Piano Olympics Spotlight: Practice Streaks

Five of the tasks in the Practicing category of the Piano Olympics include practice streaks. Students have the opportunity to earn points for three, seven, 14, 20, and 30 day streaks, which they’ll track in their Piano Olympics booklets. Simply fill in one of the bubbles with the date of each consecutive day that you practice.

What counts toward a streak:

Any day that you practice smartly to achieve a goal or improve something that you’re studying. There are no strict practice minute guidelines, and you don’t have to practice for exactly the same amount each day to keep a streak. The goal is to build a sustainable, realistic habit of daily improvement.

What breaks a streak:

Forgetting to or deciding not to practice.

What doesn’t break a streak:

• If you’re out of town or on vacation and can’t practice.

• If you’re very sick and unable to practice.

• If you don’t have time to practice on a special holiday like Yom Kippur, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.

• If a practice session doesn’t go as well as you wanted (use that as a learning experience!).

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Further Reading on Practicing

Perfect Practice Part 1

Perfect Practice Part 2

Perfect Practice Part 3

Creative Ways to “Do it again!”

This year's studio incentive is…

The pIANO OLYMPICS

When I was a fresh, new teacher, I told myself: “I will never do fancy and complicated rewards systems! It’s too much work and I don’t like rewards!” Anyways, here’s my fancy rewards system for the 2024-2025 year!

To reward or not to reward?

The New Yorker cartoon by Amy Hwang.

There’s a lot of debate concerning rewards in the education world. Generally, extrinsic rewards (i.e. if you do this, you’ll get that) are not best practice because they can hinder, creativity, long-term thinking, and overall performance. They are also unsustainable over time, and can actually become addictive (Pink 57). Ideally, students are intrinsically motivated—they do things for the inherent enjoyment, satisfaction and interest that an activity sustains.

In a perfect world, putting in the work required to become an accomplished pianist would always be enjoyable and interesting. Drive would come effortlessly, without ebb, for everyone. Beautiful music alone would be enough to motivate us into countless hours of practice and unwavering dedication! But this is simply not reality. Not even for me, the teacher!

The truth is that learning is not always fun, nor can it be fun every single moment of every lesson or practice session. Sometimes learning is uncomfortable. Sometimes keeping up with goal-directed habits is hard, especially when you’re a kid. Sometimes it’s difficult to keep the end goal in sight. This is where I believe the judicious use of rewards to be appropriate. Giving extrinsic rewards for the not-always-as-fun tasks pushes students nearer to the intrinsic reward of musicking: experiencing the confidence, exhilaration, and absolute joy that comes with achieving difficult things. Those positive feelings motivate students to continue putting in the work, creating a cycle of success that ultimately becomes the reward.

With all this in mind, my goal is to create rewards systems that:

• Encourage depth of knowledge and mastery, which allow students to experience the intrinsic joy of making music.

  • In this vein, my year-long studio incentives always use a spiral approach.

• Can be individualized to each student’s strengths and pace while still being a clear and fair system.

• Foster confidence and allow students to see and reflect on their progress.

• Are a realistic blend of long-term and short-term challenges.

• Don’t provide instant gratification.

And thus is born the studio incentive I construct each year. This year, it’s the Piano Olympics!

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Five Pillars of Musicianship

This year’s incentive focuses on growing five fundamental skills students need to be good pianists. Not every skill develops at the same time or at the same rate, but this system is structured in a way that follows the trajectory most elementary-level students (who are practicing well!) will make over the course of an academic year. It also highlights how all the pillars are interdependent. For example, we can’t improve our technique if we don’t practice it. There is a simplified version for very young students, but the five pillars remain a common thread.

1. Practicing

Practicing is a skill in itself, which can be honed over time. The amount of time we practice, how much time we allow to elapse between practice sessions, and how we structure our practice all impact how quickly we improve.

2. Aural Skills

Aural skills involve training our ears to not just to hear, but to understand music, develop our inner hearing, make musical predictions, and describe what we hear using musical terms.

3. Technique

Good playing technique equips us with the toolbox of pianistic touches and gestures we need to make our music sound the way we want it to (or the way a specific musical style deems appropriate).

4. Reading/Music Theory

Reading music is a long, careful, and systematic process. Reading music efficiently requires making a connection between the notated music, how the music will sound and—for pianists, at least—how playing the music will feel under the fingers. Music theory, simply put, includes the building blocks, structures, and rules that govern music.

5. Creativity

Creativity is a cornerstone of my entire teaching philosophy and purpose. Without it, life is just boring. Creativity is a thought process, not something we are born with or without. Students can learn creativity, and it’s an expectation in my studio that students will consciously grow their creative skills just as they would music reading or music theory skills.

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How it works

• Each pillar contains three tiers of tasks worth one, two, and three points, respectively. Most tasks build upon each other in length and difficulty. Students can track their progress by filling in bubbles on Task Tracker pages.

• Students are grouped into three teams. At the end of the school year, every member of each team will win prizes based on how their team ranked. Any student, regardless of team, who earned a Gold ranking will also get to attend a special party at the end of the year.

• Any student who has reached the Bronze ranking by the end of the fall term will earn a special treat at the Winter Recital.

• The Junior League, comprised of the very youngest students, has their own points and rewards systems so that older, more experienced students do not have an unfair advantage.

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Pink, D. H. (2011). Drive. Canongate Books.

A Long, Slow Look: Music History Edition (Part 2)

A Long, Slow Look

Using Slow Looking Techniques to Discover Music History

As a trained musician, I always wonder what it would be like to go back in time—before taking years of aural skills courses, before knowing music terminology or the elements of music, before understanding music history in context—and hear a piece of music for the first time. What would it be like to hear Brahms’ Fourth Symphony anew, or hear the sound of a harpsichord for the first time? What would I think or feel? What would my descriptions of the music be? I don’t have a time machine, but I have a diverse group of young students with varied musical backgrounds, so that’s the next best thing.

I think the ideal way for students to describe things is in their own words first, so we began with taking a slow look at art, then describing it with as much detail as possible. Then, we transitioned to listening to music with the same level of detail, only using students’ own words. Sometimes students used music terminology they knew, but they often didn’t. This is a pattern consistent with research on how children describe music! More on that later.

Discovering Baroque and Classical Music

As established in Part 1, I presented the eras of music history in pairs, focusing on how they were alike and different rather that who wrote the music or when it was written. Those are things we’ll spiral back to in the future when students have more context for composers, dates, etc. Instead, I mentioned which era came first chronologically and about how close or far from 1776 (a date lots of kids know from American history) the music was written.

We focused on Baroque and Classical music first. I chose music that was representative of the era and had elements that I thought would be easier to describe. We made predictions about how the music from the same eras as the artwork we viewed could sound based on the art pendulum we made (see below). What does “ornate” sound like? What does a “main character” sound like? What words and phrases—musical or not—could go on our music pendulum?

Baroque and Classical Art Pendulum

We listened first in silence, without commenting, but I gave students pencils and paper to write down words and phrases to help them remember their thoughts. When we listened again, students said their ideas aloud, rapid-fire, as I wrote them down on sticky notes.

For discovery’s sake (i.e. to avoid simply telling), I put the sticky notes on a giant pad of paper with some musical elements on it under the category where I thought it fit best, with no mention of formal definitions of each element yet. We took notes on one era at a time, eventually comparing them. This is what students had to say about a few of the pieces.

Baroque (J.S. Bach and Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre)

• Free, flowing, continuous (Jacquet de La Guerre: Les pièces de clavecin: I. Prelude)

• Ideas blend together (Jacquet de La Guerre: Les pièces de clavecin: I. Prelude)

• Driven, steady, energetic, bouncy, repetitive (J.S. Bach: Brandenberg Concerto No. 3)

• Complex, lots of voices, like a conversation, like an argument, interrupting (Bach: Little Fugue in G Minor BWV 578)

• Frilly, fancy, intricate, busy

• The vibe/mood/atmosphere stays the same throughout each piece, but moods change between pieces (Jacquet de La Guerre: Suite No. 1)

• Sometimes it’s hard to sing the melody, know where the melody is, or remember the melody

Classical (Mozart K. 332, first and second movements)

• There’s a main voice with a supporting voice, a high voice and a low voice, a loud voice and a soft voice, etc.

• Contrast, more louds and softs, lots of different moods

• It’s easy to tell where ideas start and end and if the idea is short or long

• Simple, light, clean, bright

• It’s easy to sing, sounds like a song

• Melodies have a clear shape like “hills and valleys”

It was fascinating to see students describe things like the doctrine of affections (one mood), phrase/period structure (clarity of short and long ideas), continuo (steady, driven), and imitation using their own words and observations. Our pendulum for Baroque and Classical music wound up looking something like this:

Baroque and Classical Music Pendulum

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I have more thoughts about how these activities went, what I liked and didn’t like, and how we’ll continue weaving this special summer topic into private and group lessons in the fall…but that’s a blog post for another day!

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Examples of Pieces We Heard

Seeing the Forest and Trees of Music Reading

Learning to see the forest and the trees

Two reading skills and how to use them.

We’re in our ✨music-reading era✨

So many students are making their transition into Piano Safari Level 2 this fall! This is such an exciting time. Students will start learning their first unabridged classical music, expand their music reading skills, and dive into even more interesting harmonies, textures, and forms through longer, more substantial repertoire. I can hardly wait!

