October practice ideas

October!!! How did it get here so fast?!? Well, by now you have had a chance to get moving on your new repertoire and have probably remained quite motivated with your pieces. How can you and your parent keep it going? Here are some fun ideas of how to practice together:
1. Students play one hand while the parent claps the rhythm of the other hand, if the music has both clefs. Then switch.
2. Progress to playing duets. Student plays one hand while parent plays the other line. Then switch places.
3. If the parent is unsure of the music, have the student teach the parent!! How fun! Kids love it!!
4. Sing all the words if they are available and make up other silly words. Create words if they are not in the score.
5. Play the piece correctly as written, then "mess" with it by changing notes, octaves and dynamics. Encourage laughter!! How silly can we get?

There...now you have 5 different ways to practice for 5 days of rehearsing!!

Welcome back to piano lessons everyone! If you are new to piano lessons, we are going to have a great year! Now that you have completed a week of school and have got your other activities started, it is time to set up a regular routine when it comes to piano rehearsal. You would never go into a hockey game having never touched a puck or without knowing how to put on your equipment...it is the same with piano. Treat it like a sport which requires a warm-up (technique) and practice (working on your pieces). The fun thing about piano however, is that it is also an art and a neurological exercise. So much of yourself improves with music!! Keep coming back to this blog for practice suggestions, composer information, great tips and the encouragement to keep enjoying what you are doing with your music education!!

Playing between the notes!!

Music is not just about playing correct notes---anyone can do that! Music is musical and therefore requires an attentive ear. Of course , the notes are necessary, but playing the right notes at the right times will not communicate the intentions of the composer. Music is not about black lines and dots...it is about form, imagination, soul, colour and character. Every piece of music has something to say and it is the musician's job (no matter how young or old) to convey a meaningful message.
      So how can a young performer do this? Investigate the score through a variety of lenses which involve the historical influences on the piece and its composer, theoretical and structural relationships within the piece, and the piece's place in the larger musical picture. If a young student just focuses on notes, reading and putting those black marks onto the correct location of a piano keyboard,  no artistic choices will be made. Encourage your young and older student/child to be creative. They can hear and create character and style at the keyboard. And the cool thing is that they do it without inhibition. Start early in their development. If you are reading a story about dinosaurs or elephants or butterflies--go to the keyboard with them and create those sounds.
      As the child develops their musical language they will instinctively be able to play creatively between the notes to create magic at the keyboard!!!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone!! As 2012 begins take the time to address your piano practice routine. Ask yourself the following questions:
1. What time of day works best for my practice without having interruptions?
2. Do I understand what I need to do for the week?
3. Am I practicing mistakes over and over or am I making an effort to correct and move on?
4. Am I listening to how musical I am playing or am I only concentrating on notes and rhythms?
5. How can I make my practice time more beneficial? Talk to me at your lesson about that!
6. Have I forgotten about doing Tonic Tutor assignments?
7. Have I started my composing project? Deadline for entries is March 1, 2012

See you in the studio---we might even play with my new iPad!!
Kathy

Music and Verbal intelligence

Here is a great link to an article regarding Musical Training and the enhancement of children's verbal intelligence after only one month of musical training. This is a recent Canadian study conducted at York University.
http://www.miller-mccune.com/education/music-training-enhances-childrens-verbal-intelligence

7 Steps to Improve your practicing quickly

1. Plan your time: one of the most important ways to see consistent satisfying progress is well-planned practice sessions. Since learning piano is both a physical and mental process, regularity is crucial. Compare piano practicing to a physical workout. You would not see very good results if you spend one day a month in the gym.

2. Prepare you mental and physical state: to get the most of our your practicing, it is important to have a focused awareness of sound, touch and movement. At the start of each practice session, take a few deep breaths and find a balanced posture with relaxed shoulders and heavy arms.

3. Analyze and mark up: When beginning a new piece, sit down away from the piano and analyze the piece. Pencil in all important details like fingering, patterns, translations of foreign words and work out difficult rhythms and harmonic progressions.

4. Repeat correctly: repeat everything you practice four times correctly. Make no mistakes during your first practice. Practice slowly with a good mental focus. Always shape every phrase and bring out all the musical details right away and even with slow practice.

