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.

A Rainbow of Handouts and Studio Incentives

Now that my website issues have been resolved (knock on wood), I can get back to the business of writing and teaching. You can read all about it here. I've wanted to share some of the tweaks I've made to my studio incentive program:

What's New:

First off, I changed the name from "Maestro's Musical Quest" to "Maestro's Top Dogs". It makes sense, since the Top Dogs in each category will party it up with Maestro at the Top Dog Party.

I also reformatted the Piano Progress Card. The booklet format was nice, but students misplaced it. Now, all the elements that were in the Progress Card are printed on 8-1/2 X 11" coloured sheets (lilac, pink, green and blue) and placed in their binders.

In the top LH corner in the photo above, you'll see two cards with shapes in a grid. That's the new technique challenge. Inspired by Qwirkle, a game created by MindWare, my students will work their way through the card, building Qwirkle-like rows ("Twirkles", perhaps?). Whenever they master six technical elements in a row, they collect $15 Maestro Bucks to spend at Maestro's Market. Students who complete the card (major minor keys) will be inducted into Maestro's Technique All-stars.

Upgraded Studio Incentives - Sticking to a Theme

One thing I noticed with last year's "Gig Card" is that some students either performed a lot or hardly at all. I suspect that some lost their steam for performing 20 times before seeing $100 Maestro Bucks. This year, they will earn $25 Maestro Bucks for each five performances.

That transferred over to the Music Moxie (formerly the "Music Maestro") and the Music Mastery cards. I decided to keep it simple and have $25 Maestro Bucks for five on all of them. The goals setting incentive remains the same as last year.

Handouts and a Bag of Tricks

This year, my students and I are going to explore practice strategies based upon their "practice personality". This is inspired by a book I bought at the CFMTA Convention, entitled Practice Personalities: What's Your Type?: Identifying and Understanding the Practice Personality Type in the Music Studentby Thornton Cline.

Instead of the Practicing 101 handouts of years past, I decide to repackage the info for my predominantly Visual and Visual-Kinesthetic learners. Once again, I drew inspiration from some of the tabletop games and video games I've played.

All students, young and young-at-heart, received a Bag of Tricks:

The original set contains 24 practice drills. One side of the card shows you how to do the drill. The reverse side tells you when to use the practice strategy and what it can be used to fix.

Some of my students were very excited when they read what the cards contained. Others looked skeptical, to which I'd say, "They're good for when you're stuck and you need to change up how you're working on something."

One of my fellow gamers enthusiastically read the cards out loud to his mother. When he got to the part where it said, "Repeat until you can play this spot cleanly five to seven times in a row," his mother said something like, "Well, duh!"

Then, one of my Grade 12 students looked at them and said, "Dude, that's a lot of work." Well, if more of my students improve because of them, then I'd say that it's worth it. At any rate, I hope that they have as much fun with their materials, practice aids and practice incentives as I had making them.

June 13, 2014 update:The musical bag of tricks has undergone significant testing and revisions, as well as a new name. I am pleased to announce that the Canadian product release of Maestro's Music Tricks (MMT) is June 30. There are 34 practice drills. MMT is currently available on pre-order. Stay tuned for details on the international product release.

MMT website: http://mmt.musespeak.com

MMT FB page: https://www.facebook.com/maestrosmusictricks

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. 

Beginning major scales Book Review

When I attended the CFMTA Music Inspires Convention last month, I had the pleasure of speaking with Paul Sayre, author of Beginning major scales. It's a combination technique and theory workbook for piano and voice students. This is quite different from the traditional theory books we use to teach music rudiments to our Royal Conservatory and Conservatory Canada students. I find it refreshing.

A Look at Beginning major scales

The workbook opens with a section called "Cold Feet". It's cute enough that young students will enjoy colouring but there is an important riddle on it for young and, as Mr. Sayre says, "grown up" kids to figure out. It's a new take on memorizing the Order of Sharps. This is followed by a cheat sheet of all the major key signatures that all students will hopefully refer to often.

