Several weeks ago, I received a nice fat stack of books in the mail, compliments of Jerald Simon, President of Music Motivation. Before I even had a chance to play through them, several students eyed the cover of Sea Fever and picked it up to find out what was hidden beneath the cool-looking design. The music inside is the same kind of attention-getting music with lots of repetitive figures and big, flashy sounds. Each piece is preceded by a brief lesson that introduces key theory concepts and technical skills contained in the piece. The selections are full of 4-note chords, sixteenth note passages, and lots of moving around on the keyboard, so I would classify the arrangements as late-intermediate to advanced.

Each of these other books contain a similar layout and style, and you can hear recordings and view samples of many of the selections on the Music Motivation Blog.

Triumphant – “10 original piano solos”
Hymns of Exaltation
Jazzed About Christmas – “For beginning and early intermediate students”
Playin’ Around and The Jazz Song – “Two Jazz Piano Solos”
Jazzed about Jazz – “For the Intermediate Piano Student”

An Introduction to Scales and Modes, part of the Theory Therapy series, contains scale and chord letterings and fingerings for all the Major and minor scales and each of the modes. A handy reference guide!

Variations on Mary Had a Little Lamb, part of the Innovative Improvisation series, is designed to introduce students to various improvisation techniques using a familiar folk tune. The Teacher’s Tips scattered throughout the lessons help even the most improvisationally-challenged teachers feel like they can help a student grow in this area.

Now, for the great news…Mr. Simon has graciously offered to give away a copy of a book of your choice to three Music Matters Blog readers! So, take a look at the links above, pick out your favorite, and leave a comment below in order to be entered in the drawing to win your chosen book. The drawing will be held on Wednesday, March 17 at noon, CST, so be sure to leave your comment before then! I’ll notify the three winners as soon as I hold the drawing, and will announce them here on Thursday.

Well, it’s about time for my annual Music Teacher’s Helper sales spiel. But instead of writing another review, I’ll let you watch the video that I produced for their recent testimonial contest. Plus, I’m super excited that they are getting ready to launch a completely revamped website! I love new things like this!

Read Review One | Read Review Two

A while back, I mentioned that I am planning to attend the MTNA Conference in Albuquerque this year. But I decided to hold off a little longer before announcing the exciting news that MTNA is having me live-blog the conference for them!

Throughout the conference I will be snapping pictures, taking notes, and posting up-to-the-minute (give or take a few minutes ) updates so that even those who aren’t able to attend in person this year will get to attend virtually. The conference will be held March 19-24, so be sure to mark your calendar and check in throughout the day for the latest updates.

In addition to picking up lots of great ideas and scouring the exhibit hall for new resources, I’m really looking forward to meeting some of you! We’re planning a get-together for Monday evening, so find our group on Facebook or send me an e-mail if you want to join in on the fun and I’ll send you the details!

My question is regarding the CDs that are sometimes included in music books. Do you keep them and use them with the student at their lesson, or do you send it home with instructions and have them bring it to the lesson? I was listening yesterday to 3 new CDs and reviewing the books and wondered what the best way is to handle this. I have a student who is so gifted she could listen to the CD and “basically” have her practice done. I used to have my teachers play the music for me so I would know how it should go. I’d go home and play it as I heard it-which wasn’t the way I should have learned!

Oh, how well I know these kinds of students! I think most teachers have a mixture of students who are good sight-readers and those who play well by ear. One of the things I love about teaching is the challenge of identifying each student’s strengths and weaknesses and then capitalizing on their strengths while helping them overcome their weaknesses. For those who learn and play well by ear, I love to get them books that have CDs so that they can listen to the pieces, choose favorites, and work on songs that are appealing to them. Actually, even for the strong sight-readers, I love for them to listen to quality CD recordings when they are learning their pieces.

I also sometimes give the “Any Song” assignment, where they can prepare any song and then surprise me with it the next week. For those who need a little more direction, we choose a familiar tune at the lesson and then I walk them through the process of picking out the tune, adding chords, developing original arrangements, etc. However, in addition to these things, I am an absolute stickler for learning to read music. This takes the form of flashcards, note identification drills, assigning lots of easier level music and anything else that I think might help.

So, yes, I am a huge fan of utilizing the CDs that come with some books. Since it has become much more cost-effective to purchase the books that include CDs, I usually have the student keep the CD so they can listen to it on their own during the week. Some of the method books even come with accompaniment CDs that I’ve just started getting into a bit more. I don’t know why I haven’t made a point to use these more with students, but they are wonderful for helping them develop rhythmic accuracy and a consistent pulse.