5. Practice the difficulties: When working through your pieces, mark difficult sections in pencil and spend most of your practice time on these parts.

6. Practice performing under pressure: Once a week or so, and most importantly of all a few days before a lesson or performance, make a video or audio recording of yourself performing your pieces at home. This is a great way to practice under pressure.

7. Be your own teacher: When you have made the recording leave it for a day or so and then listen to it again with untainted ears. Listen for the overall musical performance. Are you getting your musical ideas across? What can be improved? Listen for wrong notes and rhythms, missed dynamics and articulation etc... and mark them with a pencil on your score.

(these steps were adapted from pianostreet.com)

Happy practicing!!!

Fall piano has begun!!

All of my students have completed their first week of piano. Now is the time for families to get organized and determine when would be a good time to practice each day. I expect at a minimum 4-5 practices per week so that each student can return to lessons prepared to move ahead.  Practices do not need to be lengthy if everyone is concentrating and if we all accomplish what was asked us on on the lesson plan notes.
     Tonic tutor computer assignments were well done this week. This is an amazing site that will greatly assist each student in understanding their music and is a wonderful resource for reinforcing musical ideas discussed and tried during lessons. Keep plugging away at these assignments---you will not regret it!!
      Remember that you have been given a wonderful gift--the gift of music that will last your entire life. Cherish and nuture this gift. "Knowledge is a treasure, but practice is the key to it." --Thomas Fuller.

Spring and practice motivation

Birds are singing, the days are getting longer and everyone is getting outside a little more. Along with that comes the temptation to put your piano practice on the back burner. How can we keep motivated? Here are a few ideas:
1. Instead of practicing after school, try to get up a little earlier and get some of your work done before school.
2. Plan to give yourself a treat---like going out to a movie. Place the exact amount of money required into a jar beside the piano. If you miss a practice a dollar is removed and not replaced until you practice again. Give yourself one week to acheive the movie award.
3. Place a reminder to practice by your outdoor footwear and jackets.
4. Like the NIKE commercials says, "Just Do It".
5. Set a timer and practice for 15-20 minutes followed by a one hour break outside. Then come in and set the timer again for 15-20 minutes etc.....until your practice is complete.
6.Realize the virtues of self discipline and become more internally motivated rather than relying on your parent/teacher to do that for you. You can do it!!!
7. Have a check list of all that needs to be accomplished during your day. Do not allow yourself to go to sleep until it is all complete. You can even set up a time schedule to follow. The reward for getting your tasks complete is enjoying the outside!!! You will be out there before you know it.
8. Remember that recital is in 6 weeks and you would really like to impress your friends and family with your performance. So create some awesome invitations and hand deliver, mail them or invite via a social network. So now all you have to do is prepare accordingly. Plan a celebration dinner or party for everyone at your home after the recital!! Preparation is everything for a successful performance!!

Festival preparation

Music Festival competition is just two weeks away and here we are on a School March break. To keep your pieces fresh try these fun ideas: play them with the dynamics all opposite, record yourself, perform your pieces for neighbours and friends, test yourself by playing from memory landmarks (but mix them up). Be your own critic and listen carefully to yourself performing!!

Chopin preludes

It is important for all piano students to listen to recordings of performances. In this day of technology we can basically find someone performing almost anything a student is learning on the internet. Some performances can be great and others not so great. This learning tool enables the student to discern between the two after analyzing pieces of literature with their teacher/instructor. Below is a link to a performance of Chopins' 24 Preludes Op. 28 by one of his best interpreters Andras Schiff who is also performing on a Pleyel piano.

http://www.classicaltv.com/v1203/andras-schiff-chopins-24-preludes-op.-28

Happy New Year

Hello everyone---as we begin 2011 please schedule your time to include good practices on the piano and to complete your Tonic Tutor assignments. Report cards were sent out today. Some of you are doing great with the theory programs but many of you are doing horrible because you have not been working at it. Self discipline and sticking to a schedule will help those marks go up!!

