PIANO PETS
 

With Help From These Musical Pups, the Littlest Pianists Can Learn to Play

Friday, July 25, 1997 By ELINOR J. BRECHER, Herald Staff Writer

Three squirmy little bodies crowd a single piano bench as three sing-songy voices crow in unison: ``C is on the left of the two black keys! E is on the right of the two black keys! D is in the middle of the two black keys!'' One of the little bodies -- 5-year-old Jonathan Goodman, encased in a green-and-purple spider costume -- gets so excited that he whomps the keyboard of the well-worn old Steinway with both fists. Another -- 3-year-old Rebecca Merritt, ballet lesson-ready in leotard and pink slippers -- decides to play notes with her elbow.  ♫

``Be nice to the piano!'' admonishes a grown woman who's dressed like a Siberian husky, with furry, pointy-eared headgear, a yard-long plush tail and painted-on whiskers. This is Phyllis Sdoia-Satz, co-owner of the Sdoia-Satz Music Institute, with two Dade locations, and co-author of a new piano curriculum called, ``The Husky Gang (for the Littlest Pianist).'' ♫

The teaching method, aimed at beginners, leads children through the basics of piano via the storybook tale of a 3-year-old boy named Charlie who's heartbroken at having been told him he's too young to play the piano. The Husky Gang members assure him he's not, and they take him on as a pupil at their music school. Page by page, through a thick, three-ring binder, Charlie learns to play. And so do the kids taking piano, as they and their instructor -- or parent, using the lessons at home -- read a Husky Gang story. The pacing of the exercises is such that about the time young ones might get restless and distracted, there's a break, Sdoia-Satz says. ♫

``It works because it causes a kid to retain interest,'' says Sdoia-Satz, whose school has two studios, in Biscayne Park and North Miami, with students ranging from 18 months old to retirement age. ``We don't give them a chance to become tired of doing one thing. It changes from doing to listening, to doing to listening.'' ♫

The ``doing'' is identifying notes, symbols and piano keys, learning which hand is left and which is right, learning rhythm, finger positions, even posture, playing scales and simple melodies. The ``listening'' is the stories, such as ``The Story of Soffley, the Red Squirrel,'' or ``Chasing Away the Strange Dog -- Sharon Earns Husky-hood.'' ♫

Some sections of the text encourage children to respond verbally. Says Sdoia-Satz: ``I was saying to one of our teachers, `When Charlie brings his parents [to meet the Husky Gang], and they are identified as Mr. and Mrs. Simon, you can ask about the student's parents' names.' That makes him a participant.'' The idea, says Sdoia-Satz, is to make learning to play fun. If kids have fun with it, Sdoia-Satz feels, they can accomplish in weeks what might otherwise take months to learn. That's why she encourages children to come in costume (Jonathan's sister Jessika, 4, is a butterfly this day). ♫

``It makes the horrendous nature of repetition not so awful,'' says Sdoia-Satz, who is a mother of four and grandmother of seven. ``But it doesn't sacrifice the teaching for one second just because we're telling a story.'' ♫

In fact, says Richanda Goodman, the mother of Sdoia-Satz students Jonathan and Jessika, the kids `` fight as to who's going to go first in the practice session. It's a miracle!'' ♫

A student of concert great Rudolph Serkin, Phyllis Sdoia-Satz is a serious pianist when she's not dressing up like a dog. She has given recitals around the world. Her husband, Barry Satz, is administrator of the school, which employs 50 teachers who offer lessons in voice and every imaginable instrument, including the Japanese Koto and the bagpipes. ♫

The idea of using the animals as a teaching vehicle came to Sdoia-Satz through watching young students interact with her pets -- Sharon the Siamese, Sam the Alaskan Malamute, Sheba and Stormy the Siberians -- which lounge around the practice room. It's not unusual to find a dog snoozing atop a dining-room table or in a leather armchair. ♫

``We encourage kids to enjoy the dogs,'' Sdoia-Satz says. ``If they have an affinity for the animals, I tell them that if they have a good lesson, they can pet the dogs after.'' ♫

Once, someone asked of the animals, ``Do they teach?'' ♫

``So, little by little,'' Sdoia-Satz says, ``I came to, `Why not?' Then, we started thinking about what's wrong with music books for little kids. I've hated them forever . . . So we began to make many changes in the teaching methods.'' ♫

Beside the story-telling approach, she uses rhymes and does things like call the bass notes ``tiger'' notes because those lower notes sound a little like tigers growling. Middle-range notes are ``duck'' notes, and the upper range is the ``bird'' range. When Jonathan Goodman started at the school five months ago, his mom says she ``wasn't sure if it was going to work out. I thought, `Oh, boy, they'll just be more distracted with the characters in the story.' But, pleasantly enough, they're interactive. So the children feel they're part of the story line, and the jingles help them remember information. "They can go to the piano, find the notes, read the notes, sing the songs.'' ♫

Little Rebecca Merritt's mother, Patsy Merritt, a South Miami accountant, says at first she was looking into a different method of teaching young children music, the Suzuki method. But she chose the Husky Gang after she saw ``how Miss Phyllis has good chemistry with the children.'' Rebecca, she says, ``really got turned on to the animals.'' After only three lessons, her daughter knew the difference between a ``g-clef'' and ``f-clef'' and could locate specific notes on the keyboard. Rebecca is one of Sdoia's-Satz youngest students. ♫

``You know something, Freddy,'' Sdoia-Satz says to co-author Alfredo Leon Jr., one of the institute's teachers and music director of the Miami Latin Jazz Ensemble, ``we wrote the book, we knew it worked, we tried parts of it all along the way. But I took it from chapter one, verse and chapter exactly with this one [Rebecca], with no deviation, and it works like a charm.'' Leon is a big backer of the school's have-fun approach. ♫