When a student doesn’t want to come….

As teachers, we all have students who want to cancel their private lesson because they are not prepared…they didn’t practice.  When they (or their moms) call to cancel, I tell them this is a slippery slope; one week of not practicing turns into two, and before they know it, they don’t want to come to lessons anymore because their skills have gotten away from them.

I encourage them to come to that lesson anyway; even though they have missed an opportunity for muscle memory growth that week, it doesn’t mean you have nothing to teach them.  Don’t yell at them!  I don’t mean you shouldn’t admonish them, but don’t scare them into not wanting to come back.

Think of it as an opportunity to use their instrument to explore a new facet of music theory, to learn more about the composer of their piece, and yes, to find out just how important that lost week of muscle memory was….I have a lever harp in my studio that I use sometimes in those cases; I strongly believe that transference of skills (i.e.,relation of notes on the piano to notes on the harp) facilitates a deeper understanding of music theory and appreciation.

Authentic Purpose and My Passion

          http://www.amazon.com/Authentic-Purpose-Tamilyn-Banno-ebook/dp/B00A7D12XE

My sister, Tamilyn Banno, recently wrote a wonderful little book called “Authentic Purpose”.  She asked if I would read some drafts before publishing, and do some editing.  I thought, “How cute, my little sister is writing a little book”.  Well, it turns out I was very profoundly taken by her written words.

There is a “quiz” in it, but not like any quiz I have ever taken…as a matter of fact, I hemmed and hawed before I finally agreed to do it; I thought I just didn’t have the time.  I wanted to edit what she had written; I didn’t have time for actually answering the questions!  It’s sort of like a Cosmo magazine quiz we used to take when we were young (What Are You Looking For In A Relationship..remember those?).

But I did take it….and as a result, my purpose in life has never been more clear.  I do a lot of different kinds of things to make a living, and getting the bills paid each month was about all I could think about…until I took that little quiz.  I realize that my “Authentic Purpose” is more than teaching or performing.  My real passion, as I’ve now discovered, is providing my students with an opportunity to perform…not just for the sake of showing mom and dad what they’ve been working on, but by helping them learn, through recitals, that life can be a little messy.

Recital pieces are rarely perfect.  They’re not; get over it.  Yes, we strive for excellence, of course we do; but the real measure of a person, I feel, is how they handle their mistakes. That is what I often focus on in my teaching, and a much happier lady I am for helping my students to understand that.

Stagger breathing

Ok, I thought I was the only one who did this…thankfully. I am NOT!

When I was in high school, I was taught that “stagger breathing” was taking a catch-breath in between words.  A I grew in my craft, it occurred to me that in a choir situation, this could be ominous:  too many repeated consonants, and LOTS of “S” at the end of a word going on…

But how do you fix that?  The answer is easy, but difficult to employ at first because it is soooo counter-intuitive!  Here it is:

Instead of taking a breath in between words, take your breath instead of a word.  You read that right!  Instead of singing a short word or note (the word “the”, for example), pretend you are singing it (for the audience’s benefit)…but in reality, you want to inhale instead!

Now, this needs to be practiced; the technique is difficult at first, if one was trained to take that catch-breath in between words.  Once each individual in your choir becomes more comfortable with this concept, it’s time to make sure that everybody doesn’t take their breath on the same word!

That’s how I found out I wasn’t the only one who used this technique: an acquaintance of mine, Linda, and I were hired as ringers to be the only two altos at a performance.  At rehearsal, I decided to employ “my new technique”…only to discover that Linda was doing the same thing!  And yes, we were taking our breaths (for long phrases) on the same words.  We kept snickering every time it happened; at the break, we sat down to “divide up” the words so we wouldn’t stagger breathe at the same time.

 

And I thought I was so clever….!  Have any of you been practicing this method?

Music Education: Vegetable Soup?

These videos I’m sharing today put a whole new spin on teaching instruments and the orchestra; I believe you’ve got to somehow include this in your lesson plans!  Click here: Vegetable Orchestra

The above video I found on my MSN home page today;  I decided to do some research, and found links to the source: The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra.  For those of you who have your students make their own orchestra instruments, this is a trip!

Here is a sample of their concert work:

An innovative way of making music….as music teachers, finding a way to “serve up” the orchestra can be dry. Our responsibility is to motivate; this is a fine choice for teaching the instruments, and for an extension of teaching “found sound”.  Enjoy!

Music Ed and Do Re Mi

Here’s a wonderful video that went viral this summer; it was recently sent to me again for the third time….I figure that means there are still folks who haven’t seen it.  I smile every time I see it, so for those of you who haven’t viewed it yet, I’m including it here.  The Sound of Music was a really big deal in my family when I was growing up, and when I saw this video for the first time, there were tears in my eyes.  I just figured it was because I was tired from a long week, but my sister (who sent it to me) said she, too, felt her eyes fill up as she viewed it!

Music Education and Articulated Consonants

So….once your vowels are unified, it’s definitely time to move on to consonants…..