Since we’re on the cusp of a music-reading boom, it’s the perfect time to talk about exactly how students will expand their reading skills. But first, I have to give my speech about using mnemonic devices to name notes and why I don’t consider it best practice.

The limitations of Traditional Mnemonic Devices

Mnemonics like Every Good Boy Does Fine or All Cows Eat Grass (see below) are a quick way to identify the letter name of a note, but they don’t allow us to read music—they allow us to decode music. Reading and decoding are very different processes.

“It’s a crummy commercial!” Source

It’s not unlike the scene in A Christmas Story when Ralphie uses the decoder pin to reveal Little Orphan Annie’s Secret Message. Decoding required so many steps! Ralphie had to remember where to set the pin and write down the string of numbers to be translated, then translate each number to a letter (only to find the secret message was just an Ovaltine ad! Ha!).

Similarly, trying to use a mnemonic device to decode music requires too many steps. We have to remember the mnemonic device itself, which clef it belongs to, which line or space it should start on, then we have to count up the staff, name the letter of that line or space (which has the secondary requirement of being able to spell the words of the mnemonic!), locate it on the keys…and then we have to start this process over again for the next note, overlooking the relationship between pitches entirely. For such a detailed and complicated way to address notes on the staff, traditional mnemonics lack a lot:

• they don’t address ledger notes (very high or low notes that fall above or below the staff) or give us a framework for reading them

• they treat the treble and bass clefs as a dichotomy, as though they’ll never have to be read together simultaneously

• they assume that knowing just the letter name of a note is enough

• they don’t really give us a way to associate sound with what we see

Another flaw of mnemonics is that they can make it appear to students and parents as though reading music has been “mastered” sooner than it has, when in reality becoming a fluent music reader is a years-long process. Too often, I see claims of students “reading music!” after only one or two piano lessons, and while that might not be outright false, it is a bit disingenuous. Like most good things, learning to read music well takes time. And it’s worth it to take the time to lay a solid foundation that will empower students to be capable, independent music readers.

As a child, I learned to name notes using mnemonic devices, and piano parents who know how to read music probably learned this way, too. Just know that I am being forthright about the limitations of outdated methods with absolutely no judgement or condescension toward whatever way piano parents learned to read music.

The Forest and the Trees

So, I’ve admitted that I don’t like mnemonic devices. But that doesn’t mean that individual note recognition doesn’t have its place! My students and I have nicknamed individual note identification as “Tree” Reading and the big-picture, intervallic approach to reading as “Forest” Reading. It’s stuck so well that there’s even a poster of this concept on the studio bulletin board. We use Tree Reading to figure out where to start, and Forest Reading to travel from that point.

Tree Reading is important because it prevents us from having to go back to the beginning of a piece each time we need to start fresh during practice. We can simply choose a starting point and go! This is really helpful in longer pieces. Tree Reading also helps us place written music in the correct octave on the keyboard. We use Tree Reading only a small portion of the time.

To this point, students have been seeing landmark notes (easily memorizable notes on the staff) as the starting note of most reading pieces. As students advance, our reading pieces may start on unfamiliar notes instead of landmark notes—this is where Tree Reading will come in handy!

Forest Reading is important because it allows us to see and think of music in phrases, or musical sentences. We don’t read individual letters when we read a book; we read words that make up sentences. Reading music is similar. We look at a broader level for the distance between notes (intervals), the contour, or shape, of the phrase, any patterns that we see or feel under our fingers. We use Forest Reading most of the time.

As students expand their understanding of larger intervals, Forest Reading will help them to read intervals quickly, just as they read whole words and sentences in books.

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activities to boost “forest” reading

• Always do Pencil Work first. Trace the contour of the melody, label the different intervals, mark repeated notes. Take the time to spot any patterns and soak in the music notation before making any sounds.

  • Students are already accustomed to finding patterns anywhere and everywhere because we’ve spent a sufficient amount of time learning music by rote!

• Create a story to follow the shape of the melody. Maybe you hike up or down a mountain. Maybe you’re playing leap frog and skip over one key to get to the next. How far does the melody travel from the “home” note? What’s happening in the story when notes or patterns repeat?

• Transpose a piece to as many different keys as you can.

• Sight-read in alto or tenor clef (this one is for during our lessons with teacher guidance).

• Practice interval flashcards (sorted by interval in the Studio Resources Google Drive folder) by simply sorting the interval into like piles.

  • Practice a thinking routine as you do this. For example, “I know this is an interval of a fifth because it moves from line to line, skipping one line in between” or “I know this is an interval of a third because it moves from one line to the very next line.” Don’t worry about note names yet.

Preparatory Activities for “Tree” Reading

I’ve been sneakily preparing students for Tree Reading for some time now! This spring, many of us discovered that there was a Skips Alphabet by decorating the piano keyboard with letter tiles and removing every other one. The letters F, A, C, E, G, B, and D remain! There’s a word hidden in that pattern: “face.” The other letters don’t spell anything—we simply call them GBD (gi-buh-dee), which is silly enough to remember on its own. Students like to see how quickly they can say “GBD!” The Skips Alphabet can be spelled “FACEGBD” or “GBDFACE” and it will help us immensely with Tree Reading. To help prepare:

• Get to know the Steps Alphabet (ABCDEFG) extremely well, both forwards and backwards (most students are at this point already).

• Get to know the skips alphabet in both its iterations (FACEGBD or GBDFACE) extremely well, both forwards and backwards.

  • Try using the Spin the Wheel app that we use in lessons to choose a random letter, then recite the skips alphabet up or down from that letter. Try playing the skips alphabet up or down from that letter on the keys, too.

When it’s time to dive deeper into Tree Reading, I’ll create a guide with more in-depth activities to do.

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If you’d like to read more about the approaches I take to teaching students to read music, the Mini Essays written by the authors of the Piano Safari method are wonderful!

A Long, Slow Look: Music History Edition

A Long, Slow Look

Using Slow Looking Techniques to Discover Music History

Because the summer schedule includes two group lessons each week, it’s my favorite time to take a deep dive into concepts that we don’t always have time to cover extensively in private lessons. This summer, we built upon slow looking strategies that students have already been using and listened to music from different historical eras to discover the broad characteristics of each one.

A new way to think about music history

Does memorizing dates, composers, and representative works from different eras really build functional knowledge of music history? That was my guiding question for the summer. My least favorite way to teach is by simply telling—I would much rather give my students the chance to make discoveries through carefully-designed activities that allow them to experience concepts before diving into the nitty-gritty.

Some considerations for Teaching Music History to Children

• Musical eras did not exist in a bubble or start and end as abruptly as timelines make them appear. Beethoven is the quintessential example of this, having bridged the Classical and Romantic periods.

• I am not so concerned with knowing dates yet. It is difficult for an 8 year-old to understand how long ago 300 years was, which is completely age-appropriate. We use 1776 as a reference point because my students know that year from…wait for it…Hamilton! We refer to eras as being either before the U.S. became a country or after the U.S. became a country.

• We know what something is by what it’s not. Teaching musical eras independently of each other doesn’t make sense to me; there’s too little room for comparison and contrast.

With all this in mind, I wanted to create an immersive group lesson experience that could be taught non-chronologically, used the elements of music as a springboard for discovery and discussion, had virtually no lecturing (woohoo!) and enabled students to make their own predictions. I actually wanted the class to teach itself.

Start with Art

Music, art, and architecture are embodiments of what was valued and seen as beautiful at the time they were created. As such, we can look at them conjunctly to learn about an era. We started all of our discussions by slow looking at artwork and architecture from two adjacent historical eras—it’s easier for kids to describe the concrete things they see in art first. We used the Ten Times Two strategy:

Look at the image quietly for at least 30 seconds. Let your eyes wander.

1. List 10 words or phrases about any aspect of the picture.

2. Repeat steps 1 and 2: Look at the image again and try to add 10 more words or phrases to your list.

The images below show Baroque and Classical art. Take a slow look at them, then keep scrolling to see what my students had to say.

Giovanni Battista Gaulli, Triumph of the Name of Jesus, ceiling fresco, Church of the Gesù, Rome, 1661–1679

Jacques-Louis David, Oath of the Horatii, oil on canvas, 1784-1785

Some of the words and phrases that my 7-13 year old students came up with include:

Baroque

• a lot going on, busy, etc.

• you can find lots of details in one little part

• many students noted that things were nested “there’s a square, with a circle in it, with a flower in it, with carvings on it, etc.”

• “it must have taken a long time to make”

• extravagant, extreme

• detailed, frilly, fancy

• “everything is gold”

• things look “heavy”

• and, of course, everyone asked how they got paintings onto the ceiling! :)

Classical

• fewer things, simpler, “the room is simple and clean”

• balanced

• bright

• more contrast, “the people stand out more”

• not everything is equally important; many students thought the man in the middle was the most important character

• a few students noticed the symmetry of the arches in the background or recognized the style of columns (doric)

• many students imagined what could be in the background behind the arches

• students also wondered why the women on the right looked sad, tired, etc.

We even looked at keyboard instruments from the Baroque and Classical eras to see how the different aesthetics were realized.

A Baroque harpsichord. Image source

Reproduction of a pianoforte; original was built ca. 1800 Image source

The Pendulum of Style

Students started noticing on their own that that there were a lot of “opposites” between the artworks, which is exactly what I wanted them to notice! That’s not to say that there are not similarities between Baroque and Classical styles—we’re just thinking about the very big picture. This is when we grouped their words and phrases on either side of a pendulum. Each era is a reaction to the one before it, so a pendulum that swings between extremes is fitting.

From here, we started learning how all these words and phrases translate to the elements of music…but that’s a blog post for another day!

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Project Zero is a goldmine of thinking routines, slow looking strategies, question starts—all the tools you need to nurture a culture of curiosity, inquiry, open discussion, and discovery.

The concept of Slow Looking is explored in Dr. Shari Tishman’s book, which you can read more about here.

Music Memorization Strategies

Making sense of memorization

Although memorization is often thought of as the final step in preparing a piece for performance, the process of learning new material requires memorization to some degree. Our brains immediately begin memorizing the motions we use to play a piece, whether or not we realize it!

Accurate Repetition

A solid foundation for memorization is built when we take our time in the initial stages of learning a new piece. The goal is to make as many correct sounds and movements as possible, even when a piece is unfamiliar to us. This is best done by working deliberately in small sections. Accurate repetition aids memorization even when we’re not in the “memorization phase” of learning a piece.

Students each have a die in their piano binder pouch, which they can roll to determine how many times to repeat sections of their music. Does every repetition have to be absolutely perfect? Nope! Instead of hyper-focusing on perfection, I ask students to focus more on how repetitions begin to feel easier—not perfect—as they move forward.

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Using the senses

The more senses we can involve in the memorization process, the more secure our memorization becomes. I like to focus on sound, sight, movement, and touch. Before applying memory strategies that focus on a given sense, it’s important to know how to “tap in” to that sense in a clear, mindful way. Of course, it’s really hard to completely isolate just one sense—there is definitely some overlap of senses in the strategies below.

How it sounds

To tap into your sense of sound, go outside and listen closely to the ambient noise. How many sounds can you hear? Birds chirping? Traffic? The wind in the trees? List as many as you possibly can! This is how detailed we want to be when making music. Then, try these tasks with the music to be memorized:

• Sing the melody while playing the accompaniment.

• Sing the accompaniment while playing the melody.

• Play small sections with your eyes closed, focusing on what you hear.

• Sing either the melody or accompaniment alone, away from the piano.

How it looks

To tap into your sense of sight, take a look at your music. Look for patterns, changes in texture, parts that are similar, and parts that are contrasting. In what ways does the music look the way it sounds? Does it have a shape or contour? After practicing seeing the music with increased attention to detail:

• Imagine small sections of the score with your eyes closed. Can you paint a picture of it in your head? The picture doesn’t have to be note-for-note accurate!

• Try to play a small section without the score, using your mind’s image. Notice what feels easy and what feels hard.

• Put the music back in front of you and play the same section with the score. What feels easier now that the music is in view? Take note of that—does it give you any clues about what to practice more?

In addition to focusing on the written music, you can look at your hands while playing from memory. Some things you might notice include:

• Patterns of black keys and white keys.

• Shapes of chords and intervals.

• How close or far apart the hands are in a given section.

This is a neat video shot from lots of different angles. Notice how the performer’s gaze often falls to his hands!

How it feels (Movement and touch)

To tap into your sense of touch, take a deep breath through your nose and feel the cool air on the back of your throat during the inhale. Put your feet flat on the floor and feel the ground under them. At the piano:

• Play very slowly and feel each key under your finger. How does the distance between intervals feel? How does the shape of chords or triads feel?

• Feel the pattern of black and white keys under your fingers.

• Notice how quickly or slowly your fingers sink to the bottom of the key and how they relax after the sound is made.

• Are there any moments that you lean from the hips to reach very high or very low keys?

• In what shape does the forearm move when traveling around the keyboard?

Off-the-bench practice

Not all practice has to happen at the instrument! Mental practice is a powerful memorization tool that can be used anywhere. A few mental practice strategies include:

• Pretend-playing your piece on a tabletop.

• Pretend-playing your piece in your mind, imagining all the movements involved.

• Looking at your music away from the piano, imagining all the sounds involved.

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These are just a handful of memorization strategies focusing on using the senses—there are lots of other ways to approach memorization to explore!

Other resources

Preparing for a Recital

Perfect Practice Part 3: Interleaved Practice (interleaved practice lends itself well to memorization!)

Assignment Sheet Overhaul!

New Year, New Assignment Sheets!

From now on, you’ll see two new categories on our weekly assignment sheets: Replay and Remix.

Replay

Every week or so, students will choose a “Replay” piece to review. They may choose any piece they’ve played in the past—all lengths and difficulty levels are possibilities. For example, a student working from Book 3 in their method could choose a favorite piece from Book 1 and replay it, applying the skills and knowledge they have now that they didn’t have before. A HUGE thank you to fellow piano teacher Christina Whitlock for sharing her concept of a Replay Week, which inspired this new weekly assignment category—her podcast can be found here.

REMIX

Occasionally, students will have a “Remix” assignment that goes beyond review by playing the an in-progress or previously-mastered piece in a new, creative way. Possibilities include:

• Transposing the piece to another key.

• Playing a major-key piece in its relative minor key.

• Playing all the articulations or dynamics oppositely from what is written.

• Playing the piece in a different meter. A current student favorite is going all the way back to Charlie Chipmunk (the first piece in Piano Safari Book 1) and playing it in 3/4, 5/4, 6/8, and even 7/8 time.

• Composing a new section of the piece, transforming it to ABA form. For example, the original piece could serve as the A sections, and the student would compose a short, contrasting B section.

• Activities from the “Do it Again!” menu are also great for remixing pieces.

Reeeeeeemix! Source

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Other Additions

Since Google Drive has become such a huge part of tracking assignments, student progress, and practice reminders, the last addition to the weekly assignment is a Google Drive column. It will contain a checkmark if an assignment has online resources to use at home. Simple as that! Here’s to a new year and a more streamlined way to track assignments!

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Making Continuous Fluid Motion Part of At-Home Practice

rhythm:

Latin rhythmus, from Greek rhythmós; “to flow”

What is continuous fluid motion?

Continuous fluid motion involves moving the body in a smooth, uninterrupted way. The concept is rooted in dance and movement education, and music educator and researcher Edwin Gordon coined the phrase “continuous fluid motion” to help introduce the activity to the music-teaching realm. Continuous fluid motion (CFM) is an important activity for young musicians because it prepares them to move rhythmically (i.e. to a beat). It precedes formal rhythmic training, which is why my youngest beginners often go home with unconventional piano lesson assignments like “pretend to stir soup!” or “pretend to push something heavy across the room!”

Why incorporate continuous fluid motion?

• Develops body awareness.

• Helps children explore balance and directionality.

• Is a basis for syncing the breath with movement, musical thinking, and singing (Westervelt).

• Large purposeful movements prepare students for small purposeful movements.

• It’s fun! Continuous fluid motion is a great off-the-bench piano lesson activity.

Continuous fluid motion is fundamental in internalizing pulse, meter, and rhythm. Rhythm moves through time, and movement exploration helps students “measure the amount of time in and between beats” (Valerio). One of my favorite things about implementing CFM is that students who have experienced this kind of purposeful-yet-free movement grow into comfortable and natural improvisers!

Laban Movements

Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) was a movement educator, choreographer, and dance theorist. He developed a method for describing and categorizing movements, which includes four basic efforts, or elements: space (the direction we move), weight (how strong or gentle we move), time (how quickly we move), and flow (how much tension our body has while moving). By combining space, weight, and time at different points on their spectrums (shown below), we can create a multitude of different movements.

Examples of continuous fluid motion

These are just a few examples of CFM that can be done easily at home while listening to music, singing, or chanting.

• Pretend to push something heavy up a hill.

• Pretend to swim through water. What about swimming through mud? Through jello? Can you dive down deep? Can you splash at the surface of the water?

• Paint the room by flicking imaginary paint off your fingers. What if you painted the room with a different body part, like your nose? Can you imagine what you want the painting to look like, then create it with your movements?

• Stir an imaginary pot of soup. As you add ingredients, does it get harder to stir?

• Pick up an imaginary teacup, feather, brick, or other objects of varying weights.

• Move as though you’re an elephant, a cat, a hummingbird, a snake, a cheetah, a hippo, a sloth, etc.

  • Students in the Piano Safari method especially love moving like each of the animals represented in rhythmic patterns (Leo Lion, Tall Giraffe, Charlie Chipmunk, etc.) before imitating the patterns themselves.

• Pretend to be a flower growing.

• Pretend to be a tree swaying in the wind.

• Pretend to drive a car. Go fast, slow, or in-between. Is the road straight or curvy? Smooth or bumpy?

Once students get their feet wet with CFM activities, you’ll be amazed by the creativity they exercise and the intentionality they display when coming up with their own motions!

Sources:

Valerio, W. The gordon approach: Music learning theory. https://www.allianceamm.org/resources/gordon/

Westervelt, T. G. (2002). Beginning Continuous Fluid Motion in the Music Classroom. General Music Today, 15(3), 13-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/104837130201500305

Preparing for a Recital

9 practice strategies for a solid performance

The Winter Recital is quickly approaching! As students prepare to showcase their hard work, it’s wise to incorporate performance-specific strategies into everyday practice. Here’s a quick list of things to do (and not do!) in the weeks before a performance.

What to Do

Practice Slowly (Sloth Speed)

Accurate slow practice prevents us from practicing mistakes into our muscle memory. How slow is slow? I typically tell students to find a tempo that they think is slow—then make it even slower! Playing slowly and intentionally helps build restraint and mitigate the tendency to rush under pressure.

