Saturday Piano Lessons...when I was a child, I sure didn't like my Saturday lessons as much as Nathan enjoyed his!

Merci de Nathan!   (Nathan speaks French!)

Au Revoir!
Today was my last "teaching" Saturday...ever...well for at least a year or two!   

I predominantly teach classes at my studio and over the past few years, my private teaching schedule has grown...and grown...and grown...and taken over my evenings and much of Saturday and any little pockets of time in between classes.   

I decided that next year I wanted to carve out a little more family time in my schedule so I would let go of my evening and weekend teaching schedule and most of my private students.

 

Nathan playing and singing his good-bye song for me. 

 

Nathan's good-bye was one of the sweetest good-byes, especially considering he didn't even like music before he started his lessons with me in January.

Mom wanders in to Musicalia...
I met his mom just before Christmas when she wandered into my studio looking for donations for her youngest daughter's preschool fund raising auction.  I donated private lesson time.

She told me that both her husband and herself had taken lessons as children and didn't want that experience for their children.  After speaking with me and my philosophy about music for children she decided to bid on my gift of lessons.  She won the bid and after Christmas we started lessons with her 7 year old son, Nathan.

Nathan's love of music has a chance to sprout...
It's been pretty spectacular to watch this little boy's lights literally turn on as he sits at the piano.  He has realized how easy it is to make music and have fun doing it.  

He told his mom to tell me that he never liked music at school before he met Susan, but now that I've been his teacher, he is even is beginning to like music at school. 

He figured it out on his own!
What is so amazing to me is we only had time to experiment with writing chords for the left hand. (I call them "bridges" and "buddy notes".)  His lessons were only 15 minutes long so we really had little time to write much!

He did learn to read some treble clef, but we didn't have time to try writing melodies at all. 

His mom drew a 5-line staff for him and he figured out how to write this little tune and play it all on his own.  Honestly, I hope a traditional music teacher doesn't get hold of him!    He has so much creativity and natural talent that traditional methods might curb his enthusiasm. 

Thank YOU, Nathan!  It's been a blessing to be your music teacher:) 

Talk about having a Piano in the Family! Meet the 5 Browns...a Five-Piano Family!

The 5 Browns are all siblings and they all tour and perform together.  They are the first family in history to have 5 children attending Julliard School of Music at the same time.

I recently read that their mother sat at the piano bench with each child as he or she practiced for an hour a day.  That's 5 hours a day just spent sitting at the piano with each child!

I think the practising paid off.

Apparently their monthly tuition for piano lessons was more than the mortgage on their home.

Imagine trying to find music for a 10-hand piano quintet...probably made to order.

KinderBach- Susan's Review of a Preschool Piano Program

Have you ever heard of KinderBach?

It's a piano program for preschoolers that is available online at KinderBach .com and can also be shipped as a package to your home.  There are packages for use at home and also for preschools and daycares.  I watched the videos available to families but do not know what is offered for preschool centers.  If you run a preschool, maybe you'd like to check it out.

Meet Dodi the Donkey from KinderBach!

Now, I haven't used this program with children but I am always interested in programs that use modern technology and animation.  I can not see myself using any of them for many reasons...most of them being lack of "musicality" and "healing" reasons.  (I think of healing as "wholing" or "making whole" or "whole learning".) 

Except...

I think there are many families that could make good use of these kind of home-study programs with their children. With a "daypass" from KinderBach you can watch and listen to almost every lesson available for one day.  I did this.  (yes...I probably could have found things more interesting to do on a Sunday...but this is what I ended up doing...and it was fun:).

Here's my initial take on the home program:
Pros

1. I think many children (preschool and primary ages) would love this kind of fun, animated, colorful program.
2. Inexpensive due to the fact you revisit and rewatch any lesson at any time and several children can watch the lessons simultaneously.
3. Inexpensive due to the fact parents can provide a small electronic keyboard or even a paper keyboard to start .
4. Lovable characters that help to teach every concept from beat, rhythm, melody, notation
5. Some catchy tunes/arrangements.
6. PDF downloads for children to color that support concepts taught on the online video.
7. It's a discovery program not a performance program which keeps learning fun and playful.
8. Excellent alternative for parents who are housebound (for whatever reason) with small children and can not get out the door to a real teacher.
9. The child does need an adult to assist with organization of some materials.  I think this is a good thing.  For some parents this will be a con!
10. I enjoyed Karri Gregor.  She is the creator and voice behind the lessons.  I like her pink crocs!
11. Lessons progress very slowly and for most young children this will be great.
12. Excellent method to convey extremely basic music theory concepts regardless of what instrument you are learning.
13. Offers a more valuable way to spend time in front of screen than watching most children's TV shows. 
14. Even adults could learn about music with this program. My husband was riveted by Dodi the Donkey and his home in between the 2 black keys.  :)
15. There is an introduction to composing through "Bach Talk".
16. I LOVE finger football...the coaches help children learn about fingering...it made me laugh!

