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.
As a musician a well stocked library is a must. Music literature and reference books are vauable resources for the aspiring pianist and teacher. So here are my top 5 picks that should be on your shopping list.
*Make a note that I never said these are cheap or easy to find.
1. The New Harvard Dictionary of Music
2. The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music
3. Guide to the Pianists Repertoire by Maurice Hinson
4. Famous Pianists and Their Technique by Reginald Gerig
5. With Your Own Two Hands by Seymour Bernstein
Nobuyuki Tsujii will be performing at the Halton Theater in uptown Charlotte, NC, on Oct. 15 at 8:00 pm. Tsujii was born blind but at the age of two began exhibiting a talent for the piano. In 2009, he tied for the gold-medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
Check back later this weekend for a recap of the concert. I look forward to blogging about my student’s reactions to what they will hear at this event.
The assignment sheets for piano lessons plays a vital role in helping the student stay on top of their practice. Well, that is if the student looks at the assignment sheet. First as a student and now as a teacher, I have seen many different methods used successfully.
The most basic method is to write the date at the top of the pages that are assigned. Now this works well if the student is completing their pieces every week and if they remember what the date of their lesson was. Overall, I find that this method leaves alot to be desired.
A slightly more advanced way is to use a small notebook and just to write Lesson, Theory, Performance, Practice and notate the page numbers out to the side. This gives the student a check list to work off of. There also isn’t very much room for additional notes and writing.
The past few years, I have been giving my students spiral notebooks with college rule paper. Now this method definately worked well for me. There was lots of room to write extra notes and to keep a practice record. I did find that one of the drawbacks was that I didn’t always write the assignments in the same order. If the theory somehow got added at the end of the page instead of after technique, it almost always was forgotten. This was a good method and didn’t create any extra work for me as a teacher, but I felt that I could be more organized.
This year all of my students have been given a 3-ring binder. When the student opens the binder the first thing they see is that week’s assignment sheet. Every week I print out each day’s sheets with the correct date and the updated music history and listening assignments. Below you can look at an example of this sheet:
Assignment Sheet- word version
This form seems to be working really well. All the assignments are in the same place and there is plenty of room left for extra notes and reminders. Also, I love to give handouts that are helpful to the students. Some weeks it is supplemental theory sheets and others it can be music history information. By having a 3-ring binder handy, those papers don’t end up crumpled in the bottom of the student’s music bag. It is also a nice place to keep sheet music so that it doesn’t get wrinkled.
Over all I am very happy with the new assignment sheets and the 3 ring binder method.
So if you have looked at the listening assignment for this week, you will notice that there isn’t a link. This week’s composer invented something very important. The assignment is to listen to any music that uses this invention. Just have the student make a note of what music they listened to.
I don’t want to give away the answer. Enjoy the search!
Understanding flat key signatures.
iphone metronome app
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.
What are the formats of studio class?
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.