If you think about it, early time slots aren’t such a far-fetched idea. Many parents regularly drive their children to 7am competitive sports practices several times in a week. Plenty of students have a paper route that they navigate at ungodly hours of the morning.

So why not music lessons?

Those who teach younger students traditionally utilize weekday afternoons, evenings and Saturdays. As long as your teaching space is usable before 9am, there’s nothing to stop an enterprising music teacher from offering lessons at the crack of dawn when they will have little or no competition from other teachers. Two types of students in particular could benefit from these early morning times:

1. School-age students with possible sports or work conflicts after school
2. Working adults

The financial benefits of offering morning lesson times are not to be undrestimated. If you fill the 7-9am time slot five days a week at, say, $40 per hour, that’s an extra $400 per week added to your bottom line. With a 32-week teaching schedule, that would amount to an extra $12,800 of teaching income over the course of a year.

Have any of you ever taught at the first flush of morning? How was your concentration? How was the experience of your students different from later in the day?

However, I’ve found that a student’s path from initial contact to full studio registration can be more complex. This year I’ve devised several more categories in order to more efficiently track students at every stage in their path through my studio.

Here are the categories you can use:

1. Uncontacted. These are the students you’ve either received referrals for or who have contacted you. The people on this list are the ones you need to call or email for the first time.

2. To Meet. These are students you’ve contacted and would like to get together for an initial interview.

3. Undecided. After an initial meeting, many students (or their parents) still aren’t ready to commit. These students are to be followed up at a later date. Eventually they’ll either be registered, dropped from your studio list, or placed on the waiting list.

4. Waiting List. If your studio is completely full, these are the students to be notified if openings come available.

5. Returning/Unconfirmed. Many students intend to register for the next year but are late confirming their return to your studio.

6. Registered. These are the students who have committed to your studio, have paid, and have set a time. Registered students get first dibs on your studio schedule. If you teach at more than one location or work for more than one employer, you should make a separate Registered list for each one.

7. Former students. The final resting place of students on your lists.

Lists 1-4 should correspond to students on your MTH Waiting List. Depending on how you run your studio, the students on the Returning/Unconfirmed list will be on either your Active Students or Waiting List category. Registered students should always be on your Active Students list and should be removed from it as soon as they withdraw.

This system requires an extra level of organization on top of your MTH account, but it should clarify the status of each student as you move into the critical late August – early September registration period. You can easily implement this system using sticky notes, a whiteboard, a notebook, or a spreadsheet.

How do these registration stages work for your studio? What other categories would you recommend?

Central to the idea of exploration at an instrument is the notion of practicing as pure play, as opposed to practice as rehearsing, working, or merely repeating. All students (and professonals too!) need some emotional distance from their goals once in a while in order to fully take the time to pursue where their imagination is taking them. Children already know this innately – are we doing our best to enable this wonderful human quality?

Here are four things that teachers and parents can do to re-start student creativity:

1. Wean students away from constant parental involvement. The creative impulse often requires silence and solitude. From time to time, leaving a young student to their own devices at their instrument is an excellent idea. What they lose in the achievement of daily practice tasks they may gain in understanding, exploration, and fun. If they enjoy this time spent privately at their instrument, it might just pay big dividends down the road when they eventually play at an advanced level, enjoying the rich rewards of both trusting the responses of one’s own body and the practice process.

2. Encourage students to play rather than work at the instrument. It’s no accident that the English word for “operating a musical instrument” just happens to be “play”. The notion of practice as play is all too often forgotten, and rediscovering it will help to animate one’s creative self.

3. Enable students to learn new repertoire and new styles. Several of my students have an interest in playing both ragtime, jazz, and gospel music, and since they have the time over the summer to pursue these styles, I’m more than willing to oblige. Of course, there’s a lot of self-interest on my part in encouraging this exploration, as my students’ discovery becomes a prime opportunity for me to uncover a lot of new and interesting music that will be beneficial to my entire studio over the long run.

4. Encourage students to improvise. In spite of the rich compositional legacy of the European, jazz, and popular traditions, very few teachers ever encourage or teach their students how to improvise at their instrument. Of course, any six-year-old can make up songs without any encouragement, and free time spent at their instrument will increase the chances of crrating their own musical works.