Cons

1. My personal dislike of the kind of electronic music in this program is that there is nothing really "healing" about it.  My husband asked to turn off the sound after a few minutes...so I used headphones...but even I turned off the sound and ended up reading some of the lessons.  
2. Acoustic learning offers something that is just unavailable with modern technology at this point.  So this program doesn't fall into my sense of acoustic instrumental learning.
3. To complete this program you have to sit with a computer screen or TV.  The physical vibrational and emotional effects of sitting with a real person (as opposed to a computer or TV) are healing (even if you don't think you need any "healing") and unless an attentive (key word here is attentive) parent sits with the child during the whole program you don't get this healing with the program.
4. To complete this program you have to sit with a computer or TV.  The physical vibrational effects of touching and hearing an acoustic keyboard are healing (even if you don't think you need any "healing")  and you don't get this with the screen program KinderBach.
5. The immediate feedback a child receives from a real teacher just can not be offered by a computerized program
6. No real experience improvising or playing in real time with a real musician.  All those non-verbal cues and emotional learnings are most effectively learned from a real person and are some of the most valuable skills a musician can possess.  Children improvise right from their very first lesson if I'm involved.
7. Learning to play piano this way is primarily a "visual" learning and not so much "auditory" learning.

Would I recommend this to parents?

More Pros than Cons according to my review EXCEPT for me the cons carry more weight than the pros.  I will definitely tell the parents at my studio (even parents of my piano students) about this program.  It may be interesting to some of them and a nice resource to have in the house...rather than watching TV.  I  know it's not going to be that attractive to them though.  They are choosing to make the effort to leave their homes so their children have the opportunity to spend.time.with.me. 

If you are a teacher...I recommend letting as many people as possible know about these programs because it gives so much more value to the developmental-people work you are doing and that you are excellent at doing!

Learning technique and theory are valuable and really can be conveyed by machines and computer programs but the intangible learnings seem to be absorbed by hanging out with real people.  

Ever wonder why piano is always offered in these kinds of computerized children's programs and not violin? harp? cello? ocarina?   

I think it's because piano can be taught visually and music theory is easier to teach with visuals.  Often the most musical musicians don't play piano...they've had to learn music with their ears and hands not as much with eyes.  

Just interesting to me!

Moms have better imaginations than you think

I played piano for years beginning at about 3 years of age and as a teenager was still not a fluent player.  

Somehow between the ages of 12 and 18 my skill level and performance ability just blossomed.  My mother was incredibly insistent that I would learn and play music so I could have that as a life skill.  She just did not give up...and believe me...I fought her about this.  

She even had our piano teacher move into our house!  So I lived with my piano teacher for many years.  While this might seem remarkable to some of you...I am amazed we all lived with my mother!

I had many musical friends and I seemed to be less able than all of them at that time.  Most of those friends didn't play piano though.

They played easier instruments (well...to me they seem easier) like violin or viola or a wind instrument or a brass instrument.

With those instruments you read one melodic line of music and that's it. That's it!

With piano, you read two different clefs simultaneously.  So your brain has to remember two systems of dots and then each hand plays a different system (different notes) at once.  It's a harmonic and contrapuntal instrument.   So much more going on with piano.

More dots on the page to decipher and translate into something musical.   Not as challenging as the organ though!  Look at all the keyboards the organist has to play and think about...the organist even plays tunes with foot pedals.

In the end, my continued efforts took me far beyond what my friends or I might have imagined!

My mom had a better imagination than all of us in our short-sighted teen years! 

Be Quiet!

"Be Quiet!"
"Not that again!"
"Couldn't you have picked the flute?"

If you heard that in your home you would not be inclined to practise piano much.   We never heard that in our home from an adult.  Siblings...yes.  Parents...no.

The sound of music being practised is a little like having kids running around your house all the time.  You have to be okay with noise and mistakes and a cacophony of sorts.  Of course, some kids are quiet practisers.  They focus and play their tunes and it's enjoyable to listen to.  It brings a smile to your face.

After many years of quiet, focussed work a budding pianist is likely to play something with more intensity to it.  Maybe a little Beethoven.

Beethoven: Sonata No. 8, Op. 13 in C minor. (1st Movement) Performed by legendary pianist, Claudio Arrau.

I remember as a teenager playing this Beethoven piano sonata and loving it.  My sister would hear the opening chords and groan, "No...not that one again."  She would get as far away from the music as she could get.  She didn't like the angry, full sound of it all.  

Lucky for me my mother knew I needed the emotional release available through the playing of music of this intensity. 

How many lessons does it take to become a pianist?

That's kind of like that philosophical question..."If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

Is becoming a pianist a matter of lessons or a matter of attitude and effort?  Or just taking the action to press the keys?

Do you need the label to play?

Can you just play?  For fun?  For sound?  For release?  For yourself?

Are you a pianist if you play for yourself?

Maybe it's a matter of self-confidence and if you think you are then you are.

Maybe.