Author: Joy Morin

Joy Morin, MM, is a teacher, pianist, composer, speaker, and writer of a blog at ColorInMyPiano.com. A devoted teacher and lifelong learner, she teaches students of all ages at her independent piano studio near Ann Arbor, Michigan. Joy is a frequent attendee and presenter at conferences and workshops, and enjoys connecting with fellow piano teachers through her blog and beyond.
Printables, Technique

Freebie: Technical Requirements Charts for RCM’s 2015 Piano Syllabus

Joy Morin

UPDATE: Please visit this post for the latest 2022 RCM Piano Syllabus version.

I recently finished creating a new set of technique charts for the RCM’s new 2015 Piano Syllabus.

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RCM_08_logoHere is the backstory.

Over the past few years, I have entered a handful of piano students to take assessments through the Royal Conservatory of Music, an excellent program originating in Canada and becoming more popular in the United States. I appreciate the thoroughness of the assessments, which require students to perform a set of pieces ranging in musical styles and to demonstrate musicianship skills (sight-reading, ear training, rhythm exercises, etc.). The levels outlined in the syllabus (find the free PDF here) are soundly structured and have been refined over time by dedicated pedagogues in our field. RCM is also known for the quality and consistency of the adjudicating across the continent. RCM is not a competition; it is a standard that allows students and parents to better understand and track progress during music study.

Every seven years, the RCM piano syllabus is revised to incorporate new repertoire, eliminate repertoire that is no longer readily available, and refine the musicianship and technical requirements. 2015 marks a revision year, which means RCM teachers are seeking to learn about the updates and changes compared to the previous 2008 syllabus.

RCM technical requirements level 8RCM’s non-profit publishing company, Frederick Harris, publishes a variety of wonderful books to aid students in preparing for assessments (most notably, the piano literature books known as the Celebration Series).

Books are also available containing the notated technical requirements for each level; however, I personally prefer to teach scales/arpeggios/chords by rote rather than through having students read the notation. But it can be cumbersome to write out the RCM technical requirements on students’ assignment sheets each week–especially if you expect students to review all previous material.

So, a few years ago I released a free printable containing charts of the technical requirements for each level according to the 2008 piano syllabus. These charts have proved to be incredibly helpful to ensure that my students are learning and reviewing all of the required technical work. I’m happy to announce today that new charts are available below for the new 2015 piano syllabus. Even if you have no intention of sending students to RCM assessments, you might find these charts useful.

I keep this PDF uploaded on my iPad (use iBooks, GoodNotes, or any similar app of your choice) so I can print the appropriate charts wirelessly during lessons. Students take their chart to and from their lessons. As each item is mastered, we fill in each box with a checkmark or a sticker. The chart makes it easy to visually track progress.

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Special thanks goes to fellow piano teachers Donna Gross Javel and Nancy DeHaven Hall for helping to proofread the charts against the 2015 syllabus.

Download:

  2015 RCM Technical Requirements Charts for Piano (557.9 KiB, 29,165 hits)

Enjoy!

Music History, Printables

New Composer Lapbooks: Vivaldi & Prokofiev

Joy Morin

As mentioned yesterday, two new lapbooks have been added to my digital shop: Antonio Vivaldi and Sergei Prokofiev.

If you aren’t already familiar with my lapbook curriculum, you might be interested in checking it out if you offer monthly group classes or summer music camps. Every year, I offer a music history camp using these lapbooks for my piano students and we study a composer from each historical time period. I’ve also used this curriculum in the past to offer weekly music appreciation classes for homeschoolers. To date, I have twenty different composer lapbooks available to choose from.

Purchasing the PDF for a composer includes the license to print and copy from the PDF for your entire teaching career for personal and educational use with your students. As the teacher reads the biography booklet and discusses terms/music related to the composer, students are responsible for cutting out and assembling the items for their own lapbook to take home.

Here is some info about the two new lapbooks.

In the lesson about Vivaldi, students will enjoy learning about “The Red Priest” and his passion for composing and teaching music to the orphans and students at the Ospedale della Pietá in Venice. Special focus is given to Vivaldi’s most well-known work, The Four Seasons.

Vivaldi collage

Sergei Prokofiev was a great Russian composer of the Modern Era. Students will learn about how the political upheaval in Russia impacted Prokofiev both personally and as a composer. Special attention will be given to perhaps his most well-known work, Peter and the Wolf.

Prokofiev collage

Visit the digital shop by clicking here.

Music Camps, Music History

2015 Music History Camp

Joy Morin

Summertime means…time for music camp!

Last week, I held my first music camp of the year: our annual Music History Blast From The Past camp using my composer lapbook curriculum. This year, I was able to re-use a few of the composers that we studied at camp three years ago, but I did create a new lapbook for Vivaldi.

