high school teacher musicology professional. In particular, digital piano group lesson teaching has been gradually popularised and continuously improved, playing an increasingly important role in basic piano teaching. The establishment of digital piano collective class MIDI demonstration song library is aimed at acoustically and scientifically solving the demonstration problem in the teaching link of digital piano collective class, which can make the teacher's demonstration teaching colourful and assist the students to practice the piano in a variety of forms, so as to improve the students' interest in the piano and the learning efficiency, and greatly enhance the teaching effect.
MIDI system in digital piano group classroom
Digital piano classroom is actually a modern computer music multimedia classroom. In addition to digital pianos for students, it is generally equipped with computer music systems, music teaching machines, high-grade digital pianos for teachers (synthesizers with sequencing functions), as well as audio control systems, video projection systems, audio-visual systems, etc., which provide hardware and software conditions for the use of MIDI demonstration libraries.
1、Computer Music System
Computer music system generally includes three parts: computer system composed of computer mainframe, related software, MIDI interface, scanner and printer, etc.; audio system composed of MIDI controller and synthesised audio source, sampled audio source and drum machine, etc.; audio recording system composed of mixer, effector, equaliser, power amplifier, monitor speakers and double-track, multi-track recorder, CD recorder, etc. The computer music system in the digital piano classroom can make full use of the audio-visual system and the teacher's digital piano (for MIDI keyboard and sound source use), only need to be equipped with a computer host, MIDI interface and related software on the line.
Computer system and music-related software there are many, and for digital piano classroom MIDI demonstration library software can be used Encore4.5, MW3, Cakewalk series of Cakewalk3.0, Cakewalk9.03 and Cakewalk Sonar XL 2.0, as well as other piano teaching software, MIDI playback software and automated styles software, multimedia software, and so on.
2, the teacher piano in the sequencing system
In addition to several digital pianos for students, the digital piano classroom is generally equipped with a more advanced digital piano for teachers. Teacher piano has a variety of repertoire functions, or multi-instrumental accompaniment styles, some also have a powerful music production - sequencing function (equivalent to a synthesizer, such as YAMAHA Clavinova CVP-94 and CVP-92 digital piano), can play existing standard MIDI music, can be used for piano teaching to provide orchestral background. It can play existing standard MIDI scores, provide orchestral background styles and concertos for piano teaching, and is perfectly suited for the creation and playback of 2-channel or 4-channel piano MIDI demonstration scores. This provides hardware for the implementation of MIDI demo libraries in digital piano classrooms that are not equipped with a computer system.
3、Digital Piano MIDI Music Teaching Machine
If the digital piano classroom is not equipped with a computer system, there is no high-grade, with the sequencing function of the teacher's digital piano, then the music teaching machine is the use of MIDI demonstration library of the first choice of equipment.
The general design of the music teaching machine is compact, easy to operate, portable, and suitable for teaching. It can play standard MIDI files through the built-in 3.5-inch floppy drive, has a multi-track playback function, you can mute one of the tracks (the right hand part or the left hand part of the piano) for ensemble playing, has the function of repetition, special metronome function (in addition to the traditional standard metronome sound, it also provides other interesting metronome sounds, such as the animal's cry, or the human voice counting beats), play, mute, repeat, playback, mute, repeat. ), it is very easy to play, mute, repeat, or change the tempo or key, which is a good helper for piano teaching.
More advanced music teaching machines are also capable of complex, professional music production, with powerful music editing features designed for arrangers and demanding musicians. For example, the MT-300S is equipped with GM/GS sound source, 64 articulations, 16-track music arrangement function, which can be used for complex and professional music production, and MIDI demonstration songs can also be created in the music teaching machine and recorded on the disk.
MIDI Demonstration Song Library Creation
After having the software and hardware to use the MIDI demo library for digital piano group lessons, the establishment of MIDI demo library becomes the key to teaching digital piano group lessons with MIDI demo library.
1, MIDI demonstration song library of teaching repertoire content
Traditional individual lessons with a certain degree of arbitrariness and flexibility, the content of the teaching repertoire, the teacher is mostly based on their own skills and experience, according to the student's actual back to the class improvisation, is the completion of the piece of music to promote the teaching progress, and play the technology of teaching due to the piece of music and determine or change. Digital piano group lessons are based on the scientific classification of playing techniques as the main line to promote the deepening of the teaching content, so that the students' playing ability in the systematic and standardised training to improve. Therefore, when selecting the content of the teaching repertoire, it is necessary to base on the current syllabus and teaching plan, and give full consideration to the actuality of the students in the collective class, which can be started from the aspects of the practice pieces, Chinese and foreign music, sonatas and styles, and so on.
