Question of the Week: Jan. 31, 2011

I'm looking forward to a lighter-than-usual week. Three of my students are out of town and my church choir director is in St. Lucia which means no rehearsal on Wednesday. I have to admit that I feel a somewhat guilty pleasure in the prospect of a bit more free time this week! :)

With Valentine's Day coming up, I'm looking for some great ideas for short activities I can incorporate into my student's lessons for a fun change. I have a few ideas, but I'd love to hear from other teachers! So:

Do you have any Valentine-themed studio activities/games you plan on using in the upcoming weeks?

I'll share some of my ideas at the end of the week, but in the meantime, please share your own ideas!

Some Advice From the Teacher on How NOT to Bring Your Students to Their Lesson

There are times as a teacher when I have to wonder just what a student's parents are thinking! I'm sure other teachers all have their own stories to tell as well. It certainly keeps life in the studio interesting.

I had a student come to a lesson this past Friday in a horrible mood because he had been at a sleepover party and his father had taken him away from the party for his piano lesson. As soon as the lesson was over he'd be going back to the party. This is just about the worst set-up for a lesson that I can imagine. The child had no desire to be there, his mind was back at the party. He was completely unfocused for the entire lesson and every few minutes was asking how much time was left in the lesson. His lack of interest and focus in turn rubbed off on me and made me less patient that I should have been.

It was one of the worst lessons I've taught in a long time, but under the circumstances I can't imagine it having gone any differently. By the end of the lesson I was irritated with both the student and the parents for having brought him under those circumstances. It was unfair to me and to their son.

As I had had no idea of the situation until they showed up, I don't see how I could have prevented it from happening, and I tried to handle it to the best of my ability. Has anybody else ever dealt with a similar circumstance, and if so, how did you handle it after the fact?

Possible Repertoire for Funerals

I posted a few weeks back about a funeral I played for at church and the fact that I was interested in hearing about funeral repertoire books used by other church pianists. Well this afternoon I opened an email from Sheet Music Plus introducing some new piano releases, and what did I discover but this book:

What Can I Play for Funerals arr. by Cindy Berry

I have used other music composed by Cindy Berry in the past, and have been pleased with the variety, the accessibility, and the response I have gotten from the congregation. It certainly looks like a book to check out!

Question of the Week: Jan. 24, 2011

To continue with this month's theme of rhythm/pulse/beat/etc...

Do you require your students to count out loud, and if so, do you have any hints/tips/ideas on how to make it something fun?

I'm hoping to get some really great tips on how to make counting less of a chore for my students!

Further Thoughts on Metronome Practice (This Week's QotW)

This past Monday, I posed this question:

As a teacher, how do you introduce the metronome in lessons? When do you feel a student is ready for the metronome? Other than the metronome, what do you use with your students to help instill a good sense of pulse?

I try in instill the idea of a steady musical pulse, or 'heartbeat' from the very first lesson. I require my students to say the rhythms out loud and then to count out loud once we learn about time signatures. In the rote pieces I teach, I encourage the kids to sing the words or at least hum the song in their mind while they're playing.

I believe that pulse is something that has to be internalized through much repetition and drilling. I have found that making students actually verbalize- whether through counting out loud or by turning on the metronome- is MUCH more effective then leaving them to their own devices, even if the student claims to be counting 'in their head'.

I've used the metronome even for some of my younger students. I don't usually assign it for home practice, but we'll turn it on in the lesson- especially for songs that may be about clocks- and pretend that the metronome is the ticking clock.

A thorough understanding of pulse and the ability to maintain a steady pulse is an extremely important skill to develop and it can't be stressed often enough. The key is finding creative ways to help develop the skill.

How do You Turn Pages?

I've been accompanying choirs since my middle school days, but this past Wednesday night at choir I found myself all of a sudden struggling with the basic concept of coordinating page turns while accompanying the choir. I don't know if I was just extra tired this week (I was- and still am- battling a cold) or whether my brain just wasn't fully engaged, but for whatever reason I started having major problems executing smooth page turns. I'd turn too early and lose my place, I'd turn too late and leave a few beats of awkward silence or hold a chord from the previous measure...it was awful! And once it started my heightened awareness of the problem only made matters worse. As I'd near the end of a page my mind would start racing and I'd think "ok, I have to get this page turn right" and I'd agonize over it so much that I'd mess up anyway. UGH!

I don't know why, but as a music professional it seems that just when I feel I've earned my title I find myself plagued by amateurish problems of this nature. I guess it's good to review the basics every now and again. ;) Every day since then when I've practiced I've really focused on how I'm prepping for my page turns. And I've realized that I really don't operate under any kind of standard formulae for page turning. It happens when it happens. Some places I have to turn early, others I turn late.

Do any other musicians have a formula or rule you use for page turning? I'd like to be able to have a bit more of a set formula to take into my future years of accompanying!

"Are You Going to Cross This One Off?"

Does anybody else have students like this? Students who view the sole purpose of the lesson being getting the piece(s) from last week 'crossed off' so they can move on to the next piece(s)? I have a particular student who predictably turns to me after the completion of each piece at his lesson and says:

"Are you going to cross this one off?"

It happens every week, at every lesson, after every piece, without fail. Never mind how well or badly he may have performed the piece, for some reason he conceives the whole process to be:

1) I play the piece 2) You cross it off 3) We move on

Not exactly! I've patiently explained to him time and time again that there is more to learning a piece of music than just playing it and getting it crossed off. I'll ask questions like: "Did you add in all the dynamics?", "was the rhythm correct here?", "were you counting", "what is your hand position in this measure", etc. and together we'll discover if the piece is really truly learned.

You see, I believe that learning a piece is about more than just getting it 'crossed off'. There's more than just the printed notes. There are the extra details that make it come alive. And there's a difference between a performance where the student painfully struggles to make it through at even a slow tempo with half-hearted execution of dynamics, articulation, and hand position changes, and a performance where the student confidently incorporates all those details at a steady tempo that assures me they have a firm grasp of the piece. And more than that, that they have a firm grasp of the concept the piece was written to teach.

Each piece in a lesson book teaches or reinforces a concept, and as teachers we need to be aware of just what that something is and whether or not our students understand it before we cross off the piece and move on. Jason over at The Piano Pedagogy Page had an excellent post on just that issue that I stumbled upon the other day. As a teacher, there are times when I give in to the 'Cross It Off and Move On' syndrome, because it's the easy way. Students tend to gripe when they have to work on a piece for another week. But if we want our students to have a firm musical foundation, that's a small price to pay.

I've made it a goal to start making sure each piece is learned, and learned well, before we cross it off and move on. This involves talking through the piece with each student after the performance and helping them to discover (with a little help from me!) just how well-executed their performance was. Hopefully over time my students will not only become better performers, but better critical listeners as well.