Interesting Links

As you might have guessed by the lack of posts here, I've had a busy start to 2012! Today, I'll get back in the swing by sharing a few links to information that I've found interesting and useful in my piano teaching lately.

Why Extrinsic Rewards Are So Bad For Motivation - this post by Tim Topham is making me rethink whether my incentive program is a good idea.

Finale Notepad is now available as a free download.

As I get ready to start a spring composing project with my students, I'm enjoying using Susan Paradis' fun worksheets. Lots Of Goofs is a favorite.

This article is a great prompt for some discussion with older students: "Why does Adele's 'Someone Like You' make everyone cry? Science has found the formula."

I'm looking forward to attending a pedagogy symposium this Saturday at The University of Georgia:  Start Your Engines! Preparing Your Students For Success.  If you're nearby, come on over! It's free!

And finally, here's a funny picture that I bet many of you can relate to as well as I do!

Giveaway Winner

Congratulations to Cristina Beck who was chosen by random.org to be the winner of a free download of Michael Dulin's Christmas At Our House! Cristina, you'll be receiving an email from Alberti Publishing soon!

If you really wanted this book, but didn't win, don't forget that you can purchase your own copy, or anything else you'd like from Alberti Publishing at 30% off until the end of December. Just use this code at checkout:  MDN280.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Review and Giveaway: Christmas At Our House by Michael Dulin

I spent last night reading through a book of beautiful Christmas solos that I think you will enjoy! Christmas At Our House by Michael Dulin (Alberti Publishing) is a collection of early advanced pieces appropriate for recitals, Christmas parties, contemporary worship services, or just playing for pleasure.

Everyone loves playing and hearing Christmas carols, and my students are always motivated to practice these familiar favorites. Sometimes though, I must confess I get a little tired of the same old treatments of these pieces year after year. Dulin's beautiful arrangements breathe new life into "The First Noel," "Away In A Manger," "Silent Night," "Mary's Babe's A-Sleepin'," and "Joy To The World." Each piece is substantial at 6 or more pages, and would make a lovely addition to a Christmas recital, whether you assign it to a more advanced student or play it yourself.

The contemporary harmonies give these arrangements a fresh sound, and good high school players should find them appealing. I particularly like the fact that the virtuosic elements are incorporated organically, rather than sounding like a gratuitous opportunity to show off. Some of the challenges in these pieces include arpeggiated figures that span a tenth, hemiola, and cadenza-like runs.

Composer Michael Dulin studied piano performance at Birmingham-Southern College and at Julliard, and is an award-winning performer and composer. His work as a serious classical pianist informs these compositions. You can read his entire bio here.

If you'd like a copy of this book, I have good news! It's available as an ebook and you can purchase it at a 30% discount from Alberti Publishing by using this code at checkout:  MDN280. This makes the book slightly less than $5.60 - you can't beat that! The code is good through the end of December 2011.  In addition, you can enter a giveaway right here to win a free copy. Just follow the directions below to enter! Entries will close at midnight (EST) on Tuesday Nov. 29th, and I'll announce the winner Wednesday morning Nov. 30th. The winner will receive a link from Alberti Publishing to download a free copy of the ebook.

There are several ways to enter the giveaway, but leaving a comment on this post is the only mandatory one. You can earn additional entries by blogging about this giveaway, liking the Lowe Piano Studio facebook page, liking Alberti Publishing's facebook page, and tweeting about the giveaway. In fact, you can earn lots of entries by tweeting every day. The winner will be chosen randomly from all of the entries. I hope you'll share this giveaway with your friends and followers! Good luck!

Note: I received a free copy of Christmas At Home in return for writing an honest review. I received no additional compensation.

Review: Purple by Dror Perl

Disclosure:  I received a copy of Purple in return for an honest review. No other compensation was received.

Anyone who teaches middle schoolers knows the challenge of finding music that sounds contemporary and inspires but is still manageable for intermediate-level students. Dror Perl's color book series offers a superb solution!

The series contains three books, Red, Blue, and Purple. I shared Purple with both of my two eighth-grade girls, and they responded enthusiastically to the jazzy, bluesy harmonies and the grown-up look and feel of the book. We loved the touches of humor, as well. The titles are fun plays on the color with names like "Grape Jam," "Beet It," and "Purple Monkey Dishwasher."

I like many of the features of Purple - the sophisticated, jazzy harmonies and rhythms that sound more difficult than they really are, the chord symbols, helpful fingerings, gentle persuasion beyond five-finger positions - but what I like best is the treatment of the pedal notation. I've reached for this book over and over to show students a visual representation of what their foot is actually supposed to do. Take a look - isn't this great?

I recently shared Purple at a "show and tell" meeting of our local music teacher's association, and we all agreed that every method book should notate the pedal this way!

You can find Purple, Blue, and Red at SheerPiano.com. As an added bonus, right now everything is 25% off. Also available at the website are instrumental duet parts that correspond with several of the pieces in the books. How fun would it be to have a sibling or parent play along at a recital?

My two eighth-grade students have been eager to perform their Purple pieces for friends and both gave the book an enthusiastic thumbs up. Coming from middle schoolers, that's high praise!

Here's a clip of Anna playing Red and Blue Rumble. Anna says, "When you first play it, it's a little challenging, but when you get it, it just rolls out of your fingers."

Clip of Abby playing Purple Monkey Dishwasher

Teaching Sight Reading: This Works For Me

After years of making do by grabbing old lesson books for students to sight read from or even trying to write my own sight-reading exercises, I've stopped trying to reinvent the wheel and purchased a full complement of sight-reading books to keep in the studio.

