“After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own.”

– Oscar Wilde

Every Wednesday brings Words of Wisdom here at the Color in my Piano blog in the form of a musical quote or joke, intended to bring inspiration or humor to the middle of your week. Have suggestions? Send me a message here.

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I ordered my shirts from CustomInk.com again this year.  I was happy with the quality of the shirts last year, but more importantly — I love that CustomInk has an artist check your design before it gets printed.  My design required slight adjusting to make it work properly for both adult and child T-shirt sizes — so it was a good thing they checked everything over before the shirts were printed.

I chose the piano tie design from among the many music graphic options available on CustomInk’s website.  All I had to do was add the text on the side!  I hope this year’s T-shirt design will be a big hit.  :)

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Like last year, I’m holding one camp each month.  They run Monday through Thursday from 10am-12pm.  I chose a different topic for each month:

“I’ve Got Rhythm!” – (June)

During this camp, students will benefit from focusing on arguably the most essential element of music: rhythm!  There will be lots of opportunities for group music-making, using body percussion (clapping, snapping, tongue clucking, etc.) and hand-held percussion instruments.  Throughout the week, we will also complete workbook about various aspects of rhythm (pulse, time signatures, rhythm values, etc).  For students ages 6-14.

“Music History Blast From The Past” – (July)

Back by popular demand, this camp will give students a glimpse into the lives of the four different great classical composers.  As we study the composers we will be not only listening to the music of each time period, but also looking at the instruments, clothes, and art of each time period in order to make the past come alive.  Each day, we will focus on a time period from music history and create a scrapbook page of pictures/notes to take home.  It will be similar to last year’s music history camp, but we will cover four different composers this year.  Campers will be sure experience the thrill of a blast from the past during this music history camp!  For students ages 6-14.

“Music of the World” – (August)

Join us for a journey around to world to study the music of different cultures!  Campers will travel to four different countries to learn about each culture, music style, and musical instruments.  Students will complete a workbook and craft their own musical instrument each day.  Join us for this adventure!  For students ages 6-14.

Are you planning any summer music camps this year?  If so, please share about your camp plans in the comments below!  

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There are two gameboards to choose from, depending on if you would like to practice treble clef notes or bass clef notes.

Then, you must choose whether to practice line notes or space notes and use the corresponding music die.  You can make your own line/space note dice using wood/foam cubes, but I recommend buying the wonderful Line Notes & Space Notes dice available in The Practice Shoppe.  While you are at it, you can also order some cute puzzle erasers to use as the game markers for this game.  :)

This non-competitive game is pretty straight-forward: roll the dice, name the note, and move the game marker to the appropriate piano key.  The 5 line notes of the staff have been shaded in blue on the keyboard to help build the student’s sense of staff-to-keyboard correlation.  For a challenge, students could time themselves to see how quickly they can identify 25 notes.

To make the game more challenging, you can add an accidentals die to the mix, so that students will have to identify sharp/flat/natural notes.

To download the FREE pdf of the game boards, visit the Printables > Games page and scroll down to “Keyboard Rollin’ Game.”   The game directions can be printed on the back of the gameboard.

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Leslie, the owner, is a Suzuki violin teacher/mom.  She sells a variety of fun things in her shop to help make lessons and practice fun for students.

I ordered a few of her wonderful music dice, which are just begging to be used for some music games!  I’ll be sharing about a new game tomorrow.

The 4-sided or 8-sided dice might be nice to keep near the piano when you want a student to repeat a “practice spot” a few times.  Students can roll the dice to determine how many repetitions to do.

The black, 12-sided “Musician’s Dice” is perfect for quizzing scales/arpeggios once your students know all 12 keys.

I plan to use the “Music Notes 1″ dice (pictured at the bottom of the photo) as an alternative to a regular dice. The sides have a whole note, dotted-half note, half note, quarter note, two eighth notes, and a quarter rest.

Leslie also has some items perfect for a prize box, if you use some kind of incentive program in your studio.  In the photo above, you can see a couple of “spirit sticks” (keychains) and a cute music bracelet.

