Lately, I’ve been thinking about ways to keep students focused on the sound they are creating when they play and preventing them from becoming overly sight-oriented. Being a good musician is so much more than accurately executing what is written in the score, after all. Students should be learning to use their ears and listen to what sounds they are making too!
Here are somes thoughts I had for keeping focus on the sound during the piano lesson:
Continue reading “Go For the Sound”
For any fellow teachers in Michigan:
The Michigan Music Teachers Association (MMTA) State Conference is to take place Sunday, October 17 – Tuesday, October 19 at the Detroit Novi Sheraton (21111 Haggerty Rd., Novi). Click here to for more information (including a link to the conference schedule), and click here to register.
Martha Hilley is this year’s Conference Clinician and Leon Bates is the Conference Artist. There are many other sessions that look like very promising as well! I am so excited for the conference to get here!
Not a member of MTNA (Music Teachers National Association) or your state association?
Just a few quick reasons to consider joining a professional organization such as MTNA:
Read more about joining MTNA and your state association here.
Developing a good sense of rhythm is one of the most challenging parts of being a piano teacher. It’s not something that arrives overnight, and it’s something that must be maintained as the student advances to music with more advanced rhythms and time signatures. It truly is something that must be developed.
I’d like to suggest that there are three components to having and developing what we so loosely refer to as a “good sense of rhythm”:
Here is the summary post for the July Monthly Forum: Discussing Method Books. Thanks to those of you who shared your thoughts!
Your Thoughts
Allow me to summarize some of the main points that were made in the comments:
Read all the comments for yourself here.
Your Favorites
You also shared some of your favorite piano methods in the comments. Here are the ones that were mentioned:
My Thoughts
My personal philosophy when it comes to piano methods is that there is no single piano method that is “the best” or that works for all students. Every student learns differently and every student has various goals, interests, and tastes in music. Therefore, the teacher must seek to find and use the piano method that will be best for each individual student. It is important for teachers to become familiar with the various piano methods available so that they can choose the proper method for each student.
Questions to Ask Yourself When Evaluating Piano Methods: Continue reading “SUMMARY | July Monthly Forum: Discussing Method Books”
Last week, a colleague of mine and I held a summer piano mini-camp with the help of our piano professor. Here’s what we did:
We received applications from 11 students. The students ranged in age from 7 years to 13 years old.
We planned a rotating schedule, where the students were divided by age into 3 groups (which we named A, B, and C) and rotated from class to class. My colleague taught Music History class, I taught Music Theory class, and my piano professor taught Performance Class. Here’s how we divided our time:
12:30 – 12:45 Opening activities (all campers). 12:45 – 1:15 1st class 1:15 – 1:45 2nd class 1:45 – 2:00 Snack time 2:00 – 2:30 3rd classThe snack each day was different, consisting of items such as pretzels, fruit snacks, goldfish crackers, and juice packs. Nothing too sugary or expensive! We were very careful to keep our expenses low. Snacks were our largest expense; the rest were simply a few craft supplies needed for games/activities.
The camp was quite a success! Our campers had a great time. A few of the parents even asked if we would be holding camp again next year.
Stay tuned — I’ll be sharing more about the opening activities we used and more about my Music Theory class soon!
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
I haven’t talked about improvisation lately, and in the past I’ve only spoken of the value and benefits of improvisation in the piano lesson in a rather academic-y way — and so today I’d like to discuss some specific benefits I’ve seen develop in a particular student of mine as a direct result of our improvisation activities.
Some background on my student: she (let’s call her K.) is just a beginner, having started lessons in January of this year. K. is seven years old, and is now nearing the end of the Primer level of the Faber Piano Adventures.
Here’s what I’ve seen in K. so far:
To sum it up, improvising regularly with my student has helped her realize the freedom that comes with the art of music, rather than placing a limit herself to play only “what’s on the page.” And this is causing her to understand how music works all the better.
Creativity At Work
K. surprised me last week with a little composition she wrote. And she created her own kind of shorthand for notating her composition onto a sheet of paper. It looked something like this: CDECCDEEFGGEDDDDEDC. She informed me that the long notes were notated by having two of the same letter in a row. Continue reading “Improvisation Yields Creativity and Musical Understanding”
June is over (summer is going by so quickly!!), and so is the June Forum: Making Your Vocation A Vacation topic. Thanks for all the thought-provoking comments, all! Here’s a summary of your comments, along with some thoughts of my own mixed in:
All these ideas above are part of being an effective, successful teacher — and that’s when teaching becomes a vacation rather than a vocation. Great thoughts, everyone!