I decided on Sight Reading And Rhythm Every Day by Helen Marlais and Kevin Olson and got all 10 levels. I'm not using them as they are intended - sending students home with their own copies to do a short daily exercise. The truth is, I think that my higher-achieving students would practice, not sight-read, and my other students would just not do it. Instead, we're taking about 3 minutes of the lesson to sight-read one or two short exercises from one page. At the beginning of the year, I decided on a starting point for each individual student in one of the levels, and we marked that page with a sticky note with the student's name. At each subsequent lesson, we move the sticky note to a new page and choose another short exercise or two. We're only doing about 1/4 of the book, but they are actually sight-reading something at every lesson, and moving forward in some sort of planned way rather than haphazardly.

I think you could do this with any series of sight reading books. I do like these books because of the extensive levels that make them appropriate for all of my students and the variety of things to do. Some of the exercises involve pencil work, such as filling in bar lines or circling guide notes. To keep from marking up the pages, I've covered those exercises with clear packing tape. The students can mark on it with a dry erase marker, and the marks wipe right off. If you look closely at the photo, you can just see the edges of the packing tape on the next to the last exercise.

I'm curious to know how other teachers deal with sight-reading! I hope you'll share your ideas in the comments!

A Lasting Influence

A few days ago, one of my former private teachers passed away at too young an age. I went through several very difficult experiences during the time I studied with him. While his musical influence was immeasurable, his personal influence was certainly one of the reasons I made it through those dark days with my sanity and faith intact.

It was just four years. How long will some of my piano students study with me? In the years that I’ve been teaching, I’ve had students who have been through parents divorcing, custody disputes, the deployment of military parents, deaths of family members, transfers between foster families, and who knows what all else that I haven't been aware of. I’m in no way qualified to be a counselor to them when they go through these things, but I know first-hand the immense value of communicating that I care deeply about them and the things that affect them. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the product of our teaching is not an ephemeral musical performance, but a person who is richer for having played it.

It's actually quite frequent that I am the only adult who spends one-on-one time with a child other than his parents. What a huge responsibility. We are crafting souls, for good or bad, whether we plan to or not.

Piano Parent Tip: Know and Respect Your Teacher's Make-Up Policy

Graphic by Marco Buonvino

Labor Day seems like an appropriate time to take on a subject that creates additional labor for piano teachers:  make-up lessons.  There's a wide continuum of policies among piano teachers about making up missed lessons. On one end is the teacher who will bend over backwards to make parents happy, even if it means giving up personal time and making financial sacrifices. On the other end is the teacher who makes no accommodations for missed lessons. Your own teacher's policy will depend on several things including the number of students he/she teaches and how full the schedule is, the presence or absence of a waiting list, and their own personality.

Over the years, I have found that parents often haven't thought through what they're really asking when they ask me to make up missed lessons. For instance, I had a parent once who wanted her two boys to be able to reschedule lessons for a month due to a sports schedule. I had already told my daughter that she could not sign up for soccer because the practices met during my teaching time which happened to be during these boys' lessons. It was now too late to sign my daughter up for soccer - we had already made the sacrifice. So, now that I'd already irretrievably dedicated one slot of time to this family, she wanted another time as well - which could only be taken from my personal time since my teaching schedule was full. In short, she wanted the ability to make some other activity a priority over piano, and she did not mind asking me and my family to be inconvenienced to facilitate it. Ironically, the lesson time she had originally agreed to prevented my daughter from participating in sports, but she also wanted some of my personal time so that HER children could participate in sports. Teachers who agree to demands like this become burned out. Quite often, their next course of action is to adopt a very strict no make-up policy because they've grown very tired of trying to make a studio full of over-scheduled families happy at their own expense.

I had another family once who wanted to take a month-long vacation and simply pay no tuition while they were gone. This would have resulted in a significant financial sacrifice on my part as I had no way to recoup the lost income. I can't just stick another student in that slot for a month and then kick him out once the original student returns. Even if I had not had a waiting list at the time (I did, which made this request absurd), I would not have agreed to it.  If I allow one family to do this, I'd have to extend that policy to all, and this would mean that any of my students could come and go as they pleased with no financial obligation. I can't run a business that way. Better to refuse and risk losing that student but maintain the integrity of my policy and the stability of my income.

Teachers also struggle with the fact that we have a very short number of after-school hours to devote to teaching. I usually try to fill up all of my available teaching time, which means that if a student is sick, I simply don't have an open time to shift them to unless I resort to using my personal time. The more students I have, the more burdensome this becomes.

I tell my parents that they should think of their monthly fee as tuition which reserves their place in my studio, not a per-lesson fee. Hopefully, your teacher has a clear, written policy about missed lessons. If he/she hasn't provided you with one, you might ask for one. It's much better to deal with this issue before it actually comes up so that you know what to expect. I've found that the best practice, by far, is to make my policy clear before the student ever begins lessons. Some teachers will make up lessons under certain conditions, some teachers may provide a swap list so that you can rearrange lessons yourself, and some teachers may make no accommodations at all. Know what your teacher expects, and don't go into the situation thinking that you'll talk her/him out of it or that you'll somehow be exempt.

I have some wonderful families who truly "get it." Last year, two families had situations come up which created a conflict with piano for a period of a few weeks. In both cases, they apologized for the conflict and simply pledged to continue to pay the tuition until the conflict had passed. They offered this up front without my having to defend my policy in any way. While I would have loved it if piano had been a bigger priority, I felt that they showed me a great deal of respect, and I respected their handling of the situation in return.

Those parents fully understand what Vicky Barham writes in a fantastic online article:  Make-Up Lessons From An Economist's Point Of View.  She teaches economics at her local university, and is the parent of music students. She explains, from the business perspective, why music teachers should not be under any obligation to find another spot during the week or to refund for missed lessons. Be sure to read it!

Thanks in advance for your support!

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