Once students are comfortable in their own skin in the practice studio, discovering new styles and imorovising, there’s a big chance that they might end up creating their own compositions. Next month I’ll look at ways that you can encourage and assist students eager to make the jump into composing.

Many of my younger students played exceedingly well, far better than they had played in their lessons even a few days previously. While I was somewhat irked that they may have saved their hardest work for the last few days before the recital, I was hopeful that they may have discovered that elusive love of performing for an audience that will propel them to the next level of their development, perhaps even a lifelong love of playing piano.

In the second half of the program, students from my collaborative piano class performed a variety of duet, art song, and chamber music repertoire. The collaborative piano course I teach at the Royal Conservatory School is unique in that it is geared towards professional or semi-professional adults in the community. Since the students who take the class are mostly pianists who want to re-connect with both musical life and each other, the class ends up being equal parts social club and learning experience. Nevertheless, it was wonderful to see so much growth in their playing in the four months since the class started this semester.

But the recital wasn’t just about fun and games. Many of my students are preparing for their Royal Conservatory exams in June, and this was their last chance to try out their pieces before the real thing in a few weeks. Wish them luck!

This mental and musical multitasking can be a sizable mountain to climb for younger pianists making their first acquaintance with the form, so it’s important to have a clear order of battle when learning one of these beasts, whether for the first time or the forty-eighth.

Here’s how I learn a fugue and how I teach others to learn one:

1. Play through the entire fugue at the first sitting. That’s right. Dig right in and get the darned thing learned, mistakes and all. Write in some fingerings if you need to, figure out which hand is playing what, and get to the end in one session. It usually takes an hour or so, and if you end up crawling away from the piano afterwards to cry into a plate of chocolate chip cookies or play World of Warcraft for the rest of the evening, that’s okay.

2. Spend more time learning fingerings, articulations, division of the hands, and getting fluent. Working at the entire texture, get the nuts and bolts of the piece worked out so that you can play it tolerably well.

3. Learn each voice individually. You don’t need to play with either the same fingerings or even the same hand that you played with in step 2. You just need to be able to hear the voice, its musical shape, where the phrase is going, and how you want to play it. Do this for every single voice in the fugue. Think of it like individual members of a choir going home and learning their parts before the next rehearsal.

4. Learn each combination of voices. Once you’ve learned the individual voices, it’s time to put them together in every possible subset of voices. Yes, every single one. That means for a 3-voice fugue (with soprano, alto, and bass parts) you’ll play SA, SB, and TB. For a 4-voice fugue (with soprano, alto, tenor, and bass parts) you’ll play SA, ST, SB, AT, AB, TB, SAT, SAB, and ATB. For 5-voice fugues it gets even more complex, but do every single combination and you’ll really know what you’re doing.

5. Put the entire fugue together again. Now is where it helps to have done some accurate work in step 2. However, when you put all the voices back again, the experience of having spent time learning the voices individually and in combination will completely change the experience of playing the fugue, as well as what you’re able to comprehend. By now, you should have a sense of whether this is a stretto or episodic fugue (or combination thereof), as well as how each voice has its own character in relation to the others.

After step 5, you’ll be ready to do even more technical, musical, or analytical work with your interpretation thus far. Or you can go back to step 3 again and practice the individual lines again. At any rate, you will have already done the toughest work regarding how to wrap your fingers and brain around what can be some of the most wonderful, complex, frustrating, and glorious music in the repertoire.

Image by allaboutgeorge

Yesterday when judging the ORMTA Southern Zone Competition in Hamilton, Ontario, one of the participants came up to me before performing and asked if it would be appropriate if he talked about one of the pieces on his program before playing it. My response to the pianist was that more than being just appropriate, it was a brilliant idea and I looked forward to hearing him speak.

The piece that he was playing was Larysa Kuzmenko’s In Memoriam to the Victims of Chernobyl, a dramatic, moving, and atonal piece, precisely the kind of piece that many people might have difficulty connecting with. That is, until they understand that it is also a work dedicated to those who perished in the most catastrophic nuclear accident in history. The pianist also mentioned the current Japanese nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiishi nuclear plant as a contemporary frame of reference. Because of his introduction, the audience was able to connect with his fine performance on a level that they might not have had he not talked beforehand.

