Making Music and Having a Blast! is full of chapters for studio reading. Save time re-inventing the wheel and talking during the lesson by giving your students Blast! home reading assignments!
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Who is a chicken's favorite composer?
Bach! Bach!
June 2013
Greetings!
There's so much more to teach than just working on literature, but it's difficult to fit
everything into the lesson and to remember what we've taught each student.
My solution is to share weekly or monthly activities or topics as a studio. Having "National Scales Month" or "Bach Until You Drop" forces me to focus on important information and to become more organized so no one misses out. Even reading an article about stage fright or sharing a favorite piece is worthy of a studio project.
A clipboard reminds me of the topic of the week and to record which students have completed their at-home assignments.
I'd like to share with you a few of my recent studio activities.
Make Music History Come Alive
Composer of the month:
A 10-minute
"Bach lecture" introduces the composer. To make Bach seem like a real person instead of just a "dead white guy composer," I include
interesting facts such as how many children he had, the story of when he walked 200 miles to hear Buxtehude and then refused to marry his daughter, and his awful eye surgery.
Students read a few pages in Making Music and Having a Blast! music history section and tell me what they've read.
Students each write a one-page Bach bio and read it to me at the lesson.
They tell me which pieces they've heard on YouTube so we can talk about them. (Actually so I can rave about them and get them excited too.)
We sight read "favorite hits"
Happy Birthday Mozart!
Composer birthdays:
Some composers get
cupcakes on their birthday week, and we sing, "Happy Birthday, Dear Wolfie." I can tell you that love for a composer grows when you are eating cake.
Composer action figures:
Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and a statue of Goofy (who represents a contemporary composer of my choice) grace the top of my piano. Students can arrange their bendable arms and legs in many awkward positions, but they must
keep them in the correct order!
National Scale Month
Add the element of SURPRISE by pulling out scales from the
SCALE PAIL.
We usually start each lesson with scales, but I sometimes devote more time hearing them at the lesson.
To make it a class project, keep track of each student's progress and post it.
Be inventive and play scales in different rhythms or ask students to improvise in a particular scale.
More Weekly Topics to Share with Your Entire Studio
Before playing a note, can you tell who is going to sound better?
Posture and position
Over-exaggerating bad posture can be both shocking and hysterical. Demonstrate how bad posture not only effects playing but looks downright awful.
No matter what, don't forget to bow.
Stage presence
First impressions are made in the first 30 seconds of meeting someone or seeing them on stage. Practice walking on stage, announcing, bowing and smiling.
Sight reading
Play through to the end of a book the student has "outgrown," play duets, play easy solos, or use books dedicated to sight-reading. The ability to sight read is one of the biggest predictors of students being able to play after they graduate from lessons, and it's fun!
Flute Flash
After hearing my students at a recent contest, I realized the thing that makes or breaks a performance -- and that is most out of my control! -- is intonation.
Playing Ensembles is the most fun studio activity!
If you've found this newsletter fun and helpful, please forward it to your friends, teachers and colleagues. I'd love to hear your comments and any ideas or suggestions you might have about content; we can always learn from each other. I promise more tips, tricks and stories in the coming months.
A clipboard
After hearing my students at a recent contest, I realized the thing that makes or breaks a performance -- and that is most out of my control! -- is intonation. 