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.

Useful Music Websites

A great big thank you to my teaching colleagues on LinkedIn for sharing their favorite music websites:

Children's Music Workshop: Music Education Online
Play Piano Today - a look at Pattern Play Piano
Music Learning Community
Susan Paradis' Piano Teaching Resources

Enjoy!

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

Bringing the Groove Back into Music Studies with Pattern Play

Yesterday, ARMTA Calgary hosted a workshop on Pattern Play with piano pedagogue Forrest Kinney. He and his wife Akiko developed this extremely aural-kinesthetic approach to music playing. Seeing as I've been incorporating more of the VARK Learning Preferences into the music lessons I teach, I was looking really forward to this session.In a nutshell, students are taught two patterns. These are imparted in a "talking drum" fashion: the teacher improvises a short motif using one of the patterns (e.g. E, G, A, B). The student answers with their own improvised motif. With young students, perhaps that is all you want to give them for that lesson as their "pattern play project".

Once the student has gotten the hang of that, the teacher can show the student a simple accompaniment pattern and they switch roles at the keyboard (e.g., E, B). (BTW, the pattern I just described is called Japan).

The next step is to get students to jam hands together. Forrest advises to have them start by playing the same pattern in both hands. When one hand is bored, melodic and rhythmic variation start to creep in.

With this approach, the feeling drives and shapes the music (not the brain) just as equally as boredom does. Forrest said that "boredom makes us receptive to new ideas and to change."

That was an extremely condensed version. Check out Forrest and Akiko's website and their books for a more in-depth explanation.

Two very important points to keep in mind when working on Pattern Play - eyes closed and tap the heel. Yes, that's a very jazzy approach. When Forrest said that, it made me recall my jazz lessons last year when Derek Stoll said the exact same thing.

Pattern Play can be used to help develop students' inner ear, phrasing, and rhythm and flow. Wait a minute, didn't I write about rhythm and flow at some point?

Hiyoshi is a Japanese concept called "rhythm-timing". In his Book of Five Rings, 16th century samurai Miyamoto Musashi said, "In the field of martial arts, one finds rhythm-timing in the techniques of shooting an arrow, firing a gun and riding a horse. The concept of rythm-timing should not be ignored in any profession or art."

Forrest said that somewhere along the way, we lost our hiyoshi. We lost the groove. In the quest to reach a certain playing level by age X and our quest for perfection, we lost the tamashii (soul) and the kokoro (heart)of music. This isn't the first time I've heard this. I heard this during my jazz lessons too and variations of this in my Iaido training.

Pattern Play was developed as a way for musicians, music students and music teachers to get back their groove. To just close our eyes and feel the music. Feel the beat.

Now Kinney's approach won't work for all students or all teachers and Forrest is the first to admit that. However, there are many nuggets teachers and students of all walks can take and use form the Pattern Play approach.

For those of us teaching Royal Conservatory students, we have to follow the syllabus for technical requirements. As supplemental material for the traditional exam students - Pattern Play will be a life saver. Conservatory Canada students do get to improvise in their exams. Pattern Play is a great springboard. Pattern Play will inspire students of all levels who want to go home and be able to play something "cool" each week.

Final thoughts? I jammed on D Dorian last night (eyes closed). I selected one of the "golden chord progressions" and started with one octave arpeggios in my LH and single melody notes in my RH. I soon tired of that and remembered that Forrest jammed on doubled thirds. I hate doubled thirds and normally avoid practicing them. Jamming on double thirds? Much more do-able....and fun. Soon, I tired of that and tried parallel 6ths and the "Mozart trill". I haven't tried transposing the pattern yet into all the Dorian modes, but I know I'll get to it eventually.

When playing back the recording, I got the sense my "inner child" was having a blast. I was giddy in the recording and as I listened to it. I can't wait for my Pattern Play books to come in just so I can play.

Ditto for when I checked out the lesson videos I uploaded yesterday. The kids were pumped and they're stoked that we're going to jam "lots" this month. How apropos that this month's focus in our Musical Exploration is jazz, blues and ragtime.

September 3, 2020 update: The Pattern Play series is available at most local music stores. Online, you may find them at Sheetmusicplus (affiliate link)

Using the Camera During Music Lessons

As some of my readers know, I have been doing audio and visual recordings when I am teaching. At the end of the night, I upload the files to their special recordings page and fire off an email (Thank God for email templates), saying "Your Lesson Audio/Video Clip is up!"It's been working very well since moving to this format. All they have to do is click on the link and they can get a refresher anytime they want. They can even show off to family and friends, near and far.

This week, my students and I discovered something truly amazing. I was trying to figure out a better position for the tripod. Previously, it sat beside my desk with the camera catching a profile shot. That works well - most of the time.

However, this week, I wanted to capture a better view for my students struggling with hand position and keyboard topography.The amazing discovery? Turn the student into a roving camera person when I'm demonstrating (or I'm the roving camera person/interviewer as I get them to piece together a practice plan for the week). Then they can go all around me and zoom in on whatever they feel they need to capture as I explain and demonstrate a practice strategy to them.Now I admit, some videos don't offer the best view. There's a few moments, when the lens is panning the floor or the window but the twinkle in their eye just from being in charge of the camera is something to behold.They have also started to even take photos during the video to capture a hand position.

Some advice: make your students use the neck strap, use a camera that they can handle (and that you're comfortable using for recording lessons) and finally, for really young beginners, pass the camera to the child's parent. After all, it's for their benefit that you're doing the video.

(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.