Then the book introduces each key in turn, going through the Circle of Fifths. For each key, the one-octave scale, I-IV-I-V7-I cadence and arpeggio are shown. On the opposite page, there are some questions for students to answer - written and aural (yay! ear training). At the end of the section, two octave scales and arpeggii are shown.

The second half of the book is dedicated to music theory. There are extra theory questions on scales, followed by an introduction to major and minor thirds (followed by questions to answer).

Students not only learn about major and minor triads, but also augmented and diminished as well. The final section of the book has a Note Catcher!™ ear and theory training game.

First Impressions of Begnning major scales

Like the Piano Adventures series, The Sayre Series Beginning major scales introduces music students to intervals, chords and arpeggii early. I do like the fact that Mr. Sayre introduces the various technical elements with the single octave but gives the two-octave version later on.

Another thing that I do like about the book is that the text is worded to speak to a wide age range of music students. It's simple enough for a seven year-old student but worded with care so that an adult student wouldn't be turned off. That's not an easy feat to accomplish.

Using Beginning music scales

My beginning piano students use the theory books from Piano Adventures, while my conservatory students use either Conservatory Canada's theory workbooks or Glory St. Germain's Ultimate Music Theory series. I don't have plans of dropping those.

However, I can see three groups of students in my studio who can benefit from using Beginning major scales. The first are my adult students who are playing recreationally. They tend to find the conservatory-affiliated theory books to be "too much". They want the basics and they don't have the time to work through chapters of questions.

The second group of students I can see benefitting from this series are what I'd call "students in transition". I have a few students who are beginning that transition from the beginner method books to one of the conservatories, but they aren't quite ready age-wise or level-wise for formal rudiments. "Students in transition" also covers transfer students who are a little weak on theory but also, aren't quite ready to look at conservatory-affiliated theory books.

The third group of students are the ones who just aren't getting it. They've been in music for a few years and the materials we've been using just confuse them. Sure, there are other issues at play, but if I can help them by using a friendly-looking book, worded in "plain-speak" with them, I think they can finally get over the hump.

I do have one beef and that is the fact there is no Beginning minor scales book. I did contact Paul Sayre regarding this and he has assured me that one is in the works. However, its release is contingent upon the success of Beginning major scales (my fingers are crossed).

Beginning major scales is a fresh approach to teaching music theory and technique. This combination workbook contains practical, written and aural exercises for students to complete. It is perfect for beginners who are beginning to transition to elementary playing.

About Beginning major scales

Title: Beginning major scales for All Piano and Voice Methods: Technique and Theory Workbook for All Piano and Voice Methods

Author: Paul Sayre

Publisher: Brownstyle, 2011

ISBN: 0615426832, 9780615426839

Length: 41 pages, text and illustrations

Price: $9.98 US and up

In Canada, Beginning major scales is available at Long & McQuade. In the United States, music teachers and students may purchase the book through  Performers Music Chicago. The book is also available for sale online on The Sayre Series website .

Lesson Planning - A Work in Progress

The big decluttering project continues. It's taken years to amass all this paper and stuff so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it will take a while to clean up my mess. It seems though, that no sooner do I get my office tidied up that it becomes a bigger mess as soon as I tackle a new section in my office. Case in point:

Amidst the chaos however, plans are beginning to emerge. As I file handouts and documents from the previous teaching year, ideas for new handouts and teaching strategies are percolating in my mind.

However, I don't want to break the flow of my clean up (I refuse to start another teaching year with a messy office); so, I have three medium-sized coloured sheets, labelled: "Lesson Strategies/Planning", "Handouts to Make" and "To Do" on top of one of the binders in the lower LH corner.My tin of Crayola® markers are also close by.

So far, I've jotted down things like, "How to make technique more fun," "Strategies for helping the Keyboard Geography/Hand-Eye Coordination Challenged Students" and a long list of optional activities.

For the time being, I just grab the appropriate sheet and jot down a phrase. Once I get that tower beside my desk emptied out, then I can hunker down and transform the ideas into something tangible. I imagine that by the time I reach that point, I'll have more than three sheets of ideas. At least, it will be easier to focus as by then, I'll have a less cluttered workspace.