Webinar- How To Teach Pop Music To Your Students

Periscope #5

 A few highlights from the online 88 Keys Winter Webshop. The subject was How To Teach Your Students Pop Music.

1. Make pop music accessible to any student by teaching by rote or by finding simplified arrangements.
2. Pop Music does not have to be played note perfect.
3. Two interesting apps that access pop music

                           Chord Tracker by Yamaha

    A free app which uses the music on your i-pod or phone to display chord progressions. My student wanted to learn a piece called War by Peter Jennison. It was not available on Musicnotes.com so I downloaded the track on my phone and opened it in Chord Tracker. I started some simple notation on a staff and then together we wrote in the melody line. He played the chords as fifths for a while until he could work on arpeggiated notes in the left hand. Most importantly he was satisfied and had learned new things about music notation and chord accompaniment.

Chromatik

Another interesting app is called Chromatik. It has many, many pop tunes to open. The fun thing is that it also has the capacity to open the You Tube video along side.That allows feedback on the rhythm issues in the piece. 

   Next week on Periscope I want to share a few things am learning about Music Clock and how I use improvising in my piano studio. I am there on Tuesdays at 10:30 PST and my screen name is GabriB. I hope you will visit me.

     Periscope is a free app by the Twitter company that allows you to broadcast all over the world. There is no time limit. Viewers can participate by typing messages and questions and by sending hearts for content they like. The recorded broadcast is viewable for 24 hours after airing.