Practice Makes Excellent

When I was a young piano student, I often heard "Practice makes perfect". I have no doubt that one of the reasons I had a history of choking in performance was because of the pressure to be perfect. Notes, rhythm, dynamics, shaping - everything had to be flawless. Well, in a live performance situation, "flawless" is next to impossible to achieve. A drafty room, a sticky key, a new piece, an audience member unwrapping a cough lozenge wrapper just a little too loudly, a child in the back row asking his mom "Is it over yet?", a guest wandering over and startling the performer - such factors lead to the "unexpected" happening in a performance.

Now, as a teacher and a professional musician who plays at wedding and parties, I have unlearned the mindset for perfection. Oh, I still try to get everything to the best of my ability but now I strive for painting a musical picture as vividly as possible. I heard a motivational speaker say "strive for excellence, not perfection." What I've learned from playing at numerous gigs is that most people don't know you've made a mistake unless you draw attention to it. Keep going, smile and don't miss a beat whatever you do.

I bring this up because I am practicing for a couple of gigs taking place next week. With a full studio, it's hard to find time to practice. I try to squeeze in a couple of gig songs a night after teaching. Gigging has taught me to embellish and fake it. How liberating to not have to play anything exactly as written. How necessary it is to embellish and fake so that I can play through 40 - 50 songs for one of the gigs.

The only problem is, if I play some classical music after the gig material, I find it hard to play anything "straight."

(c) 2005 by Musespeak(tm). All rights reserved.

Is it naptime yet?

It's day three of teaching for me and I'm so tired! After a relatively light summer teaching schedule, I forgot how much energy teaching requires (and Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my long workdays!). The more excited the student, the more energy I need. I'm not complaining though. Both Maestro and I are glad to get back into our fall routine. Not to mention, budgeting will be a lot easier now that I have a regular schedule. I've enjoyed hearing about the students' vacations (camping, Disneyland, BC, Toronto) and am impressed with the progress some students have made over the summer.One continues to astound me with how well her musical ear is developing. The songs that she can pick out by ear and embellish upon are just astounding! Several have already learned two or three songs (and that's just the conservatory songs not the pop songs). With most, I have to spend some time reviewing what they learned last year.

The one glitch I've run into this week is with my new pet project. I plan to record the students' lessons onto CD but the CD burner died the first day. Two lessons sounded like two chipmunks talking. Then, the burner died. So it's back to pencil and paper until I can get that fixed. In a way, I'm relieved that it's a hardware issue. I was beginning to worry that my luck for learning new software quickly was running out.

Look at the time! I better get ready to teach.

(c) 2005 by Musespeak(tm). All rights reserved.

The Countdown is On!

The new teaching year begins on Tuesday and it has been a mad race to get everything ready by then. Bookkeeping has been postponed to contact my students’ families to confirm their lesson times (and yes, to see if they're still coming for lessons. You never know). The prize drawer and sticker tin are overflowing with the latest and greatest that's out there. All prizes have been inspected and approved of by my trusty assistant Maestro. I'm trying out a few new piano and theory books and had to buy them for planning purposes. While I was at the store, I perused through the clearance sections and found the funkiest rhythm puzzle. It was originally $35 and it was on sale for $5. When I saw it, I could picture myself clapping a simple rhythm to a young student and having him/her grab the appropriate foam pieces to create the pattern s/he heard. I also added a small set of cymbals, which the kids will fight over at group class.

I had coffee yesterday with a teaching colleague who specializes in Musikgarten and adult workshops. I had a brief introduction to Musikgarten at the Canadian Federation of Music Teachers' Associations' (CFMTA) national conference held in Calgary in July. Dr. Lorna Lutz Heyge, the President and co-founder of Musikgarten gave the clinic.

My colleague gave me a more in depth look at the curriculum and I must say I like it a lot. Musikgarten is an introductory music program for children aged 5 - 9 years. The curriculum is set up so the students learn music as they learned their mother tongue - by listening, babbling, using bigger sentences, storytelling and finally, reading. The group lessons are filled with singing, dancing and clapping. The kids don't even touch the keyboard until they have internalized the song.

I can't say that I am up for teaching the program but I will definitely recommend it to parents with young children. For more information, visit the Musikgarten website.

Well, my time is up here. The piano is calling me to run through some of the intermediate repertoire. I actually have to practice some of that stuff.

The most common question

By far, the most common question I get from people I first meet is, "How do you spend your days?" There seems to be a misconception that private music teachers don't do much outside of teaching time. I've wanted to tackle this for sometime now. Here goes... Private music teachers are basically a one-man/woman show. Corporations have separate departments for sales and marketing, information technology, accounting, administration, research and development, human resources, professional development, planning and maintenance. In my line of work, all those functions are performed by one person - the teacher (in this case, me).

I'm not sure how my colleagues do this, but I designate one day a week for each "department". I aim to get my work done before I begin teaching for the day, but that isn't always the case, especially since I usually need to address an issue from each "department" everyday. For instance, today was "wrap up "Peak Performance Conference sponsor packages/reports"" day but I have also made it "website update/overhaul day" and "ARMTA Website Committee Meeting Day". Bookkeeping is next on the list (my least favourite activity but I wear a goofy hat to lighten the mood).

It's not a typical 9 to 5 job. Often, I will get phone calls and e-mails outside of office and studio hours. But since I can't train my dog Maestro do field calls for me, I will usually take the call.

Practicing, transcribing and composing are best left for the evening after I've finished teaching for the day. I read somewhere that a study proved that you sleep better if you practice before bed. It helps the brain in someway. Unfortunately, the name of the study escapes me.

In addition to these job functions, there are workshops and events hosted by the Alberta Registered Music Teachers' Association (ARMTA Calgary branch) and the Alberta Piano Teachers's Association. These are usually scheduled in the mornings, when most teachers can attend. I currently sit on the Board for ARMTA Calgary, which means meetings, meetings and more meetings. It's not so bad though, compared to last year, when I was going to meetings and working on projects for three teaching organizations. What's scary is that I saw many of the same faces at all these meetings for the three groups.

As I also do some writing on the side, that usually is left till the wee hours of the night or when the fancy strikes me. Back in university, my best papers were written at 2 AM. That really hasn't changed since then.

The days are long, but I try to squeeze in breaks during the day - running errands, meeting with friends, hanging out with my dog. Maestro insists upon it.

(c) 2005 by Musespeak(tm). All rights reserved.

My First Blog

A friend of mine who is a marketing consultant has been on my case to set up a blog on the Musespeak(tm) website. At first, I thought, "Why? It's just a simple site about what Musespeak offers." However, the idea has been niggling in the back of my mind since she brought it up. I've been searching for ways to keep the main Musespeak site dynamic and have realized that a blog to muse about being an entrepreneur and an artist fits the bill. I should have known. This friend usually gives good advice. Why would this time be different? Consider this a slice of life blog on the adventures of being self-employed and a musician/teacher/writer. If I come across anything of interest, I'll put it here. Hopefully it will be useful and or entertaining to you, the audience.

Since I'm new at this, I won't even attempt to figure out how to enable discussion threads. I think I enabled comments to entertain comments and questions.