Arpeggio Warm-Up Exercise

This has been my favourite warm-up exercises lately. After playing the piano for over 30 years, you have to come up with different practice drills to keep things fresh.

First, I start by playing a one-octave arpeggio (eighth notes). I start slowly and as soon as I hear that I'm playing evenly, then I branch out to two octaves (eighth notes), then three (eighth note triplets) and then finally four (sixteenth notes). Sometimes, I have to repeat a particular stage three or more times before I hear that I'm playing evenly.

For an added challenge, I change the articulation: staccato, legato, portato or slurred. Then, for a bonus, each hand will play a different articulation.

Beginner piano students can just stick with one-octave arpeggios. Junior intermediate students can branch out to two-octaves. Upper intermediate students can go up to three octaves, while advanced students should go up to four octaves.

Here's a video demonstration:

Training Students to Become Active Listeners

When I was growing up, I studied piano with Miss Mahaffy. She took me from Grade 3 to Grade 9 piano. After running though a piece, she would usually comment on how I did. More often than not, my dynamics were flat or my playing was choppy. Then she'd ask me, "Did you listen to what you just did?" Usually, I'd say, "No," or "Not really." She would dutifully write, "Listen to yourself!" in my assignment book.

Fast forward to 2013. After hearing a student, usually I ask them, "What did you think? How did you sound?" Their response is eerily similar, "I don't know. I wasn't listening." To which I reply, "Well how do you know if you're getting any better if you don't listen to what you're saying?"

My strategy to teach my students to become active listeners is two-fold. I rely heavily on the technology on hand: my YouTube Music Exploration Play List and Record & Review.

Every week, I highlight a "Clip of the Week". I've been doing this for several years now. My students have an Active Listening Handout, although I really should just keep one at the piano to save time. While watching and listening to the clip, I ask them questions such as, "What instruments do you hear?", "What's the tempo like?", "Is the song major, minor or something else?" and "What's the articulation?"

The one thing that I've been employing more regularly is recording my students and having them listen to themselves.I record them onto my computer using Audacity. Any recording device will do: mp3 player, camera or phone.

I ask them to draw a star on any spot in the score in which they heard a bobble. Some students are really good at it, so I just have to talk about various practice drills and the end goal.

I have a group of students who don't really listen to themselves when they play. However, they realize what needs work only when we do the Record and Review.

Unfortunately, many of my students are weak in this area, and I want to fix that. Sometimes, I have to record them playing through a spot, record myself playing the same spot and have them compare the sound and the waveforms.

With guided questions (and a few replays), I can usually get my students to pick out one trouble spot that I'd like them to work on for the week. Once we select the most critical issue, I have them pull out their Bag of Tricks so that we can work on that spot.

This evening, I recorded a nine-year old student as she drilled a trouble spot. I played each recording for her and asked her to assess herself. We probably spent 10 minutes recording and reviewing until I felt confident that she knew what to listen for at home and that her practices will be better organized.

Basically, I'm walking my students through how to practice music efficiently. It's very tedious, especially when you take into account that I've been doing this with most of my students for the past couple of weeks. I do feel that this will pay off in the end. If I can successfully teach my students active listening skills, then they have a better chance of succeeding at self-regulated practicing.

It is my hope that well before the end of the school year, when I ask them, "What did you think? How did you sound?", they all will be able to assess their playing accurately and objectively. Then, I can focus on helping them progress with their musicianship and expression.

My Music Ed App List for iOS Devices - 2013 edition

Many of my students have mobile devices. It's what drove me to buying a Android smartphone and most recently, an iPod Touch. Now that I've had a bit of time to play with some of these apps that either my esteemed colleagues Alessandra diCenzo and David Story told me about or that I've stumbled upon, I can put a decent list together of music education apps for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.

Recording and Backing Track Apps for iOS

Garage Band for iPhone ($4.99) turns your iPad, iPhone and/or iPod touch into a collection of "touch instruments" and a full-featured recording studio. Want piano? Guitar? Drums? You can do it. You can even plug an electric guitar into you iThing to play through amps. Someone will have to let me know how well it works as I don't have an iPhone.

iReal b Music Book & Play Along ($7.99) is currently on my Android smartphone. However, I believe it was available for iOS devices first. What can I say about it? You get a mobile band with iReal b. Download the chord charts for over 1,200 songs available in the forums. Or, enter in the chord progression for any song, choose your instruments, tempo and style and play away. Instead of using a metronome, why not try practicing with a virtual band?

Note Reading, Theory and Ear Training Drills

Master in a Minute (FREE) is a fun music app for kids. It helps students develop their note reading skills. I like how it teaches intervallic reading. It has certainly been helping some of my students who are struggling with note reading. There used to be a full version, but it is no longer available in the App Store.