The selection of practice pieces should be comprehensive. Exercises are for the service of training technology. Technique, of course, the more comprehensive the better. Usually use “Bayeux”, “Czerny 599, 849, 718”, Lemmon, Cramer and other people's exercises, as well as Bach's polyphonic exercises, etc., so that the technical training is more comprehensive.
Chinese and foreign compositions, with emphasis on Chinese works. It should be admitted that in piano teaching, classical foreign literature is indispensable. On this premise, we emphasise the importance of studying Chinese works. The study of Chinese compositions has advantages that foreign compositions do not have in order to improve students' comprehension and expression, and to master the national style, colour and aesthetic characteristics of Chinese music.
③ Selected sonatas, focusing on stylistic expression. Selection of a number of classical sonatas, is to comprehensively improve the technical and artistic performance ability, as well as mastering the ability to play larger, complex works necessary. For example, Mozart's works are melodious, delicate and dexterous, mostly bright and cheerful. Harmony is simple, simple, structured and rich in meaning. Learning Mozart's sonatas trains students to be delicate, refined, elaborate, subtle and elegant in their technical and expressive abilities. The study of Beethoven's sonatas, on the other hand, can train students to learn to express the profound drama of music, a variety of musical images of stark contrast and play the music's great infectious force.
④ Select appropriate styles of music. Learning to play song styles is one of the important tasks of piano teaching in higher education. Therefore, when choosing teaching materials, you can choose some different types of styles from the systematic vocal music teaching materials and use them in combination with the piano solo music teaching materials. At the same time, songs from primary and secondary school music textbooks can also be chosen. In the teaching, not only let the students learn how to play the styles, but also learn to analyse and learn how to arrange the song accompaniment, so as to lay a foundation for the future teaching work.
2, MIDI demonstration library of MIDI music sources
After selecting the teaching repertoire, there are the following ways to get the MIDI music:
① When establishing digital piano classroom, the equipment company distributes the MIDI piano music (e.g. when establishing digital piano room in our school, Zhongyin Company gives the MIDI floppy disc of “Piano Road” as a gift).
② Music teaching machine and high-grade digital piano comes with MIDI piano music. Such as: digital piano ROLAND HPi-5, built-in 200 standard pentatonic MIDI tracks, covering exercises, classical masterpieces and popular jazz and so on, and has a visual performance function, that is, the player in the performance of music at the same time can be synchronised to watch the standard pentatonic sheet music through the LCD display on the music stand.
③Make full use of network resources. Modern computer network high-speed development, the Internet is gradually popular in colleges and universities, all kinds of music sites more and more, to have all, MIDI music is colourful, you can select the MIDI piano music download as needed.
④ Purchase MIDI piano music disc. Such as: disk music library “classical piano masters set” to the baroque period, classical music, romantic music, impressionism and modern music and other periods of the main line, from Thompson to large-scale works, the most representative 31 music masters of the 215 piano MIDI works collected in 20 disks.
⑤ Producing MIDI piano pieces is the most important way, especially for the production of Chinese piano MIDI demonstration pieces. We can make full use of the computer music production studios of music majors in high schools, digital recording studios, computer music systems in digital piano classrooms, and digital pianos with sequential sequencing functions, music teaching machines and synthesizers to produce MIDI piano pieces, so as to solve the problem of producing most MIDI demonstration pieces in the content of teaching repertoire. Demonstration Song Source Problem.
Use of the MIDI Demonstration Library
The establishment and use of MIDI demonstration song library aims to solve the problem of demonstration in the teaching of digital piano group lesson acoustically and scientifically, so as to make the teacher's demonstration teaching colourful and assist the students to practise the piano in a variety of forms. This puts forward new issues for teachers in terms of educational technology, teaching methods and teaching tools.
1, the use of MIDI demonstration song library puts forward new requirements for piano teachers.
Used to small classes of piano teachers, not only to have the ability to organise collective class teaching, it is more important for teachers to change their mindset, fully aware of the inevitable trend of the reform of piano teaching in higher education, learning to use high-tech means of piano teaching. Teachers should have the following skills in addition to the knowledge of piano playing, technical training, theoretical knowledge, music history, and command training.
①Techniques for operating MIDI playback devices. How to play MIDI demonstration songs in the computer music system, teachers' digital piano and music teaching machine, how to play, mute (turn off the piano's right hand voice or left hand voice), repeat, change the speed, lift and change the key, etc. Teachers are required to master the skilled operation of the technology.
②Recording: Understand MIDI music production techniques and master the various functions of the digital piano, so as to improve the sound effects of ensemble lessons in the digital piano classroom.
③Music Composition: Use the powerful orchestration function of the digital piano to prepare teaching materials and arrange ensembles and styles for students of different grades and levels, and guide students in arranging and composing.
2、Piano teaching combined with different ways of demonstration performance teaching
Piano teaching demonstration performance should start from the whole piece demonstration performance, local demonstration performance, technical difficulties demonstration performance and the artistic expression of the piece demonstration performance, so that the students can get the complete audio-visual intuitive impression of the piece, solve the key and difficult problems, guide and develop the students' aesthetic comprehension and aesthetic interest.
①Use MIDI demonstration songs and audio-visual materials to demonstrate the whole piece. The demonstration of the entire piece will give students a complete visual and audio intuitive impression of the nature and characteristics of the piece. Playing MIDI demonstration songs and teaching materials in their entirety will enable students to understand different performance styles and characteristics.
②Use the MIDI Demonstration Library in conjunction with the teacher's real-time performance demonstrations to demonstrate technical difficulties and local highlights. Demonstration of technical difficulties is used to overcome the technical obstacles in the works, to solve the problems, to make the difficulties easier, and to straighten out the ideas of learning the repertoire. Difficulties in learning skills often vary from person to person. Partial demonstration refers to the demonstration of a particular section, phrase or even note. This is the most common demonstration technique, and it is especially suitable for passages where there is a lot of similarity or repetition in the technical characteristics of the piece. For key and difficult pieces such as the division of phrases, the playing method of connecting lines, the treatment of strength relationship, as well as different rhythms, melodic expression, division of voices, etc., you can use the digital piano room playback system to repeatedly play and slow down MIDI demonstration pieces, and combined with the teacher's real-time demonstration of difficult pieces, to get good teaching results.
③Use the MIDI demonstration song library in combination with the audio-visual data teaching film for demonstration of artistic expression. The artistic expression of piano music should and must be rich in personalised characteristics, and the basic techniques of artistic expression are embodied by playing techniques, and there are rules to be found. The use of MIDI demonstration libraries and audio-visual teaching films is conducive to students' understanding of the different playing techniques and methods of piano players other than the teacher, as well as the different effects they produce, and the role they play in accentuating huge or subtle acoustic differences to create a wide variety of musical images.
3 Teaching in combination with different teaching contents.
In the selection of digital piano collective class teaching repertoire, based on the current syllabus and teaching plan, to determine the practice pieces, Chinese and foreign music, sonatas and styles and other aspects of the content, teaching can be based on different teaching repertoire using its special features for MIDI demonstration song teaching.
For the teaching of practice pieces, you can use the repeated practice function of the teaching equipment, the special metronome function, and the function of changing the tempo and elevation to play the MIDI demonstration piece for practice; the two-part and three-part practice pieces can also be based on the multi-track playback function, which can mute one of the MIDI demonstration pieces (right-handed or left-handed part of the piano) for ensemble; in the teaching of Chinese and foreign music pieces and sonatas, you can use the In the teaching of Chinese and foreign music and sonatas, it is possible to use the diversified repertoire function or the multi-instrument accompaniment styles function to play the existing standard MIDI music, which can provide the background accompaniment and concerto for the piano teaching; in the teaching of accompaniment styles, the diversified repertoire function can be used to practice without anyone singing, which will be a very good effect. In addition, a library of MIDI demonstration pieces can be used to assist students in various forms of piano practice.
The development and utilisation of the MIDI model song library has just begun, and the establishment of digital piano classrooms, the completeness of various functions, the training of teachers, the selection of teaching repertoire, teaching experience and methodology are yet to be flexibly applied by the piano teachers in the actual teaching activities, and constantly explored and innovatively improved.

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