Preparing your Christmas recital piece

There are only a few weeks before Christmas piano recitals begin all across North America. How can you prepare your child or student for this joyous occasion? To begin, the very first practice at home is the most important one. Everything covered with your teacher at the lesson introducing the piece must be observed perfectly. Here are some questions to ask:
1. What note am I to begin on? Are there any clues or landmarks that can assist me?
2. What finger number must that first note use? In transferring the sound to the next note do I have to create a space between the fingers or can I play in a 5-finger position?
3. Where is the end of the first musical phrase? How am I to shape that phrase dynamically?
4. What did my teacher tell me to practice---the entire piece or a phrase each day?
5. Can I begin hands together right away or do I need time to play duets with my parent?
6. Have I created a relaxing environment to be productive during my rehearsal time at home?
7. Do I know how to contact my teacher if I discover that I am having difficulties? Avoid playing mistakes for the entire week.

Hopefully this will help guide you during your first week of practicing. Enjoy!!

Canada's Music week

There is a richness to Canadian compositions for young piano players. At one time we only had what was available through the choices in the Conservatory books. Now Canadian publishing companies such as Mayfair, Black Cat and Red Leaf have lots of options available for teachers and students. Students can play jazz, lyrical, neo-classical and 12-tone styles. How fun is that?!? As we approach Canada's Music week beginning November 22nd, ask your teacher for a Canadian composition. The other option is to visit the websites of the publishers and see what is new. Most of the books are under $10 including shipping and on some of the sites you can get pieces for free to download and try. Bravo Canadian music, eh?

Is musicality contingent on good technique?

In the Webster's dictionary a pianist is used to illustrate the meaning of the word "technique". Interestesting. I guess even they know that beautiful expression is impossible without good technique. Technique helps control, modify, and free the many body movements crucial to fine pianism (Lois Nielson, Clavier Companion Sept./Oct. 2010). If all the parts of the body are well-positioned and controlled, movement is free, extensions are easy, voicing is distinct, and musical lines and colour are possible.

When Practice Makes Perfect

All our lives we've heard that practice makes perfect. But even as I write this blog entry, we all know that practice does not necessarily make perfect. We've all seen or experienced the opposite at one time or another. The word "practice" has become a catchword. It explains our failures and our successes. Poor pracitce means failure and good practice means success. However, let's not forget the base meaning of piano practice which means to train by "repetition". Repeating something "almost" correctly leads us to slow learning, or, at worst, no learning. It often causes the kind of frustration that leads to giving up. The goal is to have your child or student practice what is correct 100% of the time so that nine wrong experiences out of ten tries does not become the habit rather than the correct one. So---when your child comes home from their piano lesson three things must occur:
1. The student  should be prepared to practice his/her home assignment correctly and have understood it before leaving the studio.
2. The student must follow the practice outline each day.
3. Practice must be exciting so that the student is creating wonderful performances. Your teacher will give you lots of ideas to help with this.

Practice steps make the student think about what he is doing and allow correct habits to form. Therefore:
GOOD HABITS + AUTOMATIC RESPONSES = SUCCESS
( adapted from Richard Chronister, " A Piano Teacher's Legacy"- 2005)

Learning to Listen

Ferruccio Busoni born in Italy in 1866 was a very famous pianist who once said." There is a detail which few students observe which is of such vast importance that one is tempted to say that the main part of successful musical progress depends upon it. This is the detail of learning to listen". Hours and hours can be wasted by students who treat the piano as some sort of gymnasium that is attached to a musical instrument. They may acquire strong fingers, but will have to learn to listen before they can hope to become good performers. Pianists, even at young ages should always be in quest of new beautiful sounds that result in wonderful details. Have your child or student play a small series of notes in several ways including striking the key from high above the keyboard, striking just using finger weight, depressing a key using arm weight and the fingers as transmitters, incorporating freedom of the elbow, depressing the key at different speeds etc.... You might even record these sounds so that they can be played back. Then decide with the student or your child where these individual sounds would be appropriate in music. Some sounds are very good for fortissimo, large sounds but would not work well if the piece of music was describing a delicate flower. Allow your imagination to run wild and be expressed through the sounds you create !!

Welcome !!

Welcome to my newly created blog, "The treble and bass of Music". This site is designed to give my piano students hints and ideas for practice, musical trivia, composer information, studio information etc... It will also be a place to showcase performances. Check back weekly to see my progress and to discover !!!