Music Reading Essentials ($2.99) has four sets of flash cards to choose from: notes, rhythms, intervals and symbols. Students can focus on one area or combine decks. The timer sure adds a bit of pressure. My students have been playing a round of this while waiting for their lesson.

Music Theory Pro ($4.99) has note naming games, key signatures and interval ear training. So far, I've noticed that it's better suited to my older beginners, intermediate and advanced students. Very slick design. I'll have to try the pro levels. I like how this app includes jazz chords and scales, altered dominants and extended chords. MTP is also available for Apple computers in the App store.

My Note Games! (FREE) was featured on BBC Click! and was nominated for a "Learning without Frontiers Innovation Award" in 2012. It has six games: Hear it, Play It; Play that Note, Play-a-Day!, Play-a-Carol!, Toonr the Tuner and Hear it, Note It. My beginner students enjoy it, although they don't get very far with the free version. I just bought the $6.99 upgrade to unlock all 18 levels..

Note Works Free (FREE) is for iPad. I was quite sad to see that I couldn't get it on my iPod Touch. It looked like pure fun when Alessandra showed it to a bunch of us at the 2013 CFMTA Convention. This game is designed to teach note recognition and improve sight reading skills. Your mission is to help Hungry Munchy catch each note as quickly as possible before it skitters off-screen. The full version has more bells and whistles (Note Works Full) for $4.99.

Rhythm Lab ($2.99) allows users to copy, save, or share any rhythm pattern as an image. You can send tapping results in an e-mail, create and print worksheets. My students and I haven't tried this app out yet

I have long recommended Musictheory.net to students and am glad that the creators have made a mobile version. Tenuto ($3.99) offers  fifteen customizable exercises to help you with chord recogniation, intervals and ear training. There are also musical calculators and twelve-tone matrices. They also have a Theory Lesson app for $2.99.

Metronome and Tempo Related Apps 

Metronome Ϟ (FREE) is what I have installed on my iPod Touch. It's simple and gets the job done. The "tap tempo" feature is greatly appreciated. Also, the practice timer is a neat. You can actually set it to hammer out the beats while you drill a trouble spot for one, two, three, four or five minutes.

I've just installed Tempo - Metronome with Setlists ($1.99). It has made the Top 100 List in the Music category.  There are five modes: Basic, Preset, Setlist, Practice and Gig. Each mode presents a different combination of functionalities optimized for the task at hand. I look forward to exploring this app.

Tempo SloMo (FREE) allows you to practice at your own pace. This is great not just for music students, but language and dancing students as well. Take a whatever you are working on and slow it down or speed up the audio track without affecting the pitch. I think this will become a popular app with my students, especially with their pop songs.

There are countless apps for music education. I'll update the list as I discover new apps. Feel free to suggest some of your favourite iOS apps for learning and playing music.

Next, I'll take a look at some Android apps for music education.

Making a Practice Schedule

Hi gang! Sorry for the lack of updates. My Wordpress upgrade went wonky and everything was down for a while, but we're back with new practice tips and tricks. The key to making progress with any activity is frequency. That's why dance, sports and martial arts groups train three or more times a week.

As a musician, a lot of that training has to be done at home, mostly on your own. You need to manage your practice routine - an not just because you don't want your parents or your music teacher nagging you about it. You have to want to get better, which means that you need a practice plan and a practice schedule.

Here are some websites I've tracked down with some tips on setting up a practice routine, as well as some sites that have practice logs:

Establishing Good Practice Habits (FYI: He's right - practice your arpeggios!)

Kids' Music Practice Charts

Making the Best Use of Limited Practice Time

Music Practice Schedule Template

The Power of a Practice Schedule

The Musician's Way - Downloads (I think I'm going to try out the Practice/Creativity Log)

Now if you're an aural learner, that is you learn by listening, then record your practices regularly and review them. If you're a visual learner, record a video of yourself. It's as easy as grabbing your smartphone, tablet, camera or iPod Touch.

Music Practice Advice from Barney the Dinosaur

I was never a huge fan of Barney the Dinosaur (he just wasn't as cool as Snuffy and Big Bird to me). However, I recently came across this two-part episode where Barney and his friends talk about how practice makes music.

Pianist Greg Murray shows the kids a few neat things that you can do with music once you've worked hard to learn a song. In this clip, Greg plays some different variations of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star:

Barney & Friends: Practice Makes Music (Part 1):

And Part 2 of Practice Makes Music:

The main point to take away is that Barney the Dinosaur's friend Greg practiced a lot to get to the point where he could have fun with any song, whether it was Mary Had a Little Lamb or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.