Audiences love it when performers talk. It is absolutely necessary for every single type of popular music, and many artists in these genres are able to connect in ways that they would not be able to by merely keeping silent and playing their music.

We in the classical music world need to learn how to talk to audiences for two reasons:

1. It helps you connect with those who have come to see your performance. Let’s face it, the traditional concert situation is more than a little awkward these days, with a room full of audience members who may be largely uncomfortable with the experience of going to see music live and, to make matters worse, keep quiet all the way through. They often feel like they’re supposed to merely observe, although they’re not certain what they’re supposed to appreciate. When you speak to them, you can break through that distance right away, and if they find you engaging, you can start the process of winning them over before you’ve even played a note.

2. Audiences for the most part really, really want to like classical music, to understand and appreciate it. But since it’s not a part of current popular culture, many people feel a kind of distance between themselves and the music, and perhaps more than just a little intimidated around the high culture that allegedly goes with it. Finding the right tone and words to introduce a work of music (preferably without sounding the slightest bit high-minded) can reassure the audience that they may just have the ability to appreciate the music on your program and want to look further into the world of experience that classical music can provide.

Regarding what you’re actually going to say, it’s always best to find the words that come from a place of genuine connection rather than what you feel you’re supposed to say. It might even be a worthwhile idea to talk about your own personal journey and how as a performer you connect with the music you’re about to play rather than throwing around complex musical terminology. Try it. Your audiences will thank you.

If you’ve got an exam coming up and you want to do better than you did last time, here are some things to take into consideration if you want to be even more prepared next time around:

1. Make sure your repertoire is memorized. From Grades 1-7, 6 marks are awarded for memory (2 per piece), regardless of how well the performance goes. If you play the piece from memory in Lists A through C, you get the memory marks. Period. In Grades 8 through 10 (as well as Prep A and B), the memory marks are rolled into the marks for the piece as a whole, so you lose the memory marks out of the total of the entire piece if you use music (Note: In ARCT Performance exams, memory is absolutely mandatory so it is not included in the mark). Either way, it’s a winning bet that memory pays big dividends when playing repertoire selections, However, remember that studies don’t need to be memorized (except at the ARCT Performers level).

2. Learn your technique early, and learn it properly.  Scales, chords, and arpeggios. Know them well. Learn the technical requirements for your grade early. Practice them every day. Mix them up, starting with major, then minor, scales, then chords. The possibilities are limitless. Once technique becomes part of your practice routine, the better you’ll get at it.

3. Work on ear training. Depending on the grade, you’ll need to either clap or play back a melody and identify intervals, chords, and cadences for 10% of your grade. Unlike the subjective marks for studies, repertoire, or technique, ear training marks are much more objective. Either you get them or you don’t. For this reason, I recommend to everyone that they spend the time learning the ear training system for each grade, so that they can score as high as they can on this section of the exam. Ear training counts for 10% of the total mark, and these are marks you really want.

4. Work on sight reading. If you can sight read well, you’re developing the ability to eventually sit down and play any piece of music that is set down in front of you, a skill that can bring you years of pleasure as a musician. Sight reading is another 10% of your mark on the exam, broken down into 7 marks for playing and 3 for clapping. Although I regularly teach various tips and tricks to make your sight reading more effective, none of these are as powerful as simply sitting down in front of the piano every single day and making yourself play a new piece from sight. Practice this skill and you’ll get good at it. Many students whose playing would otherwise be adequate enough to propel them to a mark of 80% (First Class Honours) don’t get there because in the closing minutes of their exam, they stumble on sight reading.  On the other hand, get a good mark here and you will definitely raise your chances of scoring above 80% for the entire exam.

5. Learn a lot of repertoire early in the learning process for the grade. Preparing repertoire for a grade level consists of much more than learning three pieces and two studies. It consists of learning about styles, about composers, listening to the music of different times, learning the difference between them and being able to play lots of new and fascinating pieces. Therefore, I recommend an initial learning period in each grade level where you’re taking in a lot of repertoire when everything is new, fresh, and a little uncomfortable. Then slightly later down the road, you can limit yourself and focus on what you’re going to play for festivals and exams, polishing your performance and doing the memory work well ahead of time (see #1).

