February is Black History Month. This is an excellent oppurtunity to teach your students some history of American Music. Our own American music style goes back to the days of slavery when Africans carried over their own folk music and merged it with the European classical and folk music that was brought here by the white folks. This is an awesome opportunity to teach a little history in your lessons.

I grew up in the southern part of the US, and Black History Month was always a very important time in our schools. Because of this, I grew up singing and playing many important songs from the pre-civil war era as well as the jazz age. I’ve compiled a list of songs you might want to consider teaching your kids this month, in honor of this special time: More…

daily observations “classical music insights” Charles Noble is the Assistant principal violist of the Oregon Symphony.  He blogs about his experiences with the orchestra, as well as his deep love of good coffee.  Follow Charles on Twitter.

Dial “M” for Musicology “Music, Musicology, and Related Matters.”   “This is a musicology group blog that features the prose stylings of Jonathan Bellman (University of Northern Colorado) and Phil Ford (Indiana University Jacobs School of Music). It is a place for us to work ideas out publicly in what is still, for our field, a somewhat new medium. We are members of the American Musicological Society, but our views are entirely our own and should not be taken as representative of the AMS or any other academic organization. “Dial ‘M’ for Musicology” is an academic blog, but it wants to be friends with everyone. Welcome to all critics, musicians, bedroom air-guitarists, louche aesthetes, prickly autodidacts, and random passers-by!”  There are also several new contributors who have joined the fold.  Often thought-provoking and always interesting, this is a great place to find things to think about.  4-8 posts monthly.

dramma per musica “My name is Bob Kingston. I’m a librarian, free-lance musicologist, lapsed bass-baritone, and self-professed opera fanatic living in Portland, Oregon.  I give all of the pre-performance talks for the Portland Opera, and I also lead music history classes for the company’s Studio Artists. I love collecting historic vocal recordings, and I often use examples of these in my classes and presentations. So, don’t be surprised if I post a clip of some obscure Russian tenor or Italian baritone from time to time.”  4-12 posts monthly.  I enjoy Bob’s tweets immensely.  Follow Bob on Twitter. More…

A Liberal’s Libretto “A Liberal’s Libretto is the place to look for news, commentary and real-life stories related to the ARTS and POP CULTURE.”  2-4 posts daily.  “American bass-baritone James Newman holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Voice Performance from Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington and continued his education in Opera Performance and Conducting at Arizona State University. He then moved to New York City where he began studying with internationally renowned soprano, Maria Spacagna with whom he studies today. When he’s not performing, James Newman blogs, follows politics, the arts and pop culture tirelessly and loves hanging out in Park Slope with his wife, soprano Jenn Raithel Newman and their daughter, Lyla.” Follow James on Twitter at www.twitter.com/JamesNewmanNYC

Alex Ross: The Rest is Noise “Books, articles, and a blog by the music critic of The New Yorker” Author of book The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. Posts infrequently: Newly changed over to Unquiet Thoughts under the aegis of The New Yorker magazine. He plans for several posts weekly.

Artistic Discourse… because the future of the arts depend on it “This blog is about many things: technology, sociology, economics, politics, arts policy and any other potential category of discourse that peaks my interest at the moment.  However, the underlying theme to all those sub-categories will always be, THE ARTS. Whether you agree with me or not throughout the course of this blog, I would hope that you share your thoughts.  I appreciate dissenting opinions almost equally as much as affirming ones.” Was posting More…

For string players and teachers, Connie Sunday offers a book in which she has written and collected many essays of interest to the string player and teacher.  This book is available online, in paperback via Amazon, in electronic book on Kindle, or on Mobipocket for reading on a PDA or Blackberry.

Online, it’s part of Connie’s amazing webpage which is primarily commercial, selling instruments, books, and supplies.  The website is so full of information, free materials, links to sources for puchasing supplies or buying books and magazines, that it can’t fail to be of interest to all string teachers, if only to get them thinking about what’s out there.

Connie’s book starts out with the history of the violin, and addresses questions about ornamentation and many other topics.  It includes FAQs about violins and violas, including More…

There have been increased debates over what came first in prehistoric conditions, speech or music. While this remains to be fully explained, the recent discovery of a Stone Age flute from 35,000 to 40,000 years ago has helped to shine a light on the musical talents of these ancient peoples. This flute-like instrument was found near present day Ulm, Germany, and seems to represent a time wherein older humans discovered their ability to created music by fashioning a flute out of a griffon-vulture bone. This newest discovery has helped to indicate that music was present at the dawn of human culture, and further boosted the theory that there were high levels of technical and musical sophistication. More…

Originally posted on my solo performance website blog, I ran across more information on this today (see UPDATE at the bottom of the page) & thought I’d pass my posting on to my MTH colleagues.  What do YOU think about applause at concerts?