Quiz the Beginning

Several times a day, walk to the piano as if it were the day of the recital. Take your time, ensuring that the bench is at a comfortable height and distance from the keyboard. Find the starting position of your piece, play the first few measures, then stop. This practice strategy only takes a few moments, and playing the beginning of the piece at varying times throughout the day will cement the process of beginning a performance into the long-term memory.

Work Backwards

It’s also helpful to emphasize the end of a piece to ensure a strong and confident finish. Practice the last few measures of your piece. Listen closely to your sound: does it tell the story or communicate the idea that you have in mind? You may also do cumulative backwards practice. For example, play the last line of the piece, then the last two lines, the last three lines, etc., until you’ve worked back to the beginning.

Create Landmarks

Use the existing structure of your piece (e.g. ABA form, binary form, etc.) to create several starting points. The beginning of each formal section is a great starting point; from there, individual phrases or changes in dynamics, texture, rhythmic patterns, or hand position are suitable landmark locations. If you make a mistake and have difficulty moving past it, you can go back (or forward) to the nearest landmark rather than the beginning of the piece. Landmarks are especially helpful when working from memory! Some students even give creative names to each section to make landmarks memorable.

Mock Performances

Students can practice performing for family, friends, and pets. Be sure to include walking to and from the piano and bowing into at-home performances!

Things to think about in a mock performance:

• How will I approach the piano?

• How will I start and end the piece?

• What will I do if I make a mistake?

• How will I bow?

• How will I leave the stage?

Record yourself

Recording your playing allows you to listen to yourself in a new, objective way. The recording might reveal parts of the music that need a bit more practice. For example, perhaps some dynamic contrasts are not as pronounced as you thought, or there are passages where the melody isn’t projecting enough. Being aware of any issues uncovered in the recording can help guide practice in the weeks before a performance, ensuring smart use of time.

Becoming comfortable listening to our playing can also help us to look on the bright side; if you made a mistake while playing for the camera, you might realize upon listening that the blunder isn’t nearly as big as it felt in the moment!

Practice “in Your Brain”

Mental practice is a powerful tool, and you can do it anywhere! Think through your piece from beginning to end, singing it in your head. Where are the loud parts? The soft parts? What is happening in the musical story?

Create a Mantra

As I prepared for my graduate recital, I developed a mantra to recite when anxious or negative thoughts crept in. My mantra was “you’ve done the work,” referring to the countless hours of practice and care I poured into my recital program. Creating a mantra that addresses your unique challenges can help control pre-performance jitters.

Mindfulness Exercises

Take a deep breath through your nose. Feel the cool sensation of the inhale in the back of your throat. Focus on that feeling. Repeat this process, adding a predictable rhythm (e.g., breathe in for four beats and out for four beats). This exercise can help you feel less nervous and distract you from worried thoughts.

What Not to Do

Practice too much

Over-practicing before a performance can lead to fatigue, burnout, and even repetitive stress injuries—especially if you suddenly increase the amount of daily practice to “cram” for a performance. If you’ve exercised good practice habits leading up to the recital, there’s no need to add excessive time to your practice routine.

Last-minute changes

Changing fingerings and major interpretive elements close to a performance isn’t ideal. Last-minute changes can disrupt pre-performance practice routines and be a distraction during the performance itself.

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Trust in the hard work you’ve put in and know that everyone at the recital is rooting for your success! I look forward to all the beautiful performances we’ll enjoy on December 10!

Perfect Practice Part 3: Interleaved Practice

What is interleaved practice?

Interleaving is the process of structuring practice so that students move frequently from one topic to another. As opposed to blocked practice, which repeats the same skill with little interruption, interleaved practice rotates concepts frequently, even if they’re not yet mastered. While this practice model seems counterintuitive, it increases long-term learning and retention. We call this the contextual interference effect. Contextual interference has been studied in a variety of fields—most notably in sports—and, more recently, in music. In addition to enhanced learning, interleaved practice has been shown to boost executive functions like goal-setting, planning, and focus. (Carter and Grahn 2016).

How do we implement interleaved practice?

While it’s clear that interleaved practice is beneficial, implementing it in real life comes with some challenges. Some students don’t feel immediately comfortable changing tasks quickly; they may have anxiety about perceived incompleteness of a concept. Blocking is also still a predominant practice strategy among musicians—it’s likely that repetition is how many music teachers learned to practice when they were students. To deviate from what we’ve known for the majority of our musical study can feel unnatural and intimidating.

As with any practice strategy, I’ve found that the most practical way to encourage interleaved practice among students is to model it within the lesson so that it becomes familiar. Because highlighting practice strategies in every lesson is already a major part of my own teaching philosophy, creating context interference through faster lesson pacing has been relatively easy to do. My personal challenge with interleaving the lesson structure is trusting that learning is happening despite a student’s in-the-moment performance occasionally decreasing. According to the literature on context interference, this is to be expected!

A Basic Interleaved Structure

I like to have clear-cut topics for interleaved practice (or any practice session). These could include learning a brand new piece, reviewing an old piece, doing technical work (via exercises, etudes, or in specific passages of a piece), doing memory work, improvising, practicing performance etiquette, or working to make a piece more expressive. Each topic warrants different practice strategies, so rotating among them provides the context interference we need for long-term learning and retention. The names of practice topics don’t necessarily need to be explained; by using and modeling them frequently in everyday teaching language, students seem to catch onto the idea quickly.

Student-Led practice plans

This student noticed that the pattern of repeated notes ends in the last two measures, so he put a practice square around them.

I have found that marking specific practice points is conducive to successful interleaved home practice. Having students mark challenging passages with squares or highlighting tape has been useful in my teaching practice. I always have students find and mark the passages themselves and explain why a particular section is more challenging. However, the word “difficult” is something that I’ve removed from my vocabulary in this context. Rather, we call difficult passages “the fun part,” “the impressive part,” or, as one of my students puts it, “the spicy part.” This reframes challenges in a fun way that fosters a positive attitude toward practice. Students can cycle through the practice squares from all their pieces, creating context interference. The key is to practice each section only until it begins to feel easier—not until it is note-for-note perfect. This allows the brain to stay engaged.

“With blocking, once you know what solution to use, or movement to execute, the hard part is over. With interleaving, each practice attempt is different from the last, so rote responses don’t work. Instead, your brain must continuously focus on searching for different solutions. That process can improve your ability to learn critical features of skills and concepts, which then better enables you to select and execute the correct response.”

— Steven C. Pan

Real-life Results

Since actively encouraging interleaved practice, I’ve made some general observations. Students seem to be:

• less frustrated by making mistakes and more self-compassionate

• more reflective on their work, verbalizing what they missed and why they think they missed it before moving onto the next repetition of a passage

• more thoughtful before playing rather than diving headfirst into a piece

Although a great number of factors can engender these positive behaviors, I believe that the de-emphasis on perfection inherent to interleaved practice might play a role.

Further Reading

A Short Read: The Interleaving Effect: Mixing It Up Boosts Learning

A Deeper Dive: Optimizing Music Learning: Exploring How Blocked and Interleaved Practice Schedules Affect Advanced Performance

Carter CE and Grahn JA (2016) Optimizing Music Learning: Exploring How Blocked and Interleaved Practice Schedules Affect Advanced Performance. Front. Psychol. 7:1251. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01251

A Long, Slow Look

Using the practice of slow looking to tell musical stories

What is slow looking?

The phrase “slow looking” simply means taking intentional time to look closely at something. In her book Slow Looking: The Art and Practice of Learning Through Observation, Shari Tishman elaborates: “The term slow looking uses the vernacular of the visual, but it is important to emphasize that learning through prolonged observation can occur through all the senses” (Tishman 2). Unlike mindfulness, a state of being that also draws our focus to the present moment, we slow look with the intent to gain knowledge. Tishman’s book, bolstered by findings from her educational research, walks us through slow looking strategies and the positive impact slow looking makes in educational settings. Slow looking goes hand-in-hand with discovery learning, the process of learning through exploration and inquiry. Discovery learning is more engaging than a teacher explaining new concepts, and students better remember content when they construct an individualized understanding of the material.

Slow Looking in Action

Art is a natural setting for slow looking. Practice on the artwork below. You might ask yourself the following questions:

• What do I see? What do I think about what I see? How do I feel about what I see?

• What did I notice first? What did I notice after looking for a while?

• What words come to mind as I look?

• What more would I like to know about the artwork?

• Do small parts create the big picture?

• Does this remind me of something else?

• How do I think this artwork was created? Were elements added in a certain order?

Ruth Asawa, Desert Plant, 1965

Using Slow Looking as a Springboard for musical Improvisation

In a musical context, slow looking helps us understand the elements of music, their functions, and their purposes. Students train their brains to notice the layers and details that comprise a tapestry of sound. Slow looking lends itself well to two activities that have been met with enthusiasm in my studio: telling a story through music and improvising or composing new music using ideas from an existing piece. I’ve found that combining these two activities is an effective way to encourage students not only to listen slowly but also to improvise with less inhibition. By placing parameters—like improvising using rhythmic or tonal patterns we discovered through slow looking—students can improvise with clarity and confidence.

Part One: Introduction to a new piece

To encourage students to think about character and mood, perform a piece with the title hidden and have them guess what it might be about. Students use the practice of slow looking to find patterns and identify how the elements of music (e.g. melody, harmony, form, texture, dynamics) are at play in a given piece.