Stay tuned for the introduction of the July Forum topic, coming later this week!
Just thought I’d share my recent find. One again, I’ll admit, I found another treasure at the dollar store. (Does anyone else love dollar stores as much as I do?)
It might not seem like much, but I see great potential in these little blue travel sized pillows. My little student won’t have to sit on a stack of piano books any longer in order to attain the correct height at the piano!
When I first picked up the pillow, I expected the stuffing to be cheap and light stuffing which would do nothing for the student’s height once they’d sit on it, but actually it is stuffed pretty well with some kind of heavier material. And for a dollar, the price can’t be beat.
If you aren’t convinced on the importance of playing with the proper bench height at the piano, check out the revealing pictures at the Well-Balanced Pianist website.
My hand is awkwardly sticking out in this picture to give you a better idea of the size of the pillow. It’s just the right size for students under age 8 or so.
If you are interested in getting one of these pillows, check if there is a Dollar Tree store in your area. I looked for the listing of this pillow on the Dollar Tree website, but was unable to find it (if anyone finds it, please let me know). The tag on the pillow just said “Decorative Pillow.” The pillow also comes in green.
I’ve heard of some teachers using those interlocking foam square pieces for getting students to the right height. The nice thing about using those foam squares is that you can choose how many of them to stack on top of each other in order to reach just the perfect height.
What have you found to work well for attaining proper height at the piano?
I was talking to a parent after teaching a lesson yesterday, and she told me that her older daughter (who plays a few different band instruments, but is not currently taking piano lessons) is attending a band camp for high schoolers this week. Upon arrival, the camp gave her daughter a theory placement test, and she scored a 2B (I’m not sure what leveling system they were using, but her mother had expected her to score higher). Her mother was a little perturbed because she has paid for many years of lessons for her daughter, but only a few of her daughter’s past teachers taught theory as component of taking private lessons. She wondered, shouldn’t my daughter have gotten more theory training than this? What have I been paying all this money and time for?
This conversation got me thinking about our responsibility as teachers. A basic definition of music theory is the study of how music works. A student having little understanding of theory is missing a huge piece of the pie. Continue reading “Teaching Music Theory: Our Responsibility”
Many of you may remember being required by your piano teachers growing up to practice a certain amount of minutes each day/week. Perhaps your requirement looked something like this:
One of my previous teachers built her incentive program around how much practice time each student completed each week. She would set an amount for each student (15 minutes/day for the young ones, and then gradually increasing up to 60 minutes/day for the advanced ones). If you completed all your practice time each week, you’d receive a sticker on your chart for that week. When you received 7 consecutive weeks of completed practice, you were allowed to chose a prize from the prize box. She used a system similar to the following:
Personally, I use a simpler, more flexible practice requirement for my students. I simply tell my students and parents that they are expected to practice daily. And that’s it. Here are my reasons why I like to leave it at that: Continue reading “My Thoughts on Practice Requirements”
As mentioned yesterday, a new series is being introduced here at Color In My Piano: a monthly forum of sorts, where readers put their heads together a discuss various topics. The success of this series depends on YOU, so please, type away!
Without further ado, allow me to introduce the topic for the June forum:
The June Forum: Making your Vocation a Vacation
The June forum is inspired by a couple of quotes I encountered a couple of days ago that really got me thinking about my piano teaching:
“Instead of wondering where your next vacation is, maybe you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.” – Godin
“Make your vocation your vacation.” – Old adage
So the idea is to make your vocation as a piano teacher enjoyable for yourself, so that you aren’t living most of your life just getting by until the next vacation. =)
Now that summer vacation is here, ironically enough, I think this is a fitting topic to consider. I’m sure that some of you are probably taking summer vacation from teaching and others of you are probably going to be teaching as normal through the summer (personally, I’m somewhere in the middle – some students have stayed on and others are taking a summer break). Nevertheless, I’m sure we are all thinking ahead to the next year of teaching and maybe even already doing some planning. Well, now you can add this thought to your list! — How can I make the next year of teaching be more like a vacation than a vocation?
Thoughts? What do YOU do to make your vocation more like your vacation? How do you deal with discouragement and disappointments as a teacher when they come along? How do you keep your teaching fresh and fun? What are some practical ways that you can do differently to make your vocation as a piano teacher more like a vacation all year long?
Get to know the other readers on this blog – please take a moment to introduce yourself on the discussion page of the Color In My Piano facebook page! There are a few introductions there now, and I’d love to get to know more of you.
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