That was a bit of a rambling answer today, but hopefully that answers the question! Feel free to jump in with your own thoughts on using CDs with students!

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

Years ago I heard someone make a distinction by stating, “I don’t teach piano; I teach students to play the piano.” This has stuck with me ever since I heard it, and guides my perspective from week to week as I work with my students. One of the reasons I love teaching so much is because I really love my students! Every single one of them has a unique personality, God-given talents, varied interests, differing perspectives, etc. I love talking with them, sharing ideas, discussing life events, and getting input from them.

Numerous times, I have heard other teachers exclaim about how nice it is to have “adult interaction” in contrast with spending so much time each day with kids (a.k.a. their students). It’s also not uncommon to hear others advise new teachers to keep their personal life separate from their professional life. They caution them to keep their dealings with their studio families professional and not to get too personal with them. I couldn’t disagree more with either of these mindsets! For starters, when I’m working with my students, I speak to them on the same level that I would most adults. I don’t dumb down my vocabulary. If they don’t understand something, we discuss it in more detail, or I alter my explanation, but I don’t automatically assume that they won’t understand me if I explain it in the most precise terminology. And we discuss all sorts of things – philosophies of musical styles, historical elements of time periods, theory concepts…as well as many non-music topics.

Secondly, my studio operates with almost a full overlap between a professional and personal approach. I intentionally make efforts to get to know my students and families on a personal level. One of the ways I do this is by attending other events in which my students are involved – plays, concerts, sports games, community fairs, etc. Two weekends ago, several of my students were competing at a local 4-H event, so I went to watch and support them. When I arrived, I ran into a neighbor friend who asked what I was doing there. When I told her I was watching my students in the piano competition, she was in awe and said that in many years of her daughters competing in the event their piano teacher has never once attended.

Now I realize that there is not always the flexibility to be able to attend events and support our students in their various endeavors. But I strongly believe that one of the primary ways we can invest in our students as people, not just as musicians, is by getting to know them and their families on a personal level – caring about them and who they are outside of the piano lesson. This is why I look forward to lessons – not only do I have the opportunity to impart a love for music and the skills to play the piano, but I also get to see and spend time with some of my favorite people!

Several of my student’s moms commented on how much they liked the timeline that I used for our listening activity last week. This is one of the best timelines I’ve found! I love that it incorporates not only music history, but also little glimpses into other things going on in the world. Surprisingly, the timeline actually came from the back of the Hal Leonard Student Journal. I just tore out the pages and glued them together chronologically, then laminated it for durability. It has served me well for many years!

Each week, I try to think of some fun activity to start off each lesson. Hot on the heels of the previous week’s A Galaxy of Composers group class theme, I was inspired to do a composer-oriented listening activity with my students. I grabbed my favorite composer resource book (comes with a CD!) – Accent on Composers – and selected six famous works. The student was given a white board labeled as follows:

Piece:
Composer:
Time Period:

Then I played approximately one minute of each of the selections and instructed them to listen and see if they could correctly identify any or all of the above criteria for each piece. They were allowed to refer to the timeline, which contained almost all of the selected composers. Here are the works that I selected:

1. Hallelujah Chorus – George Frederic Handel – Baroque

2. The Entertainer – Scott Joplin – 20th Century

3. March from the Nutcracker – Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky – Romantic

4. Symphony No. 5 in C Minor – Ludwig van Beethoven – Classical

5. Spring from the Four Seasons – Antonio Vivaldi – Baroque

6. Hoedown from Rodeo – Aaron Copland – 20th Century

All of my students loved this activity! Even the ones that were a little hesitant at first were surprised at how many of the pieces they recognized. If they were stuck on the name of the piece or the composer, I gave them hints or pointed out certain elements in the recording that might help them identify the time period or the ethnicity of the music.

One of the things that prompted me to do this activity was the realization of how much of our time and activities are focused on doing and playing and mastering skills, concepts, etc. Rarely do I devote much time to music appreciation – just listening to and pointing out elements in music, discussing the composers, the historical eras. We do this a lot as we learn new repertoire, but there’s something different about taking a few minutes to listen to these timeless masterpieces. This is an activity that I’ll definitely be repeating in the future (with different selections, of course!).