I also ordered a few Japanese puzzle erasers.  I plan to use these as game markers for games with my students, such as the ever-popular Amazing Keyboard Race:

I was impressed with the quality of the items I ordered and will definitely be ordering again soon!

You can check out The Practice Shoppe by clicking here and visit their facebook page by clicking here.

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“Rhythm is something you either have or don’t have, but when you have it, you have it all over.”

– Elvis Presley

Every Wednesday brings Words of Wisdom here at the Color in my Piano blog in the form of a musical quote or joke, intended to bring inspiration or humor to the middle of your week. Have suggestions? Send me a message here.

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Susan affixed adhesive magnets to the back of each card, so they can be used on a dry erase magnet board.  She also punched holes on the side of each card, so she can organize the intervals on binder rings.  For example, younger students can use the ring holding the Unison through 3rd scoops.

When students arrive early for their lessons, Susan’s students practice matching the intervals to the correct ice cream cone.

What a fun learning station, perfect for the waiting room area!  Thanks for your inspiration today, Susan!

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While it is important for students to be able to identify the names of notes quickly, it is equally important for them to read intervals as early as possible in their studies.  While I am a big believer in drilling note-naming flashcards, I am an even bigger believer in drilling intervals. 

Why Is Intervalic Reading Important?

As an analogy:  Think of a concert pianist playing an advanced piece of repertoire.  As they play, do they have the letter names of all those notes flying through their minds?

Of course not.  It’s far too much to think about.  It is much easier for the brain to read intervals — distances between notes — to which the fingers can respond to instantly.  They are probably also thinking about the key of the piece and the chords they are playing.

Using this analogy, and it is not difficult to understand the limitation of reading music by only note-identification.  The sooner students become fluent at seeing intervals (and chords, later on), the better sight-readers they will become.

Teaching Intervalic Reading

Piano pedagogy textbooks discuss “intervalic reading” as a reading approach utilized by certain piano method books (as opposed to the “Middle C” reading approach or the “Eclectic” reading approach).  However, you do not need a specifically “intervalic” method book in order to teach your students to read well intervalically.

When the staff is first introduced to the student, they learn that notes are either line notes or space notes.  I like to augment the method book’s theory assignment at this point with my own worksheet, appropriately called the Line & Space Notes Worksheet.  Fun & Learn Music also has some great line versus spaces worksheets, too.

Then, as soon as students have learned their first few notes on the staff, it should be brought to their attention that when they play “steps” on the piano keyboard, the notes on the staff alternate between line notes and space notes.  And when they play “skips” on the piano, the notes on the staff go from line-to-line or space-to-space.  (It’s helpful when teaching to begin by discussing the sound, then discussing how it looks on the keyboard, and lastly talking about the notation.  Music notation makes much more sense when you first discuss the need for the notation.)

I like to quiz students on intervals using my DIY music whiteboard.  I start by drawing intervals on the staff and asking them to verbally identify them as “step,” “skip,” or “repeated note.”  If they seem to be guessing on the answers, I will ask, “How do you know?” before I confirm their answer as correct or incorrect.  The student should be looking for whether the notes alternative between line and space notes or whether the notes go line-line or space-space.

To test their understanding further, I use another activity: I draw a single note on the whiteboard staff and ask the student to draw a second note that would be up/down a step/skip.

Later on, the student will learn the interval of the fourth and the fifth.  At this point, the terminology usually changes from “repeated note,” “step,” and “skip” to unison, second, and third.  When introducing the fourth and fifth, it is important once again to point out that fourths alternate from line note to space note (much like seconds do), and fifths go line-line or space-space (much like thirds and repeated notes do).  The goal, once again, is for the student to recognize the interval upon sight, without resorting to identifying the two note-names first and without ”counting” between the notes to identify the interval.  The only time you will ever hear me say, “No counting!” to a student is when they are identifying intervals or playing the Ice Cream Interval game!  ;)

Teaching the intervals of 6th, 7th, and octave should be done in a similar manner.

There are a couple of free interval worksheets available on the Printables > Worksheet page.   You can also find some great interval worksheets at Fun & Learn Music.  I send supplemental worksheets home with students whenever I feel they could benefit from extra practice with a particular concept.

