Getting Started

When I was a kid, before I took piano lessons, which I started when I was 8, I learned two songs. One was Chopsticks, which was a very easy piece. You can see why it became an introduction to playing the piano. The other was Heart and Soul. That was played as a duet. One person, sitting on the right side of the piano bench, played the melody. The other person, sitting on the left side, played the accompaniment. Now I'm wondering how Heart and Soul found its place to be in this role and did the composer, Hoagy Carmichael, have any idea when he was writing this tune that it would eventually come to play this role.

Maybe those of us who care about teaching and learning should spend more time considering gateway activities, do-able and compelling at the same time. Identifying those poses a challenge, certainly. But the payoff from having found one seems quite large indeed.