Wow! Have you seen this video clip about British musical savant Derek Paravicini by Lesley Stahl, of CBS’ 60 Minutes? Talk about inspirational! In addition to watching and hearing from Derek and his parents, I really love listening to his teacher and seeing how he approached working with someone like Derek. (I think the book, In the Key of Genius, by his teacher, Adam Ocklelford, would be fascinating!) I am reminded of the importance of looking at each student as an individual, with unique God-given talents.

Yes, it’s essential to have structure and lesson plans and some sort of a framework to work within as a teacher. But it’s equally essential to know when it’s okay to throw all that out the window and just teach to the needs of the individual student. Most of us will never have a Derek Paravicini in our studios, but each of us have students with unreached potential walking through our door week after week. We just need eyes to see beyond the current challenges and frustrations and cast a vision for the future…because you never know where it will lead!

Two weeks ago, I shared about the Any Song Assignment that I started giving certain students a couple years ago. At our final group class of the year last Thursday, it occurred to me that two of the students were playing pieces that they came up with as a result of the Any Song Assignment, so I thought I would share them with you here:

This is just an excerpt from Lucas’ performance of Morning Has Broken (sorry, I didn’t decide to record the entire pieces until a few students later). He downloaded Cat Stevens playing this song and listened to it until he had worked out the entire piece by ear the following week.

Suzie was randomly “doodling” around on the piano to come up with her Any Song and struck on some melodic figures that she really liked. The inspiration kept flowing until she had composed this lovely piece that we’ve affectionately dubbed Suzie’s Song.

Four-Piano Version of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons

I love this! Since I’m still thinking about piano camp and contemplating a Four Seasons theme, this would be so fun to show my students. via Collaborative Piano Blog

Flight of the Bumblebee

Bet you’ve never heard it like that before! One of the presenters last week showed us this video as an example of a clip that she would have her students watch and then discuss to begin the dialogue portion of their group lesson.

Carnival of the Animals

Several years ago, when I did my Carnival of the Animals Piano Camp, I purchased the CD recording of the Carnival of the Animals with the narration, but I had no idea that this was available on video! (I think I saw this in one of the MTNA sessions as well, but now I can’t remember which one…UPDATE: via Cindy Tseng – thanks, Cindy!) My students loved listening to the recording, so I know they would LOVE being able to watch the musicians play these pieces! Of course, in addition to the Introduction and Lion, you can find videos of each of the other pieces in the set. Here’s my personal favorite: Fossils

So fun! Has anyone else come across some great video finds lately? Do share!

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

As I mentioned last Friday, we had a fabulous time with some fun games at our September Surprise! Here are some video clips and free downloadable files that you can use in your studios as well. (Refer to the Blast Off! post for game directions.)

Tappers and Listeners

Click here to download the list of familiar tunes.

Emotional Quotations

This one was especially fun, and gave a glimpse into some sides of each other that we hadn’t previously seen! My students even insisted that I take a turn at the end…

Click here to download the compilation of quotes and list of emotions.

For our final day of Piano Camp, I decided to switch things up just a little and play a game to start off the lesson.

Since we were focusing on relative keys today, I printed off a copy of my Major Minor Scale Matchup Worksheet on cardstock and then cut it into rectangles with one scale per piece. I distributed the pieces to the students and had them write the scale names, using the patterns from the previous two days to determine if a scale was Major or minor.

Once all the scale names were written, we mixed up the cards and then layed them out for a fun (and long!) game of memory.

Also, today I had each of the ensemble groups perform their piece for the rest of us. For one week’s worth of practice, I think they all did a pretty good job. And I think each of the groups are planning to keep polishing up their pieces so that they can play them at our September Surprise kickoff event. Here are video clips so you can watch each of the performances:

Noelle and Luke play Important Questions, from Simply Silly Duets by Kevin and Julia Olson. Even though Luke still has trouble with music notation, he loved this piece and really got into the feel of it!

Naomi and Isabella play Smile, Op. 280, No. 1 by Ernesto Becucci, from Easy Classical Piano Duets for Teacher and Student, Book 3.

Joey, Graham, and Ryan did a super job working together on Camptown Races, Arr, by Carrie Kraft. But I think they had the most fun planning and rehearsing their special surprise ending!

Next up, I’m planning to post a Piano Camp 2009 Resource list with quick links to all the resources I used to plan this year’s camp…

In honor of our Christmas Recital tonight, I thought I would post a video of one of the selections that will be on the program. Brittany did a “practice performance” of What Child is This? last week at her lesson. A “practice performance” means that we turn off all the lights except for the one on the piano (which simulates a spotlight!), and do the whole approach to the piano, bow at the end, etc. The goal, of course, is to try to make the student feel at least slightly nervous so that we can identify weak spots, and learn to work through the nerves.

James has had to work really hard to develop his rhythm skills. He especially loved this piece, so he was motivated to count consistently through the whole thing to make it sound right.

Here is a link to the printed music for the Bitterroot Mountains piece that James is playing:

Stories in Sound – Book 2 By Valerie Roth Roubos. For Piano. FJH Composers in Focus. Performance. Level: Late Elementary. Collection. Published by The FJH Music Company Inc. (FF1687) See more info…

Initially Ryan thought that Sun Chaser was still too hard to learn, but once I showed him the patterns, he took off with it. This was a great piece for rote teaching!

Here is a link to the printed music for the Sun Chaser piece that Ryan is playing:

Sun Chaser By Timothy Brown. For Piano. FJH Written For You Piano Solos. Animals and Nature. Level: Early Intermediate. Solo Sheet. Published by The FJH Music Company Inc. (W9111) See more info…

Doesn’t everyone teach a few of those students whose technical facility and musical talent far exceeds their music reading ability? I have found that such students love learning really cool sounding pieces that are quite a bit harder than what they could actually read from the printed music. One of my favorite pieces to teach by rote is the expressive Poet’s Lament by Jon George.

Here’s an example of my student Graham (who is just starting the Faber Level 1 books) playing this piece. We still have a ways to go with fluidity and musical phrasing, but can you tell he loves this piece?!

I’m always looking for great pieces to teach by rote that will capture the students’ imagination. Anyone have any favorite rote pieces that they like to teach? Do tell!

Since we were getting ready for our first group event last week, I took the opportunity to film several of my students playing their pieces so they could watch themselves and use it as a tool for improvement. I really need to do this more often! I finally decided to create an official YouTube channel for Music Matters Blog and you can subscribe to my videos by visiting my YouTube page here. And if you have a YouTube channel for your music blog or studio, please let me know!

Naomi has cerebral palsy, so she doesn’t have fine motor skills in her left hand. This has not deterred her from becoming a very fine pianist, though. She is incredibly disciplined and perseveres until she learns her pieces with excellence! Here she plays The Clear Stream, Op. 100, No. 7 by Johann Burgmuller.

Joey thought this piece was the perfect fit for our mystery theme this year, so he decided to play it at last week’s Private Eye Workshop. This is a recording we did at his last lesson before the event. He is playing A Mysterious Moment by David Karp.

Isabella has a lot of natural musical talent and expresses it nicely in this performance of Whirling Leaves by Nancy and Randall Faber.

Caleb and I had fun playing this duet called Blink of an Eye by Janet Vogt.