New Year… New Blog

I’ve heard that our lives renew every seven years. So far this seems to hold true for me. Buying and selling houses, changing jobs, raising kids, etc. 2012 marks the beginning of another 7 year cycle for me (I’m not saying which one) and already I see the changes. Today I’m closing The Music Studio and moving my teaching to my home. I’m selling the piano I’ve used for the past (almost 7) years and using the one I have in my living room. I’ve also started a year long recording project that’s bringing me back to the piano bench and the pieces I love. Of course, I had to start a new blog about the project… so I invite you to follow along and see where this leads…Come visit me at The Go Play Project.

Go Play Project – Week 3

Like many piano teachers I rely heavily on the compositions of Dennis Alexander, Melody Bober and Robert Vandall to light a fire under my students. Their music is fun to perform and has a big sound. It’s very approachable music and the musical patterns make much of it relatively easy.

However, I realize it’s also necessary to challenge my students with some meatier classics. I remember performing the Ravel Sonatine in high school and having a heck of a time hearing all the inner voices, let alone trying to isolate them and “bring them out.” But this week I realized how lucky I was that I could pull out the Sonatine and whip it into  shape for tonight’s “Go Play” upload. Hard to believe, but it was still in my fingers (wrong notes and all) but this time around, it was so much easier and more enjoyable to play.

Let’s make lessons fun for our students, but let’s not forget that they might sit down at the piano thirty or forty years down the road and want to be able to play a Chopin Nocturne, a Bach Fugue, or a piece by Debussy or Ravel.

You can hear this week’s Go Play installment here – Ravel Sonatine II: Mouvement de Menuet.

Go Play Project – Week 2

This week I dealt with a bout of the flu, drove my son back to college, got back to my full teaching schedule….OOOPS. I FORGOT!  This is a no-excuses piano year. And I’m happy to say, even with the exciting Denver-Pittsburgh game on in the next room, I managed to meet my self-imposed Sunday night deadline and uploaded my piece for the the second week of the Go Play 2012 Project. As I mentioned before, I’ve made it my New Year’s Resolution to learn (and record) one piece a week during 2012. The best part of the project is that I can choose whatever I want to play!

This week’s piece is Moszkowski’s Etude Opus 72 No. 6 in F major, a piece Horowitz compared to an “after dinner mint.” I call it one of my Twitter Pieces because I first heard about it through James Rhodes, one of the many fine pianists I follow on Twitter. His tweets about piano, practicing and a musicians life have motivated me to sit down and pull out some of my old favorite pieces as well as assemble a binder of music that I’ve downloaded from IMSLP including this etude.

Anybody care to join me in this one-a -week by-the-seat-of-your-pants recording project?

Go Play Project 2012

Like many piano teachers, over the years my own piano playing has taken a back seat to teaching and all the administrative work that goes along with running a music studio. This year I’ve decided to change that. I am making a commitment to record one piece a week in 2012 and upload it to Soundcloud. Piano teachers, would you care to join me in this challenge? Here’s what we’ll get out of it:

1. A cure for those of us who are procrastinators or perfectionists.
2. An chance to share our favorite repertoire and learn new pieces.
3. An opportunity to show our students what they can accomplish if they practice.

Who wants to join me in the “Go Play Project 2012?”

Rubinstein Plays Chopin

A gift for you this holiday season!

A message to piano students

Flickr Creative Commons – photo by Johnny Grim

My piano teaching has changed over the years, partly due to a general mellowing that’s occurred after (I hate to admit it) thirty years… but also partly due to the technological upheaval of the past decade. As I’ve talked about before, this new generation of piano students is a generation that has grown up with immediate access to information. Instant gratification has become their way of life.

As Andrew Hickey, blogger behind Faster than Light says:

My generation is starving for useful, thoughtful, intelligent, and inspiring information. If we want to learn how to do something – anything – we can google it, and be on our way; there’s even a how-to-do-everything podcast. If that weren’t enough, Wikipedia has an entry on just about everything, with all links eventually leading back to philosophy. We can learn about the fundamental stuff of the universe – or whatever philosophers ramble about — with a few mouse clicks. For those of us that don’t like reading, there are infographics and videos on every topic out there. When we aren’t absorbing information, we’re expressing ourselves by the millions, through sites like DeviantArt, Flickr, Tumblr, Etsy, WordPress, and more. Perhaps we are too entitled, too lazy, or too impatient, but, we aren’t stupid. I don’t accept that. We have access to more information than any other generation, and we are using it. We are becoming smarter with the information we are using, even if much of it drips through the cracks of obnoxious YouTube videos and incomprehensible memes. Perhaps I’m being sophomoric, but I think the internet is fundamentally good, because knowledge is fundamentally good. Maybe that crazy greek bastard was onto something when he said, “The only good is knowledge, the only evil is ignorance”. And, if you don’t know who I’m talking about, just google it.

I hate to admit it, but I have become one of those people he describes…apparently the exception to the rule considering my age. (Read Andrew’s entire post here.)

Twenty tabs open. Music playing. Headphones on. Lukewarm coffee on desk. Occasionally, I feel less like a person, and more like an amoeba that feeds on tweets, notifications, and followers.

So, to all you piano students, how has this changed my teaching over the past few years? Here are a few things that are important to me as a teacher as we immerse ourselves deeper into the digital age.

Read: The ability to sightread music has become my number one goal for you. If you learn nothing else I want you to be able to pick up a piece of music, any music, and play it. With all the classics available on IMSLP there’s a world of music at our fingertips (and you won’t be able to play any of it if you’re depending on YouTube video tutorials.)

Listen: There’s no excuse for not listening to music. With hundreds of thousands of sound files available online I can’t accept a blank stare when I ask you what you’ve been listening to lately.

Scales and Chords: Most Western music is written using the diatonic scale. There are 24 possible keys that a piece can be written in. Practicing your scales will make it easier for your fingers to find the right notes and for your ears to correct the wrong notes.

Anything Goes:  When it comes to choosing repertoire, I try to introduce you to as many different composers and musical genres as I can but I love when you bring me something I’ve never heard.  And you won’t surprise me with something new unless you listen. (see above)

Random Access: There’s no rule that says we have to finish Book One before we go to Book Two. There’s also no rule that says we can’t skip Book Two all together. Or Book One for that matter. Method books aren’t for everyone.

Creativity:  Most of you high school students have a senior project due this year. Let’s see something that represents real out-of-the-box thinking and entrepreneurship.

Play: If you’re taking piano lessons and don’t take the time to practice, ask yourself why. Would you practice if you were working on different pieces? Is there something you don’t understand? Do you remember what drew you to piano lessons in the first place? Maybe you’d go to the piano more often if you improved your sight reading skills, listened to more music, skipped around a bit in your book, gave yourself an interesting goal…get the picture?

Sightreading for fun

I love teaching piano during the month of December. We put away the pieces we’re working on, skip the scales and exercises, and spend the lesson time sight reading Christmas music…traditional carols, popular Christmas standards like Mel Tormé’s Christmas Song and Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, music from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, piano arrangements from The Grinch, Polar Express, and even arrangements of Transiberian Orchestra pieces. The students choose pieces to learn quickly for the annual Christmas recital/party.  One of my students, who happens to have a lovely voice, chose Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles’ “Winter Song” to perform this year.

Why is this so important to me? Well, as I told another one of my students this week…learning how to play the piano without sitting down and playing through the music you like, is like learning how to read and never picking out a book from the library.