Playing with Feeling Lab Assignment - Modern Examples

1. Watch the following performers and observe & write down the different ways they move their body to express the mood of the piece. (Arms, wrist, head, torso, elbows, etc.)
2. Write down 1 or 2 words to describe the mood of each piece.
3. Draw a picture or describe how you feel when you hear each piece or what images come to your mind.


"Bring Him Home" from Les Miserables


This "Dumb Song" by Jon Schmidt is definitely not for wimpy fingers. Keep up your Hanon practice if you want to play like this someday:0)



"Waterfall" by Jon Schmidt


Emily Bear 5 1/2 yrs old playing her own composition


"Pirates of the Caribbean" Jarrod Radnich

Great Online Music Game Resource - Tonic Tutor

Don't miss out on the opportunity this month to check out Tonic Tutor's September full free access. My students are loving the fun games on tonic tutor. For the month of September they are running a promotion where you can access all the features of the site for free. Some of the elements of this site that I really appreciate are:

• The games are short... great for younger students with shorter attention spans who need a lot of variety during labtime.
• The game rewards provide a lot of consistent positive reinforcement. Students earn "achievements" for things like time efficiency, 5 answers in a row correct, limiting listens, etc. Currently there is some friendly sibling rivalry going on at our house to get the most time in so they can win our Fall Fiesta Contest :) I never thought my kids would be fighting to play piano games! I appreciate that you can even customize the contests to motivate your students in different areas and give different students the chance to shine.
  
• There is a short tutorial for each game so most students can figure out how to play them on their own.
• Along with preset levels, teachers can change settings specific to their student's particular needs.
  
• Students can access the site from home for extra practice in addition to games I assign them during studio labtime.
  
• The games cover a variety of elements including auditory, visual, keyboard, notereading and rhythm skills.
  
• The game difficulty ranges from early elementary skills to advanced skills.
  

Initially it took a while to set up all of my student's accounts and familiarize myself with all of the games to give appropriately leveled assignments, but I think the effort was well worth it.

Cool Songs for Cool Kids 2 Review

The "cool" songs in this intermediate level book by Gerald Simon have a sort of "Jon Schmidt style", but are a little more accessible to earlier piano grade students for those students who want to impress their friends with "hard-sounding" songs and have some fun in the process.
The first few pages of the book include a helpful theory overview of intervals (including augmented and diminished), swing style 8ths, the blues pentascale & L.H. barrelhouse blues, polka and rocking 5th patterns. Although the explanations might be a bit wordy for younger students, I like the framework provided that could act as a great springboard for further improv and composition for creative students.
As a teacher one of the things I find appealing are the relatively short length of the songs. The songs are just 1 or 2 pages with repetitive themes in different octaves and many repeating rhythm patterns. Most songs could easily be mastered in just 1 week. They would make a great "energizer" for busy teens if interspersed between regular lesson assignments.
The rhythm patterns are easily understood and the counts are written in for the first few measures of each song. Most songs include syncopated eighth note rhythms.
The book includes a good variety of pop moods/styles, from energized boogie, pop rock and polka songs like"Gigabyte Guru" and "Chillaxing" to relaxing new age, dreamy songs like "Wishful Thinking" and "Sweet Serenity." The music motivation site includes a full recording of nearly every song which is useful for both previewing to determine students level of interest in the book or listening prep activities to enable more successful mastery of the songs.

I mainly use this as a supplementary book, because the songs are fun to play and and can make great motivators, especially for the teenage students and boys. The songs in Book 2 are just a bit more challenging than Book 1 and require a comfortable octave hand stretch. Several include bass 1 8va ostinato patterns, walking bass, key signatures up to 2 sharps and 4 flats, triplets, syncopated accents, grace notes and glissandos.

Free Resource for Teaching Skips and More

One of my favorite pieces for reinforcing the concept of skips is a simplified version of “Scripture Power” (by Clive Romney) on the Layton Music.com Primary site. This energetic song is a familiar favorite for most of the children in our church congregation to sing during Primary singing time, so they get pretty excited when they get the chance to play this version fairly early on in their piano studies.

As a piano teacher I appreciate several elements of this piece.

-The first page is full of a catchy repetitive stepping pattern that gives students extra reinforcement reading “across the staff” (Bass, G, A,B – Treble CDE) and switching hands with fluency. I usually assign students just the first page for starters.

-The chorus on the second page which I assign them the following week has a great repeating theme including plenty of line to line skips.

- The rhythm is fairly simple, yet catchy and motivating to play.

- The lyrics are personally my favorite element of the song. As a piano teacher and parent my motivation for teaching is more than training great pianists. I’m hoping the skills and qualities involved in learning piano will be the means of character building for my own children and my other students. So I love the reminder of these words…

“Because I want to be like the Savior and I can,

I’m reading his instructions, I’m following his plan.

