There's no such thing as a wrong note

This week, I've had some interesting conversations with my students who are so preoccupied by playing "one wrong note". I was trying to communicate that there are no wrong notes in performance - just surprises. Sometimes, they are delightful surprises that lead to an exciting and personalized performance. Others - not so pleasant. Here are a few other quotes from the pros on the subject:

• There’s no such thing as a wrong note. - Art Tatum

• There are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places. -Miles Davis

• It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong. - Miles Davis

• To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. -Joseph Chilton Pearce

• There are no mistakes in jazz - you are always a semitone from salvation! - church joke

• There are no wrong notes; some are just more right than others. – Thelonius Monk

• “Do not fear mistakes. There are none. - Miles Davis

• "There are no wrong notes, only wrong resolutions" "I think of all harmony as an expansion and a return to the tonic."— Bill Evans

• There are no wrong notes on the piano, just better choices.—Thelonious Monk

• I played the wrong, wrong notes.—Thelonious Monk

How appopos. I had a few surprises in one of the pieces I performed last night at the BeatNiq. I made it through some to my delight (others, I was just glad to plow through the line and be done with it). I added a few new elements I wasn't sure I could pull off since they were truly last minute additions. Throwing in the Mission Impossible Theme into a 5/8 version of What Child Is This? was one of those pleasant surprises.

(c) 2008 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary,AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Test Your Musical IQ

Now for something completely different... Musician and doctor Jake Mandell has developed four online tests that you can try:

1. Do you think you're tone deaf? Take the Tonedeaf Test

2. How well can you "hear" shapes? Test your Musical-Visual Symbolic Intelligence

3. Are you rhythm deaf?

4. How good are you at distinguishing subtle pitch differences?

They're trickier than going through the old Four Star books.

(c) 2008 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB Canada. All rights reserved.

Jazz Lesson Musings

After years of thinking about it, I enrolled in jazz piano lessons this year. I was motivated by my students who are "pumped" about Conservatory Canada's Contemporary Idioms syllabus and the Teacher's Choice Study in the Royal Conservatory of Music syllabus. I was also looking for ways to "jazz" up my gig repertoire.I am currently studying with Derek Stoll, an accomplished jazz pianist and examiner for Conservatory Canada. These lessons are so different from the traditional piano lesson. We really go with the flow. I am currently picking out Christmas tunes by ear, then harmonizing them, then "jazzifying" them.

It's quite the process. Fun, but boy do you ever give your brain a workout from all the keyboard harmony. I am still trying to commit the octatonic scale to memory (I have no problems writing it, playing it from memory is another story). Theoretically, I understand what an A7 with a sharp 5 and flat 9 is but my brain and hands aren't completely in sync there either. Voice leading? Again, good with writing it down but still learning to think on my feet (er, fingers).

Some stuff is starting to stick. I'm looking forward to my next gig, where I can try out what I've been working on.

One colleague recently asked me whether my teaching style has changed. I'm getting my students to start looking at the shapes of chords more. They're all picking out Christmas songs by ear and personalizing them. I'm also getting them to analyze their chords more and more. Probably the biggest change is that I'm really, really harping on them about getting their technique up to snuff. Several have expressed an interest in improvising and embellishing their songs.

Since starting my jazz lessons, I've decided I'd like to take a Contemporary Idioms exam - for fun. Since I began teaching, my scales, chords and arpeggios and ear training are better than they ever were when I took exams growing up, so I'm relishing the thought performing well on a test in these areas. I guess I should start picking out my program and get cracking!

(c) 2008 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Pikachu Helps Catch the Rhythm

My deepest apologies for not blogging regularly. It's been tougher to juggle all the balls this year - between my ARMTA Calgary President duties and jazz piano lessons (not to mention a full studio), there has been a lot on the go. I have two young brothers who started lessons with me this year. They went through the Yamaha program last year. Excellent ears, not so strong on note reading, but they are getting there. Rhythm reading has been a bit of a challenge for them. Enter Pikachu.

Both boys love Pokémon, those cute little creatures that pop out of Poké balls and are used in Pokémon matches. Clapping and saying "ta", "ti-ti", "tum" and "ta-ah" to their songs just wasn't working for them. Last week, the younger boy and I were talking like Pikachu when an idea formed in my mind:

Pi = quarter notePi-ka = half notePi-ka-chu OR Pi-ka-pi = dotted half notePi-ka pi-ka = whole note

This is the extent of Pikachu's actual vocabulary. Both boys nailed the rhythms to their songs on the first go round, thanks to that cute, yellow, electrical Pokémon.

I guess the moral of the story is, when conventional methods don't work, find something the student is passionate about and milk it to the nth degree!

Arigato gozaimasu, Pikachu. We couldn't have done it without you!

(c) 2008 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Learning Style Modalities & Music

At this year's CASSA Piano Pedagogy Workshop, there was a session on learning style modalities. I was quite excited about this session as it is an area I've been curious about ever since my science fair days in junior high. What I particularly enjoyed was that the presenter, Victoria Chow, B. Mus. Westminster Choir College at Rider University, spoke specifically about teaching tools and strategies to use when teaching. She spoke about three out of the four VARK modalities:

• Visual: learn by look, easily distracted by movements

• Aural/Auditory: learn by sound, easily distracted by noises

• Kinesthetic: learn by feel, distracted by....themselves

The fourth, for those who are curious, is read/write (or tactile). Everyone has the ability to learn through any combination of these modalities. However, we all have one or two that we are strongest in.

Some of the music teaching suggestions Victoria gave are:

• Visual Learners: music theory/analysis, demonstration, handouts

• Aural: singing the tune, assigning moods to sounds, listening to recordings of performances, lessons, practices

• Kinesthetic: theory/analysis, blocking chords, rote teaching, touch

At first, I thought I was a Visual-Kinesthetic learner but after taking the VARK questionnaire, discovered I am a tactile-kinesthetic learner. That explains why I was weakest in sight reading and ear training growing up (I have improved since I began teaching). It undoubtedly explains why I've been most challenged by my students who are strongest in auditory learning AND very weak in my strongest modalities.

Since the workshop, I've been playing closer attention to my students as they play something old and something new. I've also been paying closer attention to what they're focusing on while I'm talking. I have a good split of tactile-kinesthetic and kinesthetic-auditory learners in my studio. Next would be visual-kinasthetic. And then there's my handful of pure auditory learners.

This year, I'm singing more to my students (and still coaxing them to sing too), demonstrating and having them mimic me and doing more "on the spot" recordings and playbacks to my auditory learners (my digital recorder is great for this). I'm finding that I'm relying on Solfège a bit more to cater to this group.

I've been putting greater emphasis on sight-reading this term to build up all my students' visual learning, talking about patterns and reading intervallicly. With all students, I keep drawing everything back to "sound, look and feel" and then having the students jot down whatever notes they need to help remember. I've even adjusted how I write in their assignment binders for the tactile learners, listing specific ways to fix a trouble spot.

All in all, it's been extremely helpful. Although, I'm stumped as to why my some of my auditory learners are reluctant to bring a memory stick (to copy their lesson recording from my computer) or recording device to their lessons.

(c) 2008 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada.