A New School Year to Try out New Ideas in the Music Studio

Summer flew by far more quickly than anticipated. All of my plans to learn new repertoire, reorganize my home and just relax were replaced with...busy-ness. Now, we're in the beginnings of another year of music teaching. Last week was intense as I was burning the midnight oil to make all sorts of cool handouts for my music students.

After having my students take the VARK Learning Preferences questionnaire last year, I discovered that my students fall under three general categories:

1. Visual (mostly in combination, Visual-Aural or Visual-Kinesthetic)

2. Aural-Kinesthetic

3. Read/Write

Most admitted on their registration forms for this year that music theory and piano technique were their least favorite music subjects. I bore that in mind with this year's handouts.

This year, I incorporated more charts and diagrams (V). I was respectful of white space (V) and included succinct examples (K) and explanations (R). These were followed up by visual demonstrations (V) with the student copying me. My aural students and I discussed various sounds, my kinesthetic students and I discussed how our arms and hands should feel.

Feedbackhas been extremely positive so far. "It's easier" is the most frequent comment.

The trick is that I need to teach music theory and piano technique differently from how I was taught. I was taught written theory first. My students need hands-on, keyboard theory first. It's more fun this way.

(c) 2010 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Musical Breakthroughs with Read/Write Learners

As I mentioned in my Teaching Music Using VARK Learning Preferences (new link to comes soon) entry, I had all my students ages nine and up complete the VARK Learning Preferences questionnaire. One interesting finding was that five of my students are "pure" Read/Write learners. In many of the VARK articles on the web, Read/Write Learners are not addressed. Trying to teach this group how to work through musical trouble spots poses a challenge when there is nothing to glean pearls of wisdom from. Basically, a person needs to visit the VARK website, read the Read/Write study tips there and extrapolate on how the tips can be applied to music. At the suggestion of my brother (and colleague), I instructed one student who has been struggling with two-note slurs to transcribe her music. After months of struggles, I was running out of ideas. Transcription was my last hope for this piece.

In one week, the piece was transformed - ALL articulation and dynamics were observed when my student played her Scarlatti piece for me this week. As an aside, I found this exercise also worked for my sole VAK learner.

I also found that rhythmic dictation is working well for this group. Another Read/Write student and I were jumping for joy when the ta-ti-ti-ta rhythm she had been struggling with disappeared after doing some rhythmic dictation using rhythms from the piece in question.

I think it also helps that I'm making all my Read/Write students write out their homework in their own words.

(c) 2010 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.