Yes, I know I’m a day late. Yesterday, March 1, was the 200th birthday of the renowned Frederic Chopin. 200 is a pretty big milestone, though, so I think it’s acceptable to prolong the celebration for a little longer. Thanks to Gerald Klickstein, of The Musician’s Way Blog, for putting together a great collection of resources Celebrating the Chopin Bicentennial.

For one of my more advanced students this year, I am using a different approach. Instead of having her work on repertoire representative of each historical era, we’re focusing on one composer at a time. She loves lyrical, Romantic music, so Chopin was the perfect start! While working through a variety of repertoire, I also had her complete a research assignment each week to learn more about Chopin and the time in which he lived. Here are the assignments I gave her:

1. Research and define each of these: Prelude, Etude, Waltz, Polonaise, Nocturne, and Mazurka.
2. Find video clips of performances of each style of piece; listen to and watch them to familiarize yourself with the various styles.
3. Research Chopin and write a brief biography.
4. Look up three great pianists who performed Chopin, then compare and contrast them using a circle diagram.
5. Look up three of Chopin’s contemporaries and write a short essay discussing their work and its similarities and differences with Chopin’s work.
6. Investigate what was going on in different parts of the world during Chopin’s lifetime.
7. Explore other fine arts and discuss the common threads and undergirding philosophies: art (sculpture, paint, architecture – find images), literature (authors, philosophers, theologians), and theatre/dance.
8. Collect some of Chopin’s writings to identify his worldview, philosophies, motivations, etc.
9. Research Poland and list: interesting facts, famous people, famous landmarks/places, and famous events that are associated with the country.

The whole process was quite interesting and informative for both my student and me, and this approach is working really well for this particular student. I will probably use it with several others in the future as well. Plus, putting this together for her has given me a good framework that we can use as we move on and study other composers.

Do you have any incentive ideas for a memorizing contest, or something of that nature to encourage memorizing pieces? Some of my students are very beginner, and some are older students who have transferred (or who have REALLY applied themselves). How do you make it equal for both types of students – the 6-year olds and the 16-year olds, working on very different material?

I’m hoping that some others will chime in on this one, because I’m not sure how helpful I will be! For one thing, I don’t make a very big deal about memorization in my studio and I don’t require it for my recitals. Some students are naturally gifted in this area and memorize almost simultaneously with learning to play the piece. Others are strongly note-reading oriented and feel extremely nervous and uncomfortable playing from memory. I fit into the latter category and have had too many disastrous memorization-related experiences to enforce memorization across the board.

That said, there are, of course, certain times when memorization is required – for our state evaluation programs and for competitions. And many times I’ll have students elect to memorize a piece for one of our group classes during the year. In these cases, I have certain strategies that I use with my students to help them learn to memorize effectively, but I haven’t done a strictly memorization-oriented practice incentive in any of my practice incentive themes.

Here are a few strategies that I like to use for memorization:

1. In the Faber Piano Adventures Level 1 Technique and Artistry Book there is a piece called Kaleidoscope Colors. I love to introduce this piece by having the student discuss the patterns they see in the first line. Then I take the book away and have them play it by memory. We do this with each subsequent line so that in a few short minutes they can play the entire piece by memory based upon an understanding of the patterns. We do this a little bit with earlier level pieces, but this is typically the point where I officially introduce the principle of cognitive memorization.

2. Label various sections in the piece with numbers or letters and then write the corresponding numbers/letters on slips of paper. Have the student randomly select one of the slips and then work on memorizing that section. Continue until all sections have been worked on. Then I drill them at the following lesson by randomly choosing sections to see if the student can play them as stand-alone sections.

If you have other suggestions for memorization strategies or contests, I’d love to hear about them! This is an area where I could definitely use some improvement!

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

This isn’t exactly a music-related resource, but I’ve found it to be a great tool for earning money to spend on music-related resources, so I thought I would mention it again now that I’ve been using it for a while (plus, I get some sort of special credit if you sign up through my link)! Swagbucks is an online search engine that you can install in your toolbar along with your other search engines. As you use it to search, you earn credits that can be traded in for various products and gift cards. I always use mine to buy Amazon gift cards and have earned $60 so far just by searching like I regularly would online. Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of the search engine, so if I need to do some fast or serious searching online, I still use Google. But if I’m just doing routine searching and want to earn money for it, I happily use Swagbucks.