Designs by Musespeak(tm)

Musicians hear all about creating imagery in music. For instance, if pianist is performing Schumann's The Wild Horseman, he or she should be trying to help the audience envision a horseman on a wild crazy ride. I've decided to add to Musespeak(tm)'s activities by approaching it the other way - creating music through imagery. Photography has been a hobby of mine for many years. Check out the new store - Designs by Musespeak. As you can tell, there are several common themes along with variations within those themes.

Maestro is even excited to have his own "Maestro Groupie" t-shirt and "Bad Hair Day" hats.

(c) 2009 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Google Docs Makes Music Reports Easy

Two ways that my students can earn bonus points (and thereby Maestro Bucks) through my incentive program is to do a research project or concert report. One of my students, Grant, is pretty technologically savvy and has been using Google Docs to complete and submit his reports.

He simply emails me the link, I print it off to store in my Student Composition and Projects Binder and he gets his bonus points and Maestro Bucks.

Great Link about Articulation & Music Terms

I stumbled upon this link in my search for a refresher on tremolos. I particularly like the chart about all the different accents. That will come in handy when I start reviewing accents with my students.

Now I better get back to practicing. I'm "parachuting" in as a choir accompanist for a short-term project so I need to speed-learn the pieces for tomorrow's rehearsal. And yes, I just got the music today. Isn't that how it always goes?

The jazz lessons are paying off. My style of chunking the information has changed with my year in jazz.

(c) 2009 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Playing Fraction Pies - Help with Rhythm

Hooray! I've been looking for an online game that my students can play to practice their rhythm/fraction recognition. Here's what I found.

David provides a concise breakdown of the pie pieces and then has a game at the bottom of his page.

Happy playing!

(c) 2009 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.

Piano Pedagogy & Studio Technology Musings

I recently attended the Piano Pedagogy Workshop presented by the Calgary Arts Summer School Association, featuring Paul Sheftel, American composer, teacher and pedagogue and his wife, Dr. Sara Sheftel, Ph. D.

Paul shared with us the various techie toys and gadgets he uses in his studio, from PowerPoint to Home Concert Xtreme (click on the link for more info). He also touched upon audio recording, video recording and the use of webcams in lessons held with his students in another state. He also ran a couple of sessions on "Performance with Commentary", which I unfortunately was unable to attend.

Sara held open forums for teachers to discuss the challenges of keeping students motivated, handling teacher burnout and knowing when to let go of a student. Sara would add her comments and share her advice as we spoke. I would have liked to hear more of Sara's insights before going into an open forum set-up.

I walked away with two kernels that are percolating in the back of my mind:

1. Protect yourself. If you're too run down or your life is out of balance, it hampers your ability to teach and help to others.

2. Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS). Make the most of the technology you currently have at your disposal first before adding a whole bunch of gadgets and programs you are unfamiliar with (and don't have the time to get familiar with).

Immediately after the workshop, I sat down to redesign Studio Central, the mircosite for my students. Gone are the pages they never looked at. It's now streamlined to house things to download.

The Dazzling Downloads page remains, containing handouts and studio forms. New is the online A/V Library I'm building. When complete, my students will be able to download funky grooves at various tempii and time signatures I've recorded from my drum machine, to use for improvising or as an alternative to the metronome. Scales will be more fun to play with a rock or funk groove, right?

On the video side of things, I'm recording a series of 12 Practicing 101 demos, so when my students forget how to do the Countdown Drill or drill their memory stations, they can watch the video.

Then the piece de resistance, the Student A/V Lesson Files pages. Gone are the days where we're fiddling with ProTools, exporting a .wav file and burning it to CD (only to find that they can't play the CD in their CD player). No more transferring of mp3 files from my audio recorder to the computer to a student's memory stick. I'm just going to upload the A/V snippets of their lessons to Studio Central for them download. Each student will have their own page, their personal A/V library collection.

Back to my point of just keeping things simple. I have Finale Notepad, Sibelius, ProTools, a stage piano and drum machine. I have yet to find the time to sit down and explore each to their fullest, or to explore their connectivity capabilities. A friend just told me about Audacity, a free audio recording and editing program. However, that will have to wait for another time. I have figured out how to connect my drum machine to my Mbox to record using ProTools and I already know how to transfer audio and video files taken by my portable audio recorder and camera; so that will do until I figure out the rest of the techie toys and invest in a really good video recorder.

Who knows? Maybe sometime in the not so distant future, music teachers will be holding an Open Chat Night once a week on one of the ISM programs or Skype for students to pop in and ask questions. Teacher PodCasts. Studio Parent Chat Nights. Virtual concert nights. The sky's the limit.

(c) 2009 by Musespeak(tm), Calgary, AB, Canada. All rights reserved.