A good practice plan can help prevent a panic attack due to procrastination.
Category: Charlotte Piano Students
Masquerade Musicale
Just a quick note about how proud I am of my students. Saturday night was the Masquerade Musicale. There were 4 seatings and I had students playing in all of them.
Everyone did an excellent job. Their costumes were adorable and their behavior during the concerts was excellent.
Congrats and I can’t wait to see what the Winter Recitals will bring.
Keeping Us Healthy
Pianos are germ magnets.
Those first graders know how to practice!
I would just like to congratulate my student Savannah. She is in first grade and this is her third year of lessons with me. Savannah is the final student to still have a perfect practice record for this semester. That is all gold stars for 9 weeks! She has met her practice goals and had her practice chart filled in every week.
Savannah will be receiving a book of her choice as a reward. I am very proud of her hard work and dedication.
National Federation of Music Clubs
So this week we began picking out music for the National Federation of Music Clubs festival. This festival will not take place until February 2011 for the city of Charlotte, NC. Are you wondering what this event is that we need to pick out the music so early?
NFMC is a national event with a standardized repertoire or bulletin that is published once every three years. The new bulletin came out in June of this year and is good for 2011-2012-2013. This is not just a piano event. There are categories for all sorts of performance arts from singing to organ and dance. Every division has various levels to meet of the different stages of learning that students are in. Since most of my students are piano, I’ll explain more about that.
The piano division begins with a Pre-Primary group. Some of these pieces are for students who are not even reading on the staff yet! Within each level there are pieces of various difficulty. There is some overlap from level to level. More on why this is a great idea in a minute. The levels range all the way up to Musically Advanced II and these are definately professional level pieces that require months of work and years of experience. Each student plays one piece from the festival bulletin and one piece of their own selection.
There are two different festival events. The regular festival where students are scored with Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent and Superior. No numerical grade is given and it is not a competition. Students earn points over the years but are not trying to out play each other. The other event is Scholarship Festival. At Scholarship Festival students are given a numerical score as well as a word score. The top 2 scores are promoted on to the state competition.
If a student scores a superior then they must move on to the next level. This is why it is so nice that the levels have some overlap. If a student isn’t ready for a whole step up then it is possible to chose an easier work from the next level.
NFMC festival is a positive experience for most students and I highly encourage participation.
Studio Class 10/2
What are the formats of studio class?
Christmas Music? It’s only September!
If the sounds of holiday songs are reaching your ears, you have not lost your mind. Your child is probably already starting on their winter recital piece. Now you are probably questioning if you child’s teacher has lost her mind.
Our winter recitals are the first two weekends in December. That is only 2 months away! Now those younger students don’t have to start so early but those that are more advanced definately need the full two months or more.
Last year I made a big mistake and waited until we were done with the Masquerade Musicale to hand out Christmas music. I thought my high school students were going to find the nearest tree and string me up. I made a classic teacher mistake and wrongly assumed that the students would learn the pieces as fast as I could. What was I thinking? Just because it is advanced music doesn’t mean they have the skills to learn it quickly like a college musician or professional. So with that lesson learned, I made a note to myself to hand out advanced music in September this year.
Hopefully by the time those Christmas parties roll around the students will have a few pieces in hand with which to impress the grandparents and family members.
Sept. 10 Studio Class
I would like to congratulate my students that played today in studio class. It takes alot of courage to get up and play new untried pieces this early in the year. Great job!