Over the past several weeks I have asked my colleagues in person and via Facebook and Twitter: “During the Symphony for the Schools concert this morning at the beginning the kids applauded at 4-5 places during “Ride of the Valkyries” (1st piece). They were naturally applauding high points in the music. It made me start wondering. But, by the end, they weren’t applauding but were sitting restlessly. SHOULD we be so sure of ourselves & the importance of our presentation that we don’t allow the audience to participate in one of the only acceptable ways they have – applause? I’d LOVE to continue this conversation. I know I hate not being able to hear all the nuances of the music, but are we helping put the elitist label on classical music by proscribing when audiences can submit their input on the performance?”

Here is my Facebook Summary of responses:

“It’s always been weird but like with a cycle or set applause between each song would be tedious and also be distracting to the performer. So we hold off.”

“What if they want to applaud while you’re singing, like on American Idol or Sabado Gigante?”

“Yeah that’s annoying. I hate when you can’t hear them singing.”

“Amen!”

My Twitter responses: More…

Expose your students–and yourself–to as many styles of music as possible.  If you are involved in a fixed curriculum, plan some times to step out of it and include something different.

Every style of playing music embraces players of top quality.  Find them or recordings of them and let your students listen, and it’s of course educational for us as teachers as well.  We need to set the example for students to be exposed to a variety of styles, whether readily available or not.

Nowadays media companies try to control what most people hear in order to sell lots of their own product.  They know that people like what they hear the most.  Classical music wasn’t elitist when Walt Disney used it for all his sound tracks.

Too often we are prejudiced against a whole type of music without really listening to it, or without listening to good practitioners of that style.  For example, More…

I was lucky way back in high school, when my German teacher introduced me to Pachelbel’s Canon, before it was well known. In my high school, all the teachers had masters degrees, but oddly enough, both our German teachers had Ph.D.’s in music!

When it came time to write little bios in German class about different artists, musicians, architects, and writers, I chose Pachelbel–out of the blue, really. My teacher, who played harpsichord, came in one day with a copy for me of Pachelbel’s Canon and Gigue for 3 Violins and Continuo. I found it a beautiful piece, and fun to play, and because I came to appreciate it on my own, I suppose, it never affected me that the Canon has become so commonplace and subject to overuse in weddings and on elevator sound tracks, etc.

Johan Pachelbel was born in 1653 in Nuremburg, Germany, and died when he was 52, also in Nuremburg, though in the mean time he had lived in Vienna, and for some years lived in a house owned by the Bach family. Pachelbel was best known as an organ composer, and was important in the development of the fugue, of which he wrote about 100. More…

“In art, one has more often to fight against oneself, and the victories one wins are perhaps the most beautiful.” –Claude Debussy

One of the best ways to capture the attention of someone coming to your music teaching website is with a musical quote. Fortunately, most of the website templates that are available with Music Teacher’s Helper come already pre-loaded with one.

However, you can customize your website to reflect your philosophy and agenda as a music educator by adding a quote of your own choice. After you’ve logged in and are at your studio dashboard, go through the following dropdown menus to change your website’s default quote:

More…

You wouldn’t know it from seeing budget cuts in music programs, but as musicians and music teachers, we know how important music is to life and society, and we see weekly the effects it has on students.  The National Association for Music Education (MENC) keeps on top of scientific studies, as well as comments by leaders in society, about the important effects of music on children and adults alike.  Below are a few samples from the MENC page summarizing these studies and comments; in a few cases, I’ve gone into more detail than MENC does.

“When I hear people asking how do we fix the education system, I tell them we need to do the opposite of what is happening, cutting budgets by cutting music programs….Ask a CEO what they are looking for in an employee and they say they need people who understand teamwork, people who are disciplined, people who understand the big picture. You know what they need? They need musicians.”  Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, 6/07

A few years ago, a Canadian study of 6 year olds demonstrated that music lessons improves kids’ IQs.  Many people assumed that higher IQs among music students relates to better family situations, More…