I'm Back

        Does absence make the heart grow fonder?

   I have been missing from blogging land for two years. In those years I continued to teach piano but I suppose I lost my desire to share on this blog. I'm back primarily because of the generous hearts of so many other teachers who continue to give encouragement online. 

    Last week I tried Periscope, an app created by Twitter which broadcasts live all around the world, and I did a video about practice incentives. It was a trial and very, very, few knew about my experiment. I will try it again this Tuesday morning, 01/12/16 at 10:30 am PST. The subject will be duets. You can search for me at GabriB and the broadcast will remain online for 24 hours.

     The incentive I am using in January comes from Compose Create. Thank-you Wendy Stevens for these flash cards which I am also using for practice incentives. At each lesson if my students  practice 100 minutes or more they can receive part of a snowman. As they build they must match the intervals. 
   Length of practice time does not guarantee good practice but it creates accountability to me and to their parents. 

  Join me here or on Periscope where my next topic will be Duets, the value they have and where to find good music.

Practice

My student Danny hit a wall on the Shepard's Song. He just didn't like it and consequently he refused to practice. Weeks went by with my encouraging him to try it one more week. Finally, I felt inspired to challenge him to try an experiment. I promised him, out on a limb there, that if he would play this piece 50 times that he would learn to love it. The next week he had 4 tally marks on his page. We played it through three times during the lesson and added those tally masks to the total. Then, the following week he had a surprise for me.

He was so excited to play. He reached his goal and my promise was true. He loved it. I don't always push through with every song, but I felt the newly arranged version of this piece in "Piano Adventures Level One" was worth the work.

The more you practice the better you play. The better you play the more you enjoy making music. The more you enjoy making music the more you practice. The more you practice the better you play……..

The Happy Birthday Project

    As part of my campaign to prove that Playing The Piano Is A Practical Skill I have challenged all my students to learn a version of Happy Birthday. Some of us are learning it with thumbs sharing on middle C, others are learning it in the key of F as a lead sheet with the primary chords, and still some are learning it in different styles. Once you play it for me from memory you get to be on the Happy Birthday Board. If you play it for someone on or around their birthday you get an added sticker.

                      I am halfway through my student list and it is such fun watching the results.

What Expectations Do You Have For Your Child?

In a recent questionnaire to parents I asked the question -What expectations did you have before your child started piano lessons? The answers were varied and insightful. Here are a few of them.

1.That my children will have a better understanding of music

2. That he would learn to read and enjoy music.

4. That it would be tough-going keeping her motivated over the long-term, but that—if she stuck with it—it would prove a long-lasting gift for her and for my (hopefully) future grandchildren. I looked at it as a long-term, generational investment and a gift for her if she ever wanted to do anything musically. 

5. I thought he would learn the basics of music.

6. Just that he would have fun, and love music, and be a lifetime lover of music.

7. That he would continue to love playing and gain confidence in his musical ability.

8. Just that he would learn to appreciate music.

I thought back to what my mother would have said. It would be something like, "I expect that she will learn to play well enough to accompany our family sing-alongs, play at the Christmas Eve party, and play for the church congregation." You see my mother was practical and she saw playing the piano as a practical skill.

So, to this excellent list of expectations may I add, expect that your child will play the piano for may varied and different functions of home life and community life. The Piano Is Practical.

 Watch for a documentary, starring my students, as we explore how playing the piano is a practical skill.

Practice Incentive Review

   I have two programs going in my studio that have been invigorating to many and ignored by others. The fact that they might have been ignored could be my own problem. Lesson time is precious and when we are learning I find it distracting to stop and ask if they recorded their practice minutes or if they brought their assignment sheet. My agenda just doesn't always pan out when that excited child comes through my door. But, my failings aside, after many months interest is rising due to the large chart on my keyboard.

   Each little sticker is a level of notes read correctly in just one minute. I add new notes or amount of notes at each level. It started like this.

   The Thousand Minute Club was a challenge, not because it is hard to practice 1000 minutes, but because it is hard to log minutes on the assignment sheet and bring it to lessons. I think I may be teaching responsibility and organization, as well. I am looking forward to trying something new after June, for the summer months.

1000 Minutes

  Some of my students have successfully practiced and logged 1000 minutes in the last three months. It seemed easy to me but the difficulty arose in writing down the minutes on their assignment sheet.

    I use a form graciously shared by Susan Paradis and to get credit for these minutes they must log them in the Practice Record.
  Congratulations Clara and Olivia for being the first to reach that goal.

Bass Clef Patterns

   Some of my off the bench activities include my kitchen floor, not far from my studio. I have been using my black ropes again as I teach the bass clef notes to MFPA Book 2 students. They need to experience the staff in many ways to understand the concept of the staff and the clef signs.'Learning a concept must be reinforced bu using the concept in varied contexts." Marienne Uszler

Sometimes figuring it out is exciting.
   October will bring group lessons back and I know the MFPA students will be having a Pumpkin Party where Tucker the Dog will want to hear every ones rendition of Tucker's Secret Life. This is such an engaging title and I have taken this about as far as I can go.Yeh Tucker!

His song is making my practice incentive art project into a real art display. We are adding sparkly paper shapes as we log into the 300-400 minutes of practice.

    It started out blank and then grew to this. Artistically this is pretty cool. My students are thinking about where to place their color and what shape they want to use. It should be very interesting to see it at the recital in November.

