As summer approaches, I know my stable teaching schedule during the school year will turn topsy-turvy in a month. With vacations, football practices, and summer musicals, students are busier than ever. This summer I am trying a few new ideas to make summer lessons productive for students and worth a place in their crazy schedules.
In my last article, I talked about the misgivings that I had about adding pop music to private lessons. Instrumental and Vocal teachers alike deal with adding “popular” music to lessons on a pretty regular basis. The student that only likes to play/sing Disney songs, the student with an upcoming talent show, the student that dreams of being on American Idol. I’ve seen all of these things and more. They hear these songs on a daily basis and they love them. They sing them all the time. You might as well capitalize on all of that passion and put it to some good uses. Here are a few ideas.
1. Work on style. Listen to a recording of the song you are learning and a contrasting song (maybe a classical piece that you are working on) discuss the things that the artist did on the popular song that are different than the classical song. You could also do the same thing with another version of the song that you are working on. If you are teaching a singer, you can talk about the ways that those sounds could have been created in a recording studio and how duplicating those things without the technology can be harmful to your voice. If you are teaching an instrumentalist, try to find ways to recreate some of the vocal sounds with the instrument.
2. Talk about swing style. Most pop pieces use some form of swing style. Explain how to swing a piece. Then have the student play a part of the song exactly as written and then have them play it swung. I find that it helps to snap my fingers in time with the music to emphasize the swing feel.
3. Talk about how to change the classical style to keep good technique but create the correct sound for the style (ex. the twang for country or bending pitches.)
4. Work on learning syncopated rhythms. Talk about syncopation and how it sounds and then learn some rhythm patterns with syncopation. Take a section out of a piece of popular music that has those patterns in it and learn it. This is useful if a piece that a student really loves is not within their grasp musically. They still get to learn a little bit of it. It’ll encourage them to work harder so that they can learn more of it.
5. Because popular music is usually heard first and then learned and played (as opposed to most classical music which is learned first and then played) it is a good thing to use to work on ear training. Play a simple piece and ask the student to try to recreate what they hear. (I usually use something like Lean on Me because of the scale motion in the beginning.) Then pull out the sheet music and see how close they were able to get. (Most of it can be downloaded and printed at home using either Music Notes or Sheet Music Plus if you have an internet connection.
Pop music is not going to go away any time soon. It is always going to be something that your students will have an interest in. Use their energy and excitement to help them improve in other areas and it is a win win for both of you. Plus it’ll keep you up to date on what is THE hit song of the moment. HINT its not “Everything I Do” which was popular when I was a freshman in High School.
Instructions on how to import a csv file to Outlook: (From Microsoft Knowledgebase Article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/196743), such as MTH Calendar.
To use a Microsoft Excel workbook to import information, cancel everything in Microsoft Outlook, and then open up the file in Excel. To do this, follow these steps:
Have you checked out About.com online? It has lots of “neighborhoods” featuring information about all sorts of interests, and one of them is music education. Started in 1996, About.com has been run since 2005 by the New York Times company.
The music education site presents information and resources on music theory, history of music, profiles of musicians and composers, online music games, and lesson plans. Every week a newletter is emailed to those who sign up, with links to their articles about specific topics within each of these areas–spotlights on certain performers or composers from various musical genres, lesson plans, a free music resource of the week involving songs, links and downloads; timely series built around, for example, Women’s History Month, Jazz Appreciation Month, and Black History Month. There are ideas about practicing, buying instruments, history timelines, etc.
Apart from the music education site, the larger site, about.com also has “neighborhoods” devoted specifically to folk music, classical, guitar, top 40/pop music, and children’s music. You can also sign up to receive weekly emails with highlights and links for any of these topics.
I have a lot of students with the desire to create their own music and songs. Over the years, I have been able to get things going, in the songwriting department, by teaching chord studies and then eventually encouraging students to piece the chords together in their own unique ways. I like to start with the C Major scale. After learning the Major scale and the chord progressions that follow (The I, IV, and V7 chords), it’s time to find a song with only the C, F, and G chords (there are so many out there). I first show them how to read the chords in a fake book, and then I give them a little pattern to follow: either the root note in the left hand bass line and the right hand playing the block chords in 4 beats, or maybe just some simple arpeggios.