Next, we compare the title they brainstormed with the original title. It’s amazing how well students capture the essence of a piece! For example, “Floating,” “Dreaming,” “Soaring,” “Kite Flying,” and “Skating” are all common titles students give to “Gliding” by Elvina Truman Pearce. After thinking about the title, we learn the piece as the composer intended. Learning by rote is a natural opportunity for slow looking because listening is a crucial part of the learning process.

Part Two: Use the Title to Create a New Story

These are real-life examples from a recent lesson in which we studied “Gliding” by Elvina Truman Pearce. We slow listened to the piece to identify patterns and other characteristics, then learned to play it. In the following lesson, we did a creative activity.

I started by asking the following questions:

• Who or what is gliding?

• Where are they going? Why?

My student decided that Link from the Legend of Zelda was using his glider to travel to Kakariko Village to see Impa (another game character).

Then, I elaborated with these questions:

• Are they close, or in the distance?

• Does anything happen along the way?

• When in the music do they arrive at their destination?

The observations the student made through slow looking appeared in many of his answers. For example, he decided that Link was far in the distance because the piece started softly and that the dotted half-notes in measures 5-6 (see below) sounded like the giant footsteps of monsters.

Finally, we thought about what musical aspects we might change to fit the story. This is what the student added:

• he played mm. 5-6 loudly to signify the monsters

• he added a ritardando in the last measure to show that Link was slowing down and landing gracefully

Part Three: Use Patterns to Improvise and Compose

These are the patterns this particular student identified:

• The melody alternates between the CDE group on the white keys and a group of three black keys.

• C’s, D’s, and E’s (white keys) are played as single notes while the black keys are struck together.

• The melody always goes up.

• Each phrase sounds like one upward line.

• The hands work together to create the melody. Each hand is equally important.

The student then began improvising music by experimenting with note groups. I find that students are naturally inclined to create an “opposite” version of the piece they deconstruct. For example, this student began by playing the same melodic and rhythmic patterns but in a descending motion. From there, he more freely improvised using those patterns as inspiration.

The benefits of taking a slow look

Through her research on slow looking, Tishman identified four themes that appeared in students’ slow looking practices. Seeing with fresh eyes (interacting with the familiar as if newly discovered), exploring perspective (looking at things from multiple viewpoints), noticing detail (allowing observations to unfold from broad to specific) are three themes that deal with how students observed their surroundings. A fourth theme was philosophical well-being—students reported that slow looking reminded them of the important things in life. Students also noted that experiencing nature at a slow pace promoted a sense of well-being.

““When you look for a while, you become aware of how a thing might look to somebody else; you also become aware of your own lens...students come to an understanding of the multi-perspectival nature of knowing things in our world.” ”

— Shari Tishman

Perhaps most importantly, slow looking intensifies the extramusical qualities that music lessons instill: an appreciation of beauty, an awareness of oneself and others, the ability to problem-solve thoughtfully and deliberately, and a willingness to slow down and see the goodness that surrounds us.

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More Resources

Tishman, S. (2018). Slow looking: The art and practice of learning through observation. Routledge. 

Thinking Strategies that Support Slow Looking

The Art of Slow Looking in the Classroom

Out of Eden

Project Zero

In Praise of Slow by Carl Honore

Slow Looking by Peter Clothier

Slow Looking How-Tos by the National Museum of Women in the Arts

The Parent's Guide to Rote Pieces: Part 2

Listen up!

A look at listening skills and how to develop them at home.

The first step of learning a piece by rote is listening to it—but there are different types of listening and different situations in which we use them. Listening thoughtfully is a skill that is developed over time. Eventually, students will build a musical vocabulary that allows them not only to describe what they hear, but also to “think” in music and make predictions about how unfamiliar music will sound. Because rote learning is a core tenet of my teaching, listening skills are practiced at home as part of weekly assignments. The following is a realistic guide to get started with independent listening activities.

Types of Listening

Active listening occurs when music is our primary focus. When we actively listen, we make a deliberate choice to listen to music. We may also try to use what we know about music to understand what we hear.

Passive listening occurs when music is not our primary focus, but we are aware of it. We passively listen to the radio while driving or while performing other tasks.

Unconscious listening occurs when we have little awareness of the music around us. We unconsciously listen to background music at the grocery store.

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Active and Passive Listening Within Rote Pieces

While working on rote pieces during at-home practice, we primarily use active listening skills. However, passive listening still has its purpose in rote music learning. I have students listen to rote pieces for several weeks before we learn them. The beginning stages of listening are often passive—we listen to a piece in the background while we unpack the student’s materials, complete a theory assignment, or play a game. This way, when it’s time to actively listen to the piece, the student is already familiar with it. Outside of lessons, a great way to passively listen to rote assignments is to play them in the car on the way to or from school.

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Easy ACtive Listening Activities

Draw a Listening Map

Students might draw the direction of the melody, draw short lines for short notes and long lines for long notes, or create a combination of their own symbols to represent dynamics, form, and articulation. As they learn formal musical symbols, students may also include these in their listening maps. The youngest of students may simply draw what they think the piece is about.

An example of a listening map of “Robots” from Piano Safari Level 1 by a 7-year-old student. This piece has three distinct sections, each one at a different tempo. The melody remains the same throughout, but moves up an octave in each section. The student shows that the pitch gets higher by drawing upward lines, uses different colors to show the three different tempi, and drew a similar shapes throughout to show that the melody is the same in each section.

Move with the Form

After listening to the piece a few times, students can brainstorm movements to accompany each section. Simple movements for a piece with ABA form might look like this:

A: clap hands to the beat

B: tap knees to the beat

A: clap hands to the beat

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Guided Listening Questions

Open-ended questions:

• How does this piece make you feel?

• What do you think this piece is about?

• Do you think the piece sounds like its title?

• What story do you think the music tells?

Objective questions for beginners:

• Is the piece a slow, medium, or fast tempo?

• What dynamic levels does the piece use?

• What animal rhythms do you hear?

• Does any part of the piece repeat?

• What is the form of the piece (e.g. ABA)?

• Is the piece in duple meter, triple meter, or something else?

Objective questions for more advanced students:

• What time signature is the piece in?

• What is the tonality (major, minor, something else)?

• Can you name some of the musical terms you hear (e.g. crescendo, ritardando)?

• What is the texture of the piece (e.g. melody with accompaniment, melody only, melody over an ostinato/repeating pattern)?

Creative Ways to "Do it again!"

Repetition is a fundamental part of piano practice, but it’s not always a favorite part of practicing. These are ways that I ask students to “do it again” with flair. Each item is designed to be musically meaningful so that repetition doesn't become mindless. A specific musical goal underlies each activity. For example, playing parts of a piece “oppositely” draws attention to the intended character of the piece, and playing a piece in a different octave helps us to hear something familiar in a new way.

1. Play while singing the melody.

2. Play the right hand one octave higher and the left hand one octave lower.

3. Play small sections with your eyes closed.

4. Play the piece at different tempos (e.g. largo, adagio, andante, allegro, presto).

5. For primer-level pieces written for one hand, play the right and left hands together in parallel motion.

6. Make the piece sound like different animals (e.g. play it high like a bird, or low like a whale).

7. Play all dynamics oppositely (e.g. loud becomes soft, etc.).

8. Play all articulations oppositely (e.g. legato becomes staccato).*

9. Play and sing the accompaniment.

10. Play and say each downbeat (beat 1) out loud.

11. If the piece has multiple voices, play while singing or humming the soprano, alto, tenor, or bass line—alternate which voice you sing with each repetition.*

12. Transpose the piece to another key.

*these activities are for more advanced students or for pieces that are well into the learning process

An easy way to incorporate strategic repetition is to gamify it. I write down ways to repeat a passage on popsicle sticks and have students draw a stick, pre-selecting the sticks that are appropriate for a student’s level and stage of learning. The mystery of which stick they’ll pull keeps students eager to practice repetition in their lesson! The best part is that this game is easily replicated at home—I keep batches of sticks for varying levels handy and send them home with students. Students may even get creative and brainstorm their own ways to repeat a section!

Perfect Practice: Part 2

Five More Strategies for Successful Practicing

Positivity is Contagious

Approaching practice with excitement and positivity is crucial. There will be days that you don’t feel like helping your child practice. There will be days where your child doesn’t feel like practicing. These days might even overlap! Nonetheless, as adults, we are tasked with creating and controlling the practice atmosphere. Announcing that it’s time to practice with a friendly—not demanding or nagging—tone is a good place to start.

Although part of piano practice is identifying and correcting mistakes, it’s also important to focus on what the student is doing well. While I don’t recommend undue praise as a way to motivate or lift spirits, it’s a good idea to keep a healthy positivity/negativity ratio: for every constructive criticism, try to mention two areas in which the student is excelling in a given practice session.

Avoid Mirroring Tension

Sometimes, tension will build in at-home practice sessions. Perhaps your child is reluctant to practice altogether, or is frustrated with challenging parts of their assignment. It’s important to not greet your child’s tension with more tension. Adults are responsible for identifying and diffusing tension; young children do not always have the emotional regulation skills to do this themselves. Diffusing tension may including pausing for a moment to tell joke and have a laugh, offering praise for effort if the student is working diligently on something challenging, or keeping communication open by having the student evaluate their own work. What do they feel is the hardest part of a particular practice session? In what areas do they feel like they are excelling?

