Keeping Ensembles in Sync

This year, my students are working on duets and trios. For most, it's their first experience in the collaborative arts. Some groups are finding it relatively easy to find the ensemble's pulse. These players have a fairly good internal pulse and have caught on to giving and receiving cues. Or in the case of those who aren't usually steady, they become steady because they are listening to their partners and to how everything fits together. And - they get along (always a bonus).

Then, there's the other extreme. One trio is comprised of a boy whose tempi vary widely (although he vehemently denies this), one girl who stops every time she plays a note that's not on the page and one girl who just doesn't care about getting the notes right, much less the tempo. I can only hope that the next trio class will go more smoothly. In another group, my "Giggle Trio" - two players were distracting each other, which drove the third partner crazy because she just wanted to get through the entire song.

Here are a few articles on ensemble playing:

The Ensemble that Plays Together - another great post from Chris Foley

Why Being a Great Ensemble Player May Require More than Just Our Ears

September 3, 2020: Updated some of the dead links.

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.

Music Lesson FAQs

For my 2008/09 Registration package, I created a FAQs sheet. It contains some general questions about music lessons. I thought it would also be useful to create a Music Lessons FAQ's page on my website. I did conduct some online research on FAQ's and am grateful to my colleagues who have inspired me with theirs. In the spirit of sharing, colleagues who visit my page are welcome to take and revamp my FAQ's for their own studios.

If you have any suggestions for FAQ's, please send them in!

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

Adding Passion to your Technique

Today, my student L came to her piano lesson a little on the grumpy side. Blame it on her homework and group projects. We tried something today that was rather fun - we added a bit of passion to her technical exercises.

We focussed on two keys today - G major and its minor cousin E minor. We wound up staying in E minor since it sounds angrier. I asked her to play me some Angry Scales, Stressed Out Triads and Frantic Arpeggios. She was rather convincing in conveying her emotions of the day. The way she made her triads zigzag really sounded like a stressed out person running in one direction and rapidly turning to run the other way. Ditto for her arpeggios.

After venting her frustrations" through her technique, L's rendition of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" was sufficiently tender, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" was perfectly boogie-ish, while Beethoven's "Ecossaise was positively perky.

Now I'm willing to bet that if I had her start with Can You Feel the Love Tonight?, it would have sounded like someone yelling.

I tried the same tactic with a few more students tonight to great success as I had quite a few students stressed out from homework. I think I'm going to give it a try with my own technical exercises.

At the end of L's lesson, I wished her well with her school projects and expressed my hope that within a few days, she'll be able to practice some Happy Scales, Excited Triads and Lazy Arpeggios.

(c) 2007 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.