Each day, we studied a period of music history and a composer from that time period.

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What kid doesn’t enjoy arts and crafts + music?! 🙂

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The four composers we studied this year were Antonio Vivaldi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amy Beach, and John Cage.

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Here is a photo of this year’s camp T-shirt design. 🙂 I ordered my shirts from CustomInk.com.

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It was a fun week!

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Interested in holding your own music history camp using these composer lapbooks? Here is a blog post describing how to do just that!

Stay tuned — tomorrow I will share more about the new lapbooks now available in my digital shop: Vivaldi and Prokofiev.

Conferences

2015 Piano Pedagogy Seminar at Ohio University

Joy Morin

Last weekend, I attended the 2015 Piano Pedagogy Seminar at Ohio University. It was a wonderful event that definitely helped recharge my teaching batteries! If you happen to live anywhere near Ohio University, I would encourage you to “like” their facebook page so you can receive information about this annual event.

This year, the featured artists and clinicians were Alan Chow and Dr. Robert Duke. Alan Chow gave a masterclass, an artist recital, and a lecture entitled, “It’s In The Score!” I really like Alan Chow’s playing — I must say his recital was among the best I’ve attended. His lecture the following day was enlightening as it gave us a glimpse into his mind as an artist interpreting the score, and also into his mind and method as a teacher.

20150626 OU Piano Pedagogy Seminar - Alan Chow

Robert Duke gave a two-part lecture entitled, “If We Learn Like That, Why Do We Teach Like This?” He is the author of the incredible book, Intelligent Music Teaching, which I reviewed in a previous post. His lecture was challenging, inspiring, and entertaining. If you ever have the opportunity to hear him speak, be sure to take advantage!

20150626 OU Piano Pedagogy Seminar - Robert Duke

cover170x170After his lecture, Robert Duke encouraged us to check out the U of Texas-Austin’s Center for Music Learning website. There are a variety of videos and other free resources available there. He also let us know that he is involved in an NPR podcast called Two Guys on Your Head. I’ve been greatly enjoying these podcasts, and I also discovered that there are a few lectures by Robert Duke available for viewing on YouTube if you search for his name.

Other sessions included a lecture entitled, “The Secret Ingredient to Piano Teaching Success: The Powerful Role of Parents” by husband and wife team Dr. Christopher Fisher (OU professor) and Katherine Fisher (co-author of the Piano Safari method). In their talk, they described the “Parent Practice Workshops” they like to organize to help inform and equip parents to support their students’ piano study. They also shared a huge variety of creative resources and ideas for making home practice interesting and effective. If this sounds interesting to you, you might enjoy listening to this podcast Chris Fisher gave for the TeachPianoToday.com folks.

We also enjoyed a session about the Royal Conservatory of Music exams, given by Dr. Andrew Hisey. He gave an overview of the program and also provided a great deal of helpful information about the changes that were made with the release of the new 2015 syllabus (revisions are made every seven years). P.S.: If you have ever used my free technique charts for RCM, please know that I do plan to release charts for the new 2015 syllabus–hopefully soon!

20150626 OU Piano Pedagogy Seminar - Andrew Hisey

For the OU seminar, I traveled and roomed with a seasoned piano teacher from my local MTNA chapter. We had such a great time together.

I’ve been saving up to attend a couple of other events at the end of this summer: the 2015 NCKP near Chicago and a workshop by Irina Gorin occurring in the Indianapolis area. What upcoming events are you planning to attend? I encourage every piano teacher to be committed to attending every professional development opportunity that you can!

Resources

Highlighter Tape Alternative for Marking Music

Joy Morin

Just a quick, fun post today…

I’m sure many of you are familiar with and love using highlighter tape to add visual reminders to students’ sheet music. The “tape” is transparent yet colorful, and removes easily if you want to keep the student’s music clean. I’ve seen highlighter tape available at music stores, conferences, or online.

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Highlighter tape is a bit expensive (but worth it!), in my opinion. However, I recently discovered that these highlighter “tabs“ (pictured below) are just as good if not better!Hot-Sale-Paper-Sticky-Adhesive-Post-Highlighter-Index-Tab-Flags-It-Neon-Page-Marker-School-Memo.jpg_350x350

 

They are essentially pre-cut as opposed to the tape rolls. Only half of the strip is sticky, but that actually makes removal easier. Win-win.

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You can buy packages of highlighter tabs here on Amazon; however, you will find it to be much more affordable in the office supply aisle at your local store. You might even find them at your local dollar store.