The “Interval Talk”

Teaching students to read intervallically can be done through the above strategies, but it can also be discussed openly with the student when discussing effectively sight-reading strategies.  Reading intervalically is more than a skill: it is a conscious mental shift.

I find that the “interval talk” is particularly important for adult beginner students at some point during their studies.  Adult beginners sometimes do not want to advance in their method book because they think they should first become more fluent with the note-names they have already learned.  While it may be true that they need on-going practice with note-naming, it’s important for them to realize that it is not the goal to have the name of every note going through their mind as they play a piece.  They should understand that reading intervalically is more than okay!

The analogy of the concert pianist described at the beginning of this article is one that any student can understand.  I like to follow-up by asking students to think about what percentage of the time should they be reading intervalically as they play, and what percentage of the time they should be reading note-names.  It is both interesting and revealing to hear their responses!  My opinion is that music reading is at least 80% interval reading and only 20% note identification.

Students may be completely fluent with identifying intervals, but they may need encouragement and reminders to actually utilize interval reading in-the-moment when sight-reading.  I like to encourage students to imagine a melody as a string on the page and that they should try to follow the line horizontally with their eyes as much as possible, looking for those steps and skips.  In particular, students need to be encouraged to read intervals across barlines, and from one line on the page down to the next.  Sometimes, before sight-reading a piece of music, I will ask the student to find and circle all the skips (or fourths, or whatever) in their piece.

Just as with note-identification, students may need plenty of interval drilling throughout the stages of their piano study.  Any student who struggles with music reading should be tested on their ability to identify line/space notes and steps/skips in their music.  A sure sign that a student is reading mostly by note-name instead of by interval is when the student hesitates before or does not want to play a note that they cannot immediately identify by letter name.

Closing Thoughts

To sum things up:  Should students be able to identify any note they play?  Yes.  Should they necessarily be identifying every note they play as they sight-read?  A resounding no!  :)

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Piano Dust Buster

There are two games within this app: “Germ Attack” and “Staff Master.”  Each game has two playing modes: using your own real piano or using the on-screen keyboard.  If you use your piano, the app will “hear” the frequency of the sounds you play to check if you are playing correctly (so cool!).

Each game also allows you to choose between a “Practice” mode (accurate rhythms are only loosely enforced) and a “Showtime” mode (the app will not wait for you to play correct rhythms). 

Germ Attack

Playing the “Germ Attack” game reminds me a lot of playing Guitar Hero on the Wii.  The notes (“germs) scroll downwards on the screen towards the keyboard, and the player must press the right piano key at the right time.

Your students are not likely to learn how read notes or rhythms from playing Germ Attack — the educational value of Germ Attack is in the ear training that players will receive by learning to play tunes by ear.  Players will also become familiar with a variety of old folk songs and classical themes.  The app comes with 21 free songs.  If you’d like to purchase addition song sets, you can choose from folk tunes, pop music, movie themes, classical themes, kids’s songs, holiday music, etc..

The soundtracks sound great in this app and make the game fun to play.

Staff Master

The other game in this app, “Staff Master,” is a little more challenging.  The same song selections are used in this game as in Germ Attack, but now the “germ” notes appear on the staff moving across the screen from right to left.

I am surprised that the developers decided to put the letter names next to each note (which discourages both note-name reading and intervalic reading).  I recommend turning this setting off — which you can do by pausing the level you are working on and then hitting the button with the letter on it.  Playing the tunes in “Showtime” mode goes so quickly that there is little time to read the letter names, anyway.

I think Piano Dust Buster is a great app to recommend to your students to play for fun!  Students will enjoy using the skills they’ve learned in piano lessons when playing the games in this app, and they will benefit from some ear training to boot.  This app provides a fun way for some recreational music making.

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I will be adding more apps to this list in the future, so stay tuned!  Let me know if you have any suggestions for apps to add to the list.

Click here to view the brand new “Music Apps” page!

P.S.:  Here is the direct link to my article about rhythm which was published in the 3-D Piano Method’s “Soundpoint #12″ Newsletter yesterday!

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