They are usually thrilled with the beautiful music that they are making without actually reading music. After they have learned how to put 3 chords together, I usually encourage students to try piecing the 3 chords together in a song that they make up. They can either write words to it, or make it an instrumental. If it’s an instrumental, the teacher can always make up a duet part. That’s a good way to show improvisation in action.
Here are some good songs to begin chord studies with:
“Love Me Do” (C, G, D7)
“Iris” (Em, C, G, D)
“Surfin’ USA” (A7, D, G)
“Twist and Shout” (D, G, A7)
It’s the season for seasonal allergies, along with viral infections and subsequent hoarseness and voice loss - never welcome guests for singers. I am not a medical professional, but as a regular sufferer of allergies and other bronchial complaints I have learned a few tricks of the trade to alleviate symptoms.
When my husband suggested that I add pop music to the music that my students sing, I was a bit apprehensive. After all, I am a classically trained singer and I teach my students to sing largely classical and musical theater songs because I have felt that a good foundation is built on teaching the basics through classical song. My young students (who are 9 through high school age) need to have the skills to be able to go on and sing in productions at school, in choirs and solos. His thought was that it would meet some of their needs and desires and make private lessons more valuable to them (and thus less likely to be abandoned.) I have worked with adult clients on several styles of music as well as classical, so I was open to the idea. However, I did have a few concerns.
1. I needed to find ways to keep the student learning musical and performing skills.
2. I needed to make sure that the student would continue to sing/play with good technique even though it was a pop song.
3. I didn’t want their entire “diet” to become pop music.
For the past few weeks, I have been incorporating pop music into my lessons. Here is what I found. Adding pop music into lessons does a quite a bit to keep the students interest. Students are more likely to practice a popular song that they have chosen because they like it. I make my students sing pop music from sheet music. This forces them to look at the song in sheet music form and creates some really interesting discussions about the differences between whats on the page and what they hear on the recording. It also helps them to learn to read more difficult rhythms. Some pop songs are remakes of older songs or have multiple recordings made of them. It is fun to listen to older recordings to hear the differences in the song and how different performers have made the song their own.
To be continued.
Reconciling lessons is an important part of using Music Teachers Helper. Here are some tips on ways to do it.
Reconciling can be as simple as checking off that something happened. It can also be the moment you adjust something for the record, such as date, time, or how much you charged for a particular lesson. You can even issue a credit or partial credit, and at the end of this post, I’ll discuss how I’m using this for a new lesson cancellation policy I’m trying out.
But the most useful part of reconciling a lesson is to add lesson notes. These can be very simple or whole chapters in the saga of one of your students! It depends on how much time you want to spend, and on how you plan to use the notes.
When I started using MTH, I was concerned with how much time I would spend on lesson notes. But not only have I found them helpful for my own teaching, they are also very effective and supportive of students, to the point where I think they help keep students learning, enjoying, and continuing their lessons more. If this helps students learn better and helps you keep them longer as students, it certainly pays for your time in writing them.
I still try to be efficient with lesson notes, though, and one of the best ways to do this (more…)
We’re constantly adding improvements and enhancements to Music Teacher’s Helper, based on the requests of teachers like you. This month mostly consists of smaller improvements, in contrast to last month’s gigantic studio website overhaul, allowing you to add unlimited pages to your studio website. But there have been some useful improvements.
Competitions and Festivals: Repertoire Tracker Improvement
The most helpful improvement is probably the change we made to the Repertoire Tracker. We added two new options to the Repertoire Tracker which will help those of you who involve your students in competitions or festivals. (more…)
When tax time comes around, it’s helpful to see a list of all of your expenses, broken down into categories. Music Teacher’s Helper makes it very easy to do this, totaling up the amounts you’ve spent in each category over a period of time.
When you have an expense, such as office equipment, you can record it Music Teacher’s Helper with just a few clicks, and the report will be generated for you automatically. To record an expense, click on the “Billing” -> “Expenses & Other Income” menu. (more…)