If you have any comments or questions about RCM/NMCP exams, leave a comment and I would be glad to respond. You can find the 2008 Piano Syllabus here. Don’t forget that the registration deadline for Spring 2011 exams is February 22 in the United States and March 1 in Canada.

What are the instruments and what do they sound like? Are there different types of classical music? What does a conductor do? What on earth is one supposed to listen for in a concert?

These are complex questions whose answers are not often to be found in the annals of popular culture. As teachers, we can touch on these subjects, but in a weekly lesson, it can be extremely difficult to allocate enough time to teach the depth of knowledge required to enjoy classical music to the fullest.

Fortunately, there’s a new way that students can learn about this vibrant tradition. From February 23- to March 15, 2011, the New York Times Knowledge Network will be presenting How to Listen to Classical Music, an online course geared towards music students and casual listeners. Teaching the course will be respected journalist Daniel J. Wakin. From the information I’ve seen, it looks like the online class will be neither a music theory nor a history course, but a musical listening journey designed to unlock a lifetime of pleasure exploring classical music.

If you or your students are interested, you can register online. The course costs USD$135 and will be delivered using the Epsilen Learning Management System, known for its multimedia and collaborative learning tools. This is not a large price to pay, considering that similar courses regularly offered through schools can run to two or three times the price of what the NYT Knowledge Network is asking.

What is the greatest benefit of a genuine understanding of classical music? The basic knowledge needed to develop a collecting and concert-going habit that  allows you to dig into a musical world that you could not possibly exhaust, even through a lifetime of listening and performing. Students who understand this can be the most rewarding of all to teach.

I was mulling this very question a few weeks ago when I seized upon a simple fact regarding people’s tech habits these days:Nearly all my students or their parents bring cell phones to lessons.

Specifically, cell phones that have video cameras. When demonstrating a passage in a lesson at the Royal Conservatory a few weeks ago, I decided to ask my student to film me while I was playing. She gladly agreed, and a week later, she had mysteriously corrected the passage in question and was improving steadily throughout the piece.

I decided to try this for other students, and had them film me on either their own cell phone or their parents’ whenever they would hit a particularly difficult passage that required some modeling on my part. It seems like the act of filming me demonstrating the passage (and then watching the playback at home) helped them to understand how to play it better. Some of them took the act of filming very seriously and opted for a moving camera that zoomed in at certain places in the music.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve even evolved different ways of having students film me when they’re learning a new work. Sometimes I’ll play the right hand alone, then the left hand alone, followed by the piece with hands together. When they’re learning hands separately, they can simply play the video for one hand while working on the other so they can learn to hear what both hands sound like at an early stage of learning. I’ve even found that this approach can significantly lessen the amount of time needed to learn a piece.

In addition, many of my students prefer emailed lesson notes through MTH. The combination of having video of difficult passages and lesson notes on their email accounts means that while they’re engaged in practicing, they can also spend quality time with their cell phone…as a practice tool.

Of course, it goes without saying that you cannot screw up when having your students videotaping you play. After all, you never know where the video footage may end up in this age of technology and over-sharing. But on the other hand, if you are confident in your abilities as a performer and arrive at lessons well-prepared for what you’re about to teach, it might not be the worst thing ever to happen if your flawlessly executed G# minor 4-octave formula pattern ended up on someone’s Facebook account.

Why are you here? What are you about as a teacher? What is your core purpose? 20 years from now, what do you want your students to have taken away from their encounter with music in your studio?

Here are some possibilities:

• Sharing the joy of music making
• Finding the goodness in each student and working to find its outlet in their progress
• Creating a healthy approach to an instrument
• Passing on the greatest aspects of a musical style
• Passing on the greatest aspects of a performing tradition
• Finding each student’s individual path to excellence
• Helping students to understand their own personal voice

You don’t need to have every single one of these goals foremost in your mind.

You only need one, maybe two.

And from that single-mindedness, everything else will follow. Business plans, studio policies, week-to-week goal-setting, communications, parent management, festival and audition preparation, and referrals will all fall into place with your fine teaching, but at the core of it all, you need that underlying purpose that will generate the details of your teaching practice.

What is your underlying purpose as a teacher? What core values have you observed in teachers that have influenced you?