Because I want the power his words will give to me,

I’m changing how I live I’m changing what I’ll be.

Scripture power, Keeps me safe from sin.

Scripture power is the power is the power to win.

Scripture power, everyday I need the power that I get each time I read.”

Click here to hear a recording of this song.

The 2 most influential sources of inspiration in daily living for me have been inspirational music and daily scripture study/prayer. I feel indebted to both those who compose inspirational music and heroes like William Tyndale who paved the way for me to have daily access to God’s word. As I read about Tyndale in the following excerpt from an article by Boyd K. Packer my hope is that my children will come to appreciate both the power of inspiring music and inspiring scripture in daily living and pattern their lives after the heroes in the scriptures.

“It has been 400 years since the publication of the King James Bible, with significant contributions from William Tyndale, a great hero in my eyes.

The clergy did not want the Bible published in common English. They hounded Tyndale from place to place. He said to them, “If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou.”

Tyndale was betrayed and confined to a dark, freezing prison in Brussels for over a year. His clothing was in rags. He begged his captors for his coat and cap and candle, saying, “It is indeed wearisome sitting alone in the dark.” These were denied him. Eventually he was taken from prison and before a large crowd was strangled and burned at the stake. But William Tyndale’s work and martyr’s death were not in vain.

I am thankful for the privilege to live in an era of freedom and knowledge where I have daily access to God's word and music inspired by those who strive to follow him.

Piano Teaching 101- Thirteen Tips on How to Begin

Piano Teaching 101: 13 Tips on How to Begin

In response to a recent query from a friend of mine who is interested in becoming a piano teacher, I compiled this quick "to do" list of elements that have proven valuable in my own piano teaching adventures.

1. Purchase some beginning method books and become familiar with them. 

My favorite beginner-level piano books are Piano Adventures by Nancy & Randall Faber. The wealth of online support ideas makes this a great book to start with for teachers who are just starting out, and their songs are appealing to students as well. I have my students purchase the Lesson and Technique books. I teach them theory with online activities and games during lessons and lab time and supplement with other books from my music library instead of using the Performance book.
Another favorite method of mine is Piano Pronto. The familiar songs with backing tracks are especially motivating and engaging for the beginning levels and provide a fun support system for home practice to spice up the "simple-sounding songs" at the start of music lessons. The presentation of concepts in both of these methods follows a similar order so I often interchange them to suit the tastes and needs of my students. Check out my free piano lesson plan links to view supplementary activities that correlate with each piece in the Piano Adventures and Piano Pronto Lesson Books. The music samples, theory and improv activities can be viewed by students at home or during piano lesson time to reinforce the concepts each piece is focused on.

(Disclosure: I don't receive any monetary compensation for promoting any of the resources on this post-- they just happen to be some of my personal favorites:)! )

Hearing Half Steps Lab Assignment

1. Watch this video listening for the entrance of the "spooky sounding" character.
2. Create your own story composition that includes a "spooky" character and use half steps on the piano when he enters the story.

Composition as a Reinforcement Tool

"Can I compose a Sonatina???"
That was the question posed to me by one of my students today after I introduced her to this simplified version of Clementi's Sonatina . She has demonstrated amazing composing/improv ability and "WOW's" my other students with the compositions that she performs at group lessons.

Last week I decided to capitalize on this interest of hers - She'd much rather compose her own songs than play the ones in the lesson book. She hadn't quite mastered the a harmonic minor scale from the week before, so I asked her to compose a song including an a harmonic scale rather than giving her the same assignment again. This ended up being the perfect solution and I was pleased to hear plenty of broken primary chords in her song as well.

So in my efforts to apply the ideas I've gleaned from recently reading "Play it Again, Sam - What Why and When to Repeat" (by Marienne Uszler), I decided to let her give it a try. Uszler mentions that effective teachers can present the same concept in a myriad of different ways and thus appeal to the various senses and learning styles of each student and aid in reinforcement of concepts.

Sometimes it takes a little courage for me to think outside the box of tools that my teachers passed on to me... composition was definitely not one of them. But based on last weeks lesson assignment results, I discarded my previous lesson plan ideas. My student seemed pretty intrigued with the Sonatina which I introduced to her go along with our focus this month on the Classical Era, so I taught a mini lesson on Sonatina form and briefly reviewed identifying relative keys. I asked her to come back next week with the beginnings of her composition including the following components:

Exposition (major),
Development (relative minor)
Recapitulation (reintroduce the major theme)
Contrasting Legato & Staccato elements
at least 1 scale

After she listened to Clementi's original composition on CD, I let her loose on the Doodle Pad for lab time. After hearing her "beginning stage of composition" on the Music Ace Doodle Pad that I had her create during lab time, I'm excited for next weeks lesson!

For more ideas about encouraging Composition check out Wendy's blog at Compose Create. Her posts have given me the inspiration and motivation to utilize composition as a tool in my studio more often.