Be Fair and Follow Through

To feel safe, communicate openly, and be freely creative, students need to trust that their teachers will not give them more than they can handle, hold them to unrealistic standards, or be inappropriately picky. The same is true for at-home practice, where the parent temporarily becomes the teacher. Avoid asking the student to do more than is listed on the weekly assignment, and be consistent with requests—it isn’t fair to have a student play a passage ten times if five times was the agreement. When children feel like they are being treated fairly, they will be more likely to put in more effort.

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Deep Dive: Give Rewards—But Know How to Use Them

Although I do not use studio-wide incentives that reward practicing on a regular basis, it’s fine if parents choose to reward practice. Using rewards without considering how they impact motivation, however, has the potential to be problematic. In the book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink discusses the psychology of rewards, including their potential pitfalls. Two main categories of rewards are discussed: If-Then rewards, and Now-That rewards.

• If-Then rewards are given upon completion of a task (e.g., if you do this task, then you will get XYZ Reward). They are usually anticipated by recipients.

• Now-That rewards are also given upon completion of a task, but they are usually a surprise and do not incentivize completion itself; instead, Now-That rewards recognize less-concrete qualities like good effort, divergent thinking, and focus.

If-Then rewards ultimately stifle creativity and inhibit deep thinking. This is because the focus is on the short term and the reward itself—it’s like chasing a carrot on a stick. Pink also explains how If-Then rewards can deflate motivation: “If-Then rewards require people for forfeit some of their autonomy…And that can spring a hole in the bottom of their motivation bucket, draining an activity of its enjoyment” (36). When an enjoyable task becomes a job, our motivation to perform the task out of genuine excitement interest declines.

If-Then rewards are also hard to maintain because they are anticipated by recipients, who come to then expect rewards upon completion of similar tasks. Pink notes, “…before long, the existing reward may no longer suffice. It will quickly feel less like a bonus and more like the status quo—which then forces [the use] of larger rewards to achieve the same effect” (53).

Now-That rewards, on the other hand, foster intrinsic motivation because they allow students to see the relationship between their behavior and rewards. What do Now-That rewards look like in the context of piano lessons and practice? Here are a few examples:

• When the student accomplishes their practice goals before their practice session is finished, reward their focus and effort by allowing some time for games via music apps. Explain that the surprise app time is a result of their focus.

• When the student successfully uses visual aids included in their take-home pouch (e.g., fuzzies, picture cards), reward them with some fun, affordable manipulatives like Iwako erasers or finger puppets. Mention that since they know how to use those aids so well, you got them some new, cool ones!

• When the student uses practice strategies independently, reward their ownership with a treat.

Because they are a surprise, Now-That rewards should always be followed up by explaining why the reward was given—this will get the student eager to show off their good attitude and effort in the future!

What I Don’t Use as Rewards

I personally avoid using creative and improvisatory tasks as rewards in any context. I believe that these activities are inherent parts of music-learning, not fun embellishments to be added as a treat or taken away as negative reinforcement.

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Thank you for reading this long-overdue addition to my Perfect Practice series! For more a in-depth look at rewards and motivation, I recommend reading Daniel Pink’s book or giving this episode of Ashley Danyew’s podcast, Field Notes on Music Teaching & Learning, a listen.

The Parent's Guide to Rote Pieces: Part 1

What is rote teaching?

Rote pieces are intended to be learned by imitation. Although the score (music on the page) to every rote piece can be found in the Piano Safari repertoire books, students practice rote pieces by using their ears, reminder videos, and various manipulatives that provide a visual representation of the piece.

The term “rote” might have negative connotations for some adults. Did you ever have to memorize information “by rote” for an exam? It probably wasn't very fun or engaging. The standard dictionary definition of “rote” isn’t very friendly, either: Merriam-Webster defines it as “the use of memory usually with little intelligence.” Fortunately, rote learning in a musical context is much different—and there’s nothing unintelligent about rote learning when it is facilitated by a well-trained teacher.

Why learn music by rote?

By the time children begin piano lessons, they have been exposed to music in a multitude of genres, styles, and settings; rote learning allows students to access the complex music they hear in their world without the prerequisite of note reading. Just as children learn to talk before they can read words, they can also learn to hear, feel, and execute musical concepts with proper technique before seeing and processing written symbols.

Some other benefits of rote learning include:

• Rote pieces sound more difficult than they are and often use the breadth of the keyboard, which is exciting and motivating.

• Because there are no notes to read, students can focus on technique. When a reading piece uses a technical concept first taught by rote, good technique happens almost effortlessly.

• Students become comfortable playing without music in front of them, which prepares them for performing memorized music in the future.

• Feeling and hearing the musical patterns in rote pieces actually helps students to read music later. The patterns are stored in students’ muscle memory as they learn by rote; when it’s time to read music, the emphasis can truly be on note-reading.

For further reading on the benefits of rote teaching, check out Dr. Julie Knerr and Katherine Fisher’s essay.

The Basic Rote Learning Process

Starting hand positions are always shown in the upper left corner.

All of my students—from preschoolers to retirees—learn by rote in addition to learning to read notes on the staff. The practice process for rote pieces, while not more difficult, is different from what parents and students might consider traditional practice. To clarify the process, I’ve created a basic guide to practice.

We learn rote pieces in our lesson; a rote piece will rarely be a YOYO (You’re on Your Own) piece. Students listen to rote pieces for a week or two before they’re taught to play them. This means that students will occasionally have a listening assignment to do at home.

To practice rote pieces at home, students should use the following steps:

1. Listen to the piece multiple times. The student should sing, move, and engage with it as they listen. The Piano Safari method includes a download code at the front of the book; you can store mp3’s of every piece in the book (both rote and reading) on your device.

2. Refer to the score in method book for the starting hand position and lyrics. Do not worry about reading individual notes! Students may point out that the notes move up or down, or recognize other broad patterns in the score. This is encouraged! In fact, I often leave the score open in front of the student to expose them to notation—this makes it less foreign when students eventually learn to read on the staff.

3. Try to play the piece using strategies taught in the lesson before using the reminder video. These could include visual aids in the method book, printable cards, or breaking the piece into small sections before attempting a run-through.

4. If using the Piano Safari method, consult the reminder video on YouTube for detailed instructions. Even if the student plays the piece successfully without the reminder video, it’s a good idea to review the videos to ensure that the student is using correct finger numbers and technical gestures.

Longer rote pieces use picture cards to aid memory.

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In the next part of this rote learning series, I’ll go into more detail about each of the practice procedures for rote pieces, including how to actively listen to new pieces, how to break rote pieces down into manageable parts during home practice, and guiding questions to ask your young pianist as they review rote pieces at home.

Untitled Goose Game and the Magic of Reactive Soundtracks

It’s a lovely morning in the village, and you’re a horrible goose.

That is, in a nutshell, the premise of Untitled Goose Game, a “slapstick-stealth-sandbox” puzzle game released by House House in 2019. The player assumes the role of a goose, who uses its limited physical abilities and the manipulation of objects within its world to unlock achievements—all of which involve pestering unsuspecting townspeople.

Le honk.

While the gameplay is relatively straightforward, Untitled Goose Game’s dynamic soundtrack offers an interesting take on music and mood. Rather than composing an original soundtrack, the game developers borrowed selections from Claude Debussy’s Préludes (which are now in the public domain). Elements of urgency, surprise, movement, and mischief are infused into the existing music by altering its tempo, pulse, volume, and register. Composer Dan Golding describes the creative process in an interview with Paul Dougherty of Zoneout:

There are two performances of every Prélude on the soundtrack – one version that is similar to how you’d typically hear the music performed, and another which is slower and has lower energy. Both of these performances are chopped up into about 300 to 400 short fragments, each between one and three seconds long, that are queued to trigger in order.

The game then chooses which of the two versions to trigger depending on what the player is doing. And if the player is doing nothing, the soundtrack remains silent.

The game is comprised of five settings within an English village, each featuring a Prélude: The Garden (Minstrels*), High Street (Les Collines de Anacapri), the Back Gardens (Hommage à S. Pickwick, Esq. P. P. M. P. C.), The Pub (Le serenade interrompue), and the Model Village (Feux d’Artifice).

The differences between the original Préludes and their modified versions are most pronounced upon entering each world, when the goings on in the game are still relatively low-energy. Minstrels, for example, has a sense of ambiguity achieved by exaggerating Debussy’s instructions to hold back (cédez, which translates literally as “give up”) after each four-bar phrase. Golding expands upon this by hesitating between each 5-1 movement in the bass line (Example 1), momentarily denying our ears resolution.

Example 1 Minstrels

Similarly, when comparing the standard Les collines d’Anacapri to its in-game counterpart, the most obvious adaptation is the tempo, which Golding has dramatically reduced. The register has been altered, too. The opening figures have been raised an octave in some instances and lowered by an octave in others. The cumulative result is a contemplative mood reflective of a sleepy village yet to endure the goose’s undoing.

Example 2 Les collines d’Anacapri: changes made to register in Golding’s low-energy interpretation are marked in red.

The phrasing in Golding’s low-energy interpretation is, in places, nearly inverse of the original. The first climax (m. 21) is treated as more of an afterthought than a point of arrival, trailing away in both pulse and volume (not unlike a distracted goose). The dotted-sixteenth thirty-second motive (seen in m. 17 and throughout the piece), on the other hand, is voiced more emphatically than is typical, lending a sense of playful clumsiness (also not unlike a distracted goose).