A reader left an excellent comment: 

 “Dear Michelle,
I have some issues with how to pronounce final consonants, because I learn different things from language/speech teachers than in music. For example, in speech/language sessions, I was taught not to dentalize or aspirate “d” or “t” endings, but it seems that this is what is taught in music.
As I am not a professional musician, I realize I may be missing something. Can you help out? Thanks.”

The way you articulate in vocal music is definitely different than you would in speech; it’s  as if you must be fluid in two different languages.  In making music, I strongly advocate putting a “shadow vowel” after an explosive consonant (like a D or a T).  Robert Shaw said “Two consonants in succession (p/l, d/b, t/f, etc.) require a neutral “uh” vowel to be rhythmically inserted between them. Two words, one ending in a consonant and the next beginning with one, frequently require this neutral vowel (or “schwa,” or “shadow vowel”) for clarity of articulation”

I would further recommend having your choir put this “shadow vowel” on an explosive consonant (D, T, P, etc) that happens at the end of a phrase:  In his treatment for choral singing , ” The Chorale Singers Cheat Sheet” , Sean Boulware says, “Explode consonants, don’t implode them. Audiences may love us for our vowels, but they respect (and pay) us for our consonants.”  You must have your choir execute “shadow vowels” so that the text is clearly understood by the audience.  Now, if the “schwa” is just too much, either have the choir as a whole back off a little bit, or just cut back on the number of choir members who are to perform the “shadow vowel“.  Remember, you want to have enough so the choir is easily understood, but not so much that you turn off your listeners! 

It’s a bit like “terrace dynamics“:  even though that means to go from one dynamic level to another (piano to forte)  with no graduations of volume (no diminuendos or crescendos), this was often accomplished in the Baroque era by suddenly eliminating instruments to achieve a quiter sound until it was time to play more loudly again.

Let’s Take A Break!

Time now, I think, to take a break from all this talk of  correct unison singing, vowels, consonants, yadda, yadda, yadda…..come with me now to “Africa” and hear Perpetuum Jazzile perform, making music with  an astounding a capella rendition of rock band Toto’s song with an amazing duplication of a rain storm…this is nothing but pure enjoyment.  Please take the time to watch this video; if you’ve never seen it, I promise you’ll enjoy it.  If you’ve seen it before, I’m pretty sure you’ll want to see it again!

Music Education and Birdie Notation

Ha!  Take that, Twitter!

There was a commercial on TV not too long ago where a composer, having a bad time with his work at the piano, looked out the window and saw birds sitting on wires.  They were positioned just so;  their little birdie bodies looked like musical notation on a staff.   Remember it?

Well, here’s a little treat for you…a composer actually did it!  Click on this link:    Birdie Notation    to view this video and see what the composer came up with.

Well, Jarbas Agnelli is certainly not the first to try making music in that way, but it’s fun to see and hear someone’s efforts on an old music education technique.  Don’t pass up reading the comments…they’re a hoot!

I would love to hear from you about this….go on, give it a try!  It’s an excellent assignment to give your music appreciation class.

Michelle

Unison Singing in Music Education

 I cannot stress the importance of unison singing in music education!  Learning to sing as a single unit is the most crucial skill a music director can teach a choir.  I have heard many choir conductors say, “Now, make sure you really pronounce your words”, but exactly how to pronounce those words is not taught; likewise, I have also heard  “Make sure to put on your endings”.  Well, yes, that is important….but if it’s overdone, or if not enough attention is  paid to formation of dipthongs, we could be headed for a mess.

But let’s first discuss breathing and phrasing; just as there is no way you can teach your choir everything they need to know in a few sessions, neither can I impart the steps of good unison singing in one post.  Teaching your choir how to take a deep, quiet breath without letting all the air go in the first few words will have to wait; today you need to teach them when to breathe…..and by extension, when not to breathe.

Often we hear from our excellent instructors that the breath is everything in music production, no matter what the instrument. They will say that correct breathing, maintaining support throughout the phrase and learning to use the body correctly is the alpha and omega of learning to make music, and I couldn’t agree more.  But when we take the first step in choral singing, we first have to learn to sing, and breathe, in unison….

How to advertise yourself as a music educator

Several years ago, I grabbed a friend of mine, John Clark, to play piano for me while I sang at a another friend’s recording studio.  I was able, then, to give a CD of myself  to prospective brides.  In order to advertise myself online, I had to convert the songs on the CD to MP3 wav files.

For the uneducated among us (and I include myself in that category), here is how I did it:

I entered “how to convert CD into MP3” in the search bar.  This gave me a whole bunch of sites to choose from.  I went with

http://www.eusing.com/CDRipper/CDRipper.htm – you can download it for free.

After downloading , insert your CD into the CD/DVD player of your computer:
 
1) select desired track
2) click “extract” – it extracts and automatically encodes
3) click “folder” to see and hear your selection,
4) left click, chose “send to”, then select “MyDocuments” 

From there, I put the new wav file into “My Music” – or you can create a folder and title it yourself
 
…and then I upload to whatever site I’m working on (instead of  an”upload” button, some websites may have buttons that say “browse”)

It was far easier than I thought.  If you don’t have a CD of your own, I strongly suggest you have one made; it’s a very handy tool for internet usage, and going to a studio and recording yourself is quite an experience!