Category: creative juices

Defeating The Performance Time Boogie Man

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So, you’re sitting at the BIG black monster – uh, piano – in front of a crowd of people. You’re playing your piece, and suddenly your brain goes on strike and you don’t know what notes to play. YIKES!!!

Most musicians have had this happen before, but what to do? These episodes seem to linger in  our performance memories for years and can be quite traumatic. I can still remember forgetting my piano piece in my second piano recital at age 6. It was so awful that my teacher had to finish the song for me! Well, piano students around the world need not fear this happening to them any longer. If during practice a certain phrase constantly escapes your student’s memory, this is a clue that some precautions must be put in place at performance time to combat any possible brain strike.

That’s where the blocks come in! One of my very young students was having trouble remembering the “fa la la la la” phrase in Deck the Halls. So, in a last-minute moment of inspiration, I grabbed some letter blocks and used them to spell out the notes of the phrase. We used them each time during the lessons leading to the performance so my student could get used to them being there. At the performance, the blocks were great because you couldn’t see them over the book stand like you would a book. My student was able to relax knowing that if he couldn’t remember his notes they were right there in front of him and the audience didn’t even know!

What precautions do you take to combat the inevitable performance time boogie man’s sabotage efforts?

Songwriting Game

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Yesterday I came across a set of balls in my studio like the ones you see at places like Chuck E Cheese where the kids can get in a pit and just have a good time. I had purchased them a while ago knowing that eventually I’d get an idea about how to use them to teach music. Well yesterday was the day the idea finally arrived! SONGWRITING BALLS!

This is an activity that can be done with any instrument, not just piano!

The balls conveniently come in 5 colors. I purchased mine at Wal Mart. Of course in my mind the number 5 screams PENTATONIC SCALE. So, I chose one note of the pentatonic scale for each color. C – red, D – orange, E- blue, G- green, and A-yellow and wrote these one the balls. I made 5 sets of each color.

To play the game (which is really writing a song), place all the balls in a large hat or bag.

Then, using a composing worksheet such as the ones you can find on Susan Paradis’ site, determine how many balls to draw from the bag. You will need one for each note of the song.

Each time a ball is drawn from the bag, write the note name in the appropriate space on the composing worksheet.

Since we are only using the pentatonic scale for this song, any combination should sound nice. You could also specify that the first ball drawn will be the first and last not of the song.

Once you’ve got all the notes written on the worksheet, it’s time to play your new masterpiece!

Extensions – Add lyrics!

Use the G and C balls to demonstrate V-I progression. Add this to the end of your song to show how lots of songs end this way. Have your student play G-C up and               down the chosen instrument.

Secret Practice

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  As we get close to Spring Performance time I am modifying what practice looks like for my younger students. They will be given the wonderful job of presenting a concert at home for family members! We’ll brainstorm ways to really ham up the performance with costumes, tickets, and maybe even snacks! I will tell them 1 or 2 songs that have to be part of the concert and they can add others if they like. Then at home they will give out invitations to their concert which can be printed here. There are two versions of the invitation. The first has a picture on the cover that they can color. The other one has a space for them to draw their own picture. Inside each invitation is a space to write the titles of the pieces they will play. You can download the files by clicking the images above. Once you print the file all you have to do is fold the paper in half horizontally and then fold again like a card. Presto! Instant kid concert invitations and a practice sessions with no tears!

If you want more ideas about how to make practice fun for kids see “Don’t Practice, Play A Game”

Linking Piano With School

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Young students learning to play the piano enjoy making connections between what they are doing at school and what they are doing with piano. When my daughter was in Kindergarten her teacher chose a different student to be Student of the Week every Friday. That student got the opportunity to bring home the class teddy bear for the weekend. They were supposed to take care of the bear all weekend and involve the bear in all their activities, take pictures, and show the class on Monday. She saw this as a wonderful chance for her to teach the bear how to play the piano. “Teaching” the bear to play her current song gave her lots of fun practice time that she didn’t even know she was getting!

Hot Cross Buns For Easter

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Hot Cross Buns For Easter

This may be a little too late for today, but you can still share it with your piano players since most piano students learn to play Hot Cross Buns. This is a link to a site that posts videos that teach kids how to cook. Just click the link above or go to spatulatta.com to watch the video recipe.

Spring Break Music Travel

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Family vacations and day trips are great opportunities to explore each other’s interests. For musical families or families with anybody who is musical this can mean adding an additional adventure to an already planned trip. That’s what we did on our most recent trip. Although not everyone in my family is musical we all enjoyed it. We didn’t have to take a huge chunk of time out of our vacation to do it either. It was just another memory making moment in time. So, families, make the most of this Spring Break and visit a music related display, concert, or anything else musical you can think of!!! You never know what it could lead to.

Easter Egg Surprises

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Here is a quick activity that can be used in the piano lesson or as a piano assignment to be done at home! To use it in the piano lesson, you will need 12 plastic eggs, a sharpie or other permanent marker, and some candy. On each egg draw a staff, add a treble clef or bass clef and draw a note. I used treble clef space notes since my students have been working on these lately. I also made one egg for each space note as a quarter note, half note, and whole note since some kids struggle to grasp the concept that ANY note can be a quarter note, half note, or whole note. You can have students hunt for the eggs around your studio or randomly pick one from an egg carton or Easter basket. If they can correctly identify the note and its value, they get to open the egg and keep the prize inside!

As an at home assignment, kids can draw the notes themselves and write the letter name on the back. A special prize can be given for completing this assignment.

What’s In The Box?

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This beautiful box was a gift to my studio from one of my piano families. When I got it I thought, “wow so many possibilities”. In fact so many ideas about how to use it in the studio ran through my mind that I still don’t know exactly what I’ll use it for. All I know is that I want it to be something everyone in the studio can use and look forward to. Maybe it will be a mystery box where I keep spontaneous awards for miscellaneous accomplishments during the lesson. Or maybe it will be a suggestion box. Or maybe it will be a surprise activity box that the students get to do at the beginning or end of each lesson! Hmmm. Can you help me out with more suggestions?

NBC’s The Voice – Preschool Style!

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Today my 3 year old music class was in a singing mood. Two of the boys in particular wanted to sing. After the first boy sang, the second boy said I can do it! And the next thing I knew the two of them were in a singing battle and critiquing each other in between. This has NEVER happened in my class before and it gave me the idea to abandon the planned activity for the day and convert the class into an episode of The Voice. We have a large mat in our classroom where the children usually sit for circle time. We used this for the boxing ring like the one from the TV Show. Kids volunteered two at a time to step into the ring and sing. The rest of the class played the audience and showered the singers with applause after every round. Everybody was eager for their turn. I captured video of each performance and the kids looked forward to watching the videos afterwards. To top it off, one kid gave out pretend trophies to each performer!

What and awesome day!