Example 3 Hommage à S. Pickwick, Esq. P. P. M. P. C.: m. 17 shows the dotted-sixteenth thirty-second note motive that recurs throughout the piece; Debussy’s instructions for the climax in m. 21.

Le serenade interrompue: A Deep Dive

Le serenade interrompue, aside from a relaxed tempo, remains relatively unchanged until measure 62, when a caesura is added before a syncopated melody begins. Meant to imitate a Spanish guitar—Debussy’s instructions state quasi guitarra, or “like a guitar”—the texture and articulation suggest strumming (mm. 21-23) and plucking (the ostinato beginning in m. 25). However, when performed under tempo with a heavier articulation, the ostinato becomes bumbling and pervasive (again, not unlike a distracted goose).

Example 4 Le serenade interrompue, with a strummed texture in the first system and a plucked texture in the next system.

This Prélude is perhaps the most overtly programmatic of those used in the game’s soundtrack. It tells the story of one lover serenading another—but with interruptions that come not only through abrupt, brief changes in harmony and dynamics (mm. 46-49), but also through prolonged changes in style (mm. 80-84, and again in mm. 87-89). The longer “interruption” passages sound like background music within the musical world: yet another thing with which the guitarist must compete. In the context of the game, another layer of storytelling is added through the interrupting goose. Even without modifications, Le serenade interrompue tells a story.

Example 5 Le serenade interrompue: The harmony changes abruptly from an acoustic collection (-3) to unrelated half-diminished chords, which might be interpreted a few different ways (that is beyond the scope of this blog post). Nonetheless, measures 46-47 are a clear interruption—not only through harmony, but also through volume and texture.

Example 6 Le serenade interrompue: Measures 80-84, clearly in D major, feature a march-like style not seen in any other section of the piece—the guitarist is competing with other music within his world. His sentiment toward this more prolonged interruption shows in mm. 85-86, marked Rageur (furious). Golding’s interpretation places this interruption two octaves higher.

While exploring the individual alterations to each piece is interesting, it’s the instantaneous change in affect enabled by the juxtaposition of the altered and original versions that make the magic of the soundtrack. The player never hears the same combination of versions twice during gameplay.

Though Debussy’s Préludes seem to have been chosen for the soundtrack by chance, the way Debussy handles titling the compositions makes them a striking fit for a reactive soundtrack. Although Debussy gives interpretive instructions on the score—sometimes using standard musical terminology, but sometimes using descriptive phrases unique to a particular Prélude—no title is revealed until the end of the piece. This allows the listener to subjectively submerse themselves in the melodic, harmonic, textural, and even timbral elements that Debussy combines to create a soundscape. What we ultimately find to be titled Le serenade interrompue (“The Interrupted Serenade”) may have evoked different images for different listeners.

What does a terrible goose have to do with piano pedagogy?

I have always found movie and video game soundtracks to be of pedagogical value, especially if they are already of particular interest to students. What can we learn from reactive soundtracks? These are some thoughts that came to mind as I compared the Untitled Goose Game soundtrack to standard performances of the Préludes:

• What effect does register, specifically, have on mood? Could students create a sense of atmosphere using only one pitch in different registers? This might be a great starting point for students who are overwhelmed by improvising.

• What elements do composers manipulate to create different moods?

• How would the mood of a piece change if we played certain elements—dynamics, articulations, tempo markings—oppositely? Taking a trip to what my young students and I call “Opposite Land” can also be a good way to make students more sensitive to a piece’s intended markings.

• How do we know what a piece could be about without using the title as an influence?

It’s worth noting that we can give any piece the “Debussy treatment” by covering its title and having students imagine what the piece might be about—then compare their title to the original one. We can also turn any piece into the soundtrack to a story we create ourselves. Sonata-Allegro form, with themes of contrasting affect in the exposition and harmonic exploration in the development, lends itself especially well to storytelling. In smaller-scale teaching pieces like sonatinas (or other forms that don’t typically have imaginative titles) we might:

• Associate dynamic levels or major/minor sonorities with a particular character.

• Imagine different characters for the right and left hands.

• Use formal sections to guide the story.

Storytelling through music is a topic of its own, but I found it impossible to discuss a reactive soundtrack (music to fit an ever-changing story) without at least touching upon the pedagogical tool of narrative (creating a story to fit music).

Although the soundtrack to Untitled Goose Game happens to be classical, I hope that this blog post provokes some thought about the value of video game music—in the Western classical tradition or otherwise—and its potential as a creative tool.

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* Debussy’s Minstrels alludes to minstrelsy (defined by Oxford Languages as the form of entertainment associated with minstrel shows, featuring songs, dances, and formulaic comic routines based on stereotyped depictions of black Americans and typically performed by white actors with blackened faces). This is no doubt problematic, and it’s necessary to discuss how to handle repertoire like this. An obvious option is to boil the piece down to its technical components and select a different piece with similar pedagogical concepts. Another option for Debussy’s music, specifically, is to give the student power over the piece by having them listen to it and create their own title. Since Debussy placed the title of each Prélude at the end, taking such liberty is not only appropriate, but encouraged.

Perfect Practice: Part 1

Five Basic Habits for Stress-Free Practice

Most piano families know that practice is an important factor in successful piano lessons, but without clear communication between teachers, students, and parents, the specifics of at-home practice remain a mystery. Just like piano-playing, practicing is a skill to be learned and improved upon. In this inaugural entry in my Perfect Practice series (the title of which is a nod to piano pedagogue Elvina Truman Pearce), my goal is to begin demystifying at-home piano practice, working from broad to more specific ideas.

Practice Starts in the Lesson

My particular teaching style includes covering practice techniques within each lesson—when expectations are clear, and students are confident that they can meet them, they practice more readily. For each assignment, students use specific techniques for at-home practice, and I have students replicate those techniques for me so I can be sure they will be successful at home. By observing the lesson, parents of younger students can get a clear idea of what should happen in at-home practice. Some parents like to take notes while observing, and some even film part of the lesson on their smartphones! It all boils down to what parents feel will be most helpful for them at home. Even occasionally observing a lesson helps maintain communication between teachers, students, and parents.

Choose a Time and Stick with It

A tried-and-true rule for productive at-home practice is following a routine. When treated as a negotiable part of the daily routine, piano practice often lands at the end of the day when both parents and students are too tired to be productive. Elvina Truman Pearce outlines this topic in The Success Factor in Music Teaching: Making Practice Perfect. She makes two great suggestions:

• “trying out” different practice times (before or after school, before or after dinner, etc.) for at least five days each to see which one clicks best with everyone

• splitting up daily practice into two or three short sessions

I promise this won’t be the case. ;) Source

It’s important to note that, while practicing may happen at the same time each day, practice length may vary. I encourage students to use practice time wisely to ultimately spend less time practicing, and I don’t use studio incentives or rewards based on the number of minutes practiced each week. There are certainly broad practice time suggestions for different age groups that are helpful for new piano students, but these are starting points—not rigid guidelines.

Create a Favorable Environment

The ideal practice environment sets the student up for success; it doesn’t work against the student. Is the room quiet, or does noise make it difficult for the student to focus and hear themselves? Is the piano in a relatively low-traffic area, or do waves of activity create a distraction? Are the student’s lesson materials organized and easy to use, or is accessing those materials a task in itself?

“The point is that if practice is to become important to the student and a regular part of [their] daily routine, then a suitable environment for it must be created and respected by the entire family. This indicates to the student that all members of the family respectfully support its importance.”

— Elvina Pearce, The Success Factor in Piano Teaching: Making Practice Perfect (193)

Remember that Children are Children

Children are still learning to recognize and regulate their emotions and behaviors. They need patience and guidance as they learn the self-regulatory skills necessary to direct their behavior toward a goal. Self-regulation includes a complex set of abilities developed gradually from infancy through middle-childhood (up to around age 12) (Ziv et al. 2017). For piano students, self-regulating includes planning practice, changing the plan if something isn’t working, and thinking about what went well and what didn’t. That’s a lot of work for a developing brain!

It’s expected that younger students will need a parent’s help with planning and following through with practicing, and it’s normal for kids to need a reminder to practice—even if they really love piano and excel in lessons! It’s also not uncommon for there to be both good days and bad days regarding attitudes and behaviors regarding practicing, even for top-notch students. Parents who understand this can be better prepared to handle challenging days, form realistic expectations, and exercise more patience with their child.

Deep Dive: Be Organized—But Provide Choice within the framework

As students mature, independent, self-motivated at-home practice is an important goal. Experts agree that autonomy plays a significant role in motivation (Gandhimathi & Anitha Devi, 2016). The meaning of autonomy is twofold. In an educational sense, it refers to students’ ability to guide their learning; in general, it can refer to independence or freedom. Though the two definitions of autonomy are often conflated, we can think of them as two unique components that work together. For students to be interested in their learning process (autonomy), they need to feel in control of their goals (through freedom and choice).

Who makes most of the choices in the context of piano lessons? Parents of younger students usually decide when practice happens; the teacher decides which practice techniques to use (or how) to practice; method books, even when supplemented with outside music, can largely dictate what is practiced. While it’s essential to keep a steady and organized practice routine, it’s equally important to allow students to make their own decisions. Some strategies for providing choice and facilitating independence include:

• allowing the student to plan the order of tasks within their practice session

• incorporating improvisation into every practice session

• using tools that help students keep track of (meaningful, not mindless) repetition independently (see example below)

• providing opportunities for the student to reflect on their progress

• asking the student which practice assignment they feel needs the most focus

• encouraging the student to keep track of questions that arise during practice

Use Iwako erasers to track repetition—each time the student plays the target passage correctly, move an eraser to the other side of the music stand.