Progress On Practicing Incentive

About 60% of my students are on board with my fall practicing incentive. On board means they are aware of how long they are playing each day, they want to report their minutes, and they have placed their first color shape on the board because they practice 100 minutes or more.

On Board

This studio wide art project will symbolize the many layers of musicality. It allows me to talk about this concept over and over again.

This fall incentive dovetails perfectly with my quest to ask better questions as many of my questions will be about adding more layers of musicality.

I am noticing the difference in participation and awareness as I expect my students to listen and evaluate their  playing.

Practicing Incentive This Fall

Layers-

 Just like an onion has different layers of skin so a piece of music has different layers of elements to learn and perfect. This fall my students are going to practice with the intent of adding more layers to their musical artistry.

    Although tracking practice time is not an end in and of itself, I am going to keep the incentive to record the minutes we practice which we started this summer, every 100 minutes earns a chance to glue a shape, design. or sticker to a piece of posterboard. The poster will become a collage of shapes and colors; a work of art representing the layers of musicality we add as we learn a piece of music. At the fall recital we will display our project and hopefully our music will show what we have learned..
  The purpose of this incentive is to:
    1- Make student and parent aware of the length of their child's practice time
    2- To use assignment books routinely for reviewing assignments and recording practice times
    3.- To participate in a studio wide experience
Incentives to practice work for me if they take less than a minute to record and if they are inexpensive.

We will start with the first 100 minutes being shapes and basic colors. This layer is likened to playing correct notes and correct rhythm.

 As the minutes add up the shapes will be textured as dynamics add texture to the music.

Patterns on the paper will be like articulation. 

Shiny foil shapes will allow me to talk about phrasing and voicing.

Lastly, stickers will add personality as interpretation of the music is unique and individual.

I see it happening and I hope my students come on board and enjoy the art we create together.

Ice- Cream Group Lessons

   Today was the kick-off for my ice-cream group lessons. I will have four different lessons with 4-6 kids in each group. I ended up with only two girls, the other student had a conflict. These two girls were jazzed because they had earned so many scoops in my practicing incentive. The students earned one scoop of ice-cream for every 100 minutes they logged.

    Besides having ice-cream we did some note-reading. We made up some words using only the musical alphabet. You can find the work sheet here.

    And we learned a simple piece which I had written for 6 instruments. I like giving my students different musical experiences and this one was about reading a score and learning parts for both pitched instruments and percussion. I did not know how this would play out, pardon the pun, but it was just right for the time factor and for my students.You can find the music here.

   I will write about how it is with more students next week. 

A Scheduled Practice Time

    I read a good post by Laura Lowe, a fellow piano teacher, and it made me want to add my own words to this subject.
    Setting a certain time aside to practice may be the key to progress for your child and for yourself. For the child making piano practice into a routine communicates the importance you place on this endeavor. It also gives your child the security to know that what happens today on the piano bench can be improved and enlarged tomorrow.

                                                                             
   As the parent having and staying with a practice routine will give you confidence that your child will learn to play. Let's face it, parents carry much of the guilt for failed improvement at the piano. I know when I took my daughter to her lessons I felt very bad about the days that disappeared without a thought to her playing. Realistically it may have been her fault for not going to the piano, but I know it wasn't until our routine was set that I could expect her to be responsible.
 This summer I had a incentive to keep practice happening. I rewarded every 100 minutes with a scoop of ice-cream on a cone. For some students this was ridiculously easy, and I think it was because they already had a very set routine of daily practice. Except for the very earliest beginners, every child should practice at least 20 minutes a day. And it needs to happen most every day. Research shows that the brain needs the repetition every day and it shows that cramming for a longer period once in a while does not prove the best results.
  I tell my students the story of what I learned from my third grade teacher. She applied this to learning spelling words but it works exactly the same way in piano practice. She told us to go over our spelling list in our heads before falling to sleep on the very day we received the new words. I experimented with her advise and found it to work. So, if you ask your child to go through all the music he learned at the lesson before bedtime, the remembering will place the information in longer term storage. This need not be a long intensive practice. It is more a remembering and it would be ideal to sit with your child and ask questions about his new pieces. Your child may want to skip practice on the day of their lesson, but this is the very day that practice is the most beneficial.
   "A great deal of research shows that thinking or talking about an event immediately after it has occurred enhances memory for that event."   This is written about in Brain Rules by John Medina. 

                                                                             
Think about how confident your child will be the next day when she goes to practice and her assignment is familiar. Children have an "I can do it " attitude naturally and when they find they can't they sometimes assume they have failed. They are much harder to motivate in failure mode than if they feel they are successful. So, when is practice time at your house?

Ice-Cream Practice Incentive

                I am brain-storming ideas for my end of summer ice-cream group lessons. This is a lesson to celebrate my students summer practicing. I will have at least two sessions if I keep them to 6 students. I got the idea from Sarah and made it adapt to my circumstances. Many families go out of town and so I don't see much of them but when they come they write down how many minutes they have practiced. For every 100 minutes they put a scoop on my ice-cream chart.

       I want to do some learning before we have our ice-cream and so I have written a very simple ensemble piece. It is called My Favorite Treat and it is for 6 instruments. Two piano keyboards, xylophone,finger cymbals, triangle, and drum. Ensembles are fun with different age groups if the piece is easy and it teaches so much about counting and listening. My students love to trade instruments and we play it over and over again.
  I also did a little worksheet for a warm-up. These are available to look at and copy here.
  Any other ideas? What do you think?