Reviews

Book Review: Intelligent Music Teaching by Robert A. Duke

Joy Morin

I am excited to post this book review because this is one of the best books I have read in a while. If you are looking for a practical yet research-based book about piano/music pedagogy, get your hands on this book. This is my best book recommendation for any music teacher looking to improve their teaching.

Intelligent Music Teaching: Essays on the Core Principles of Effective Instruction, by Robert A. Duke

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The author, Robert Duke, is currently Professor of Music and Human Learning at the University of Texas at Austin. According to his bio, his research on human learning and behavior includes studying motor skill learning, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. He is also a former studio musician and public school music teacher.

Robert Duke’s book is organized into eight chapters or essays, with titles such as “Precision in Language and Thought,” “Sequencing Instruction,” “Feedback, and “Effecting Change.”

In the first chapter, the author makes a point about the ability to speak/write with precision of language being an important asset for any teacher. Based on the wonderfully clear writing is this book, I imagine that the author is an excellent teacher.

The book discusses how to think of the every day components of our teaching — instruction, assessment, evaluation, sequencing, etc. — with an awareness of how the human mind works and learns. Every page of this book contains a nugget of wisdom or practical tip for how to teach intelligently and meaningfully so that our students learn how to change and improve themselves.

Allow me to give you one quick example of a meaningful take-away from the book. During a section where the author makes a comparison to learning how to solve quadratic equations in math, he states: “The goal of instruction — the real goal, the long-term, far-reaching goal — is not to solve the equations, but to use what you know about solving equations to solve other problems that you may or may not have encountered before” (p. 29). Music teachers should have a similar instructional goal, as the author expounds throughout the book. The goal is for the student to gain intellectual, physical, or social skill rather than merely knowledge.

The writing is pleasant to read, being both intelligent and conversational. I think it is rare to find a book with such well-grounded information that is understandable by the layperson. The teaching/learning strategies and principles discussed in this book are backed by research. Yet, reading this book felt like having a thought-provoking conversation with the author over coffee. I could hardly put the book down until I finished reading it.

I highly recommend this book to any music teacher. It is a must-read for newbie and experienced teachers alike. My opinion is that it should be required reading in every piano pedagogy class. It will influence and change the way you teach. View it on Amazon here.

Edit: Ohio University sponsors a piano pedagogy seminar each summer in June and this year (2015), they have invited Robert Duke to be a speaker. I read Dr. Duke’s book in anticipation of attending this event. For more information about the event, visit oupianopedagogyseminar.com. 

Memorization

Music Mapping with Piano Students

Joy Morin

With nearly every piece I teach, the student and I analyze and label the form: Q&A phrases, AB form, ABA form, sonata form, etc.. Understanding the structure of a piece helps the student learn the piece more thoroughly and make well-based decisions relating to the interpretation of a piece.

Back in early March, a student of mine demonstrated he had his piece memorized all the way through but found he was “fuzzy” on the details in certain places and could not always remember what came next between phrases without taking time for thought. In a moment of inspiration (or perhaps desperation!), we decided to construct a visual map of the piece — an activity I have found to be beneficial in the past with certain students. I took a blank sheet of paper from my printer and handed my student a few colored pencils. Taking a few minutes to turn our analysis into a simple, visual graphic proved to strengthen and clarify his memory of the piece.

During my college years, I was exposed to this kind of music mapping thanks to a book I found in the university library: Mapping Music: For Faster Learning and Secure Memory, by Rebecca Payne Shockley. She shares many examples in her book to learn from, but emphasizes that music mapping is a very personal thing: the map must primarily make sense to the person who makes it.

Music Mapping with Piano Students graphic

As you can see from the image above, we used boxes to represent the 4-bar phrases as well as the larger A and B sections. Within each box, my student drew lines or shapes to represent the melodic contour of the phrases. We also added a few chord symbols to help mentally clarify the B section and the ending.

As a final step, we added dynamic markings in pink and green shading to represent pedaling.

Screen Shot 2015-05-01 at 12.51.20 PMAfter completing the music map, I asked my student to play the piece by memory again. It was not a perfect performance, but it was definitely better because his memory of the piece’s structure was stronger and more clear.

After creating a map, it should not be necessary to have the student read from the music map while playing, although that is an option. The point of the exercise is to be able to rely on a strong, mental picture of the piece during performance. In my student’s own words: “It’s the process of creating the map that is beneficial; not the finished map itself.”

Have you ever created a music map with a student?

[Note: In case you are interested, the piece my student was learning is called “A Quiet Lagoon” by Dennis Alexander and Martha Mier. We were using a sampler piece of sheet music I received during a conference, but the piece is readily available in the Technique Book Level 2B of the Alfred Premier Piano Course.]