In the next Perfect Practice installment, we’ll talk more about practice attitudes, how to deal with difficult practice days, and the do’s and don’ts of reward systems—do you really need to make a sticker chart? You might be surprised!

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Sources

Gandhimathi, S., & Anitha Devi, V. (2016). Learner Autonomy and Motivation - A Literature Review. Research on Humanities and Social Sciences, 6(3). https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/234674899.pdf

Pearce, E., Sale, C., & Blickenstaff, M. (2014). The success factor in piano teaching: Making practice perfect. Kingston, NJ: The Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy.

Ziv, Yair & Benita, Moti & Sofri, Inbar. (2017). Self-Regulation in Childhood: A Developmental Perspective

Getting the Most from Online Lessons

What to do before, during, and after online lessons

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A sudden switch to online lessons in the middle of a life-altering pandemic isn’t everyone’s ideal learning situation, but some simple measures can be taken to help virtual lessons run smoothly and, dare I say, enjoyably! A guide to more in-depth adjustments and optional tech purchases will follow soon!

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Before Enrolling

Time Commitment

Plan for online lessons to require a slightly greater time commitment than traditional lessons. For example, the teacher may have students film and submit some of their repertoire ahead of time for lesson-planning purposes. The student may also need to send video clips of their progress to the teacher mid-week to ensure they are on target. Occasionally, the teacher might ask students to watch an instructional video to get a head-start on a new concept before their lesson (this is called asynchronous, or flipped, learning). Younger students will likely need help accessing these activities, which are completed in addition to regular practicing.

Scheduling

Try to schedule lessons when Internet traffic is light and noise in the house is minimal. With entire families working and learning at home, I understand that this might be difficult—keep reading for tips on maximizing Internet speed.

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Before the Lesson

• Sign up for Zoom if you haven’t already.

• Have all materials (lesson books, sheet music, flashcards, a pencil with an eraser, etc.) ready. It’s helpful to put sticky notes or flags on relevant pages in music books for easy finding. If the teacher asked for the score to be marked between lessons (adding measure numbers, highlighting accidentals, etc.), be sure to do that before the lesson.

• Position the camera to show the student’s upper body, arms, and hands, including the keyboard. I have found that the best camera placement is directly to the student’s left or right, capturing their profile. The student can turn their body to the camera when speaking.

• Check your Internet connection using Speedtest. A download speed of 10mbp/s is ideal if more than one person is using the Internet, but as few as 2mbp/s will work for a single user.

• If your connection is slow, moving the wireless router closer to the piano or using an ethernet cable (if your device will accept one) can help with speed and consistency.

• Be sure all devices to be used during the lesson are fully charged or plugged in.

• If your piano is in a bright room, you might need to close the blinds or curtains to prevent wash-out. The light should be in front of the student to avoid glare and shadows.

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During the Lesson

• Parents should be present to help take notes, handle manipulatives, solve technical issues, and help young students listen for cues. Even some of my high school students choose to have their parents nearby during their lessons!

• The teacher, student, and parent will take turns talking and playing to save time, using cues like “my turn” or “your turn” to eliminate confusion.

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After the Lesson

• Download the recorded lesson to review later, if applicable.

• If the teacher assigned any flipped learning activities, add the due dates to your calendar, or set a reminder on your smartphone. Help your student complete and submit the assignments.

• Encourage your student to practice. Younger students may require supervision and guidance as they practice.

• Be sure to give praise! For students accustomed to in-person lessons, a sudden switch to online lessons can be stressful and confusing—especially with all sense of normalcy lost during the recent pandemic. Compliment your student on their effort, resilience, and willingness to try new things.

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For more resources on piano lessons during the COVID-19 pandemic, see these tips published by The Frances Clark Center and Piano Magazine.

The Art of Marking Music

Yes, it’s an actual skill!

Marking music with purpose and clarity makes for more efficient lessons and practicing. Perfecting this art has been an ongoing goal of mine.

The Issue

Piano teachers are in a constant race against time—there’s so much content to fit in during the 30-60 minutes per week that we see a given student. I am in never-ending pursuit of spending less time talking and writing down assignments and more time making music! My quest to find the most effective way to mark scores is motivated by two questions that I’ve found myself repeatedly asking over the course of my career: “I marked this mistake on my sheet music—why am I (or why is my student) still making it?” and “Are assignment sheets actually useful? How can they be made more practical?”

Why do we mark our music, anyways?

A marking is a call to action—there’s something we want our students to do, and marking their music is a way of getting them to do it. The marks my students and I make usually fall into distinct categories, and sometimes the categories overlap. These categories are not something I thought of before using them; they are borne from reflection on my teaching. Some examples include:

• To analyze

• To encourage phrasing

• To prevent mistakes

• To reinforce a new concept

• To give meaning to an abstract concept

• To guide practice

How Students Interact with Their Scores

I also think of markings as existing on two independent spectrums: passive vs. active and fixed vs. flexible. The former describes the way students interact with a marking when it’s made (usually during their lesson), and the latter describes how students interact with a marking over time (usually during independent practice).

Fixed markings aren’t necessarily better than flexible ones (or vice versa). However, I almost always consider active markings to be better teaching tools than passive ones. It is easy to pinpoint issues and mark them for students to save time, but this passive approach doesn’t provide students with much ownership of their music. It has been my experience that an active approach—when students engage with their scores and make their own marks—ultimately results in greater understanding and retention.

Fixed and flexible markings function exactly how they sound. Fixed marks go on the page and stay on the page—think of circling or highlighting accidentals, denoting formal sections, or marking harmonic events. Flexible marks live and breathe with the student, allowing them to track progress. They are moveable, removable, stackable—the list goes on. I like to use removable highlighter tape, but I have also used erasable colored pencils. The goal is that flexible markings be eye-catching, engaging, and fun.

Glenn Gould’s score to Bach’s Goldberg Variations. (Source)

More About Flexible Markings

I anticipate that most musicians are familiar with fixed markings. Flexible markings, however, probably warrant more explanation. They are great for denoting:

• sudden dynamic changes

• sudden position changes

• practice strategies for particular sections of music

• errors made in a run-through of a piece

• places where memory slips occurred if a student is working toward memorization

In these situations, I use flexible markings for a few reasons:

• The tape can be removed when the student solves a problem. Errors can also be highlighted again in another color to show that a concept still needs another week of practice. Asking students if they think the tape is ready to be removed also sets the tone for self-evaluation.

• Visual clutter doesn’t accumulate over the weeks. Students won’t likely practice the same way each week; practice techniques can be swapped in and out.

• I can spend less time writing down instructions in a practice notebook and more time teaching.

• Students love taking ownership of their scores by choosing colors and applying tape on their own. Even my high schoolers enjoy picking the week’s tape color.

• There is no way to “forget” practice suggestions when they are adhered to the score with fluorescent tape. ;)

How does this relate to practicing?

If we expect students to practice independently, these conditions must be met:

• The teacher has shown the student how to practice their material in the lesson.

• The student has successfully replicated the practice techniques more than once in the lesson, under teacher supervision.

• There is a clear, concise explanation of these techniques where the student can review them, like a practice notebook—or, better yet, right on the score where they can’t be ignored.

Therefore, thoughtful, intentional, and dynamic markings that extend the practice notebook onto the score in an engaging way can be considered a student motivator. When we know what to do and how to do it, we’re more likely to take action.

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Examples

Burgmüller Op. 100, No. 9: The Chase

Here, we have a few flexible markings that outline which practice technique to use in specific passages.

O.F. = on the fallboard

G.P. = ghost practicing

S/P = stop/prepare

I don’t always use abbreviations, especially with younger students. Practice technique shortcuts like these are only useful if the student knows what they mean and how to execute them, so I write more detailed instructions in an assignment book, if necessary. Many of the nicknames I use for practice techniques are from Piano Safari’s Practice Strategy Cards. Students can buy their own and print the cards on cardstock for under $8.

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Kabalevsky Op. 27 No. 13: A Little Joke

Since different practice techniques will be used to master the rapid position changes and left-hand speed and clarity, this passage is a great place to use flexible markings.

B.P. = blocked practice, with circled notes practiced together in a “block” to aid with the rapid position changes in the notorious B section of this piece.

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Rachmaninoff Prelude in G-sharp Minor, Op. 32 No. 12

I wanted to include an example using fixed markings to illustrate the potential for creativity; fixed markings don’t have to be passive circles on the score. Here, I’ve quantified the gradual crescendo (an otherwise abstract concept) that begins in the first measure of this page. This activity is a great opportunity for advanced students to listen to recordings of concert pianists, observe the artists’ varying interpretive decisions about the crescendo, and decide for themselves how and when the volume will increase in their personal interpretation of the piece.

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The Takeaway

• The marks we make on our scores can be active or passive, fixed or flexible.

• Categorizing markings allows us to be more specific, making practicing easier for our students because they know precisely what to do and how to do it.

• Students should mark scores themselves whenever possible. Older students may also write their assignments down in their assignment books.

• Flexible markings extend the assignment notebook onto the score in an interesting way. They also allow students to self-assess and see their progress.