How the year has flown by! I can't believe that we're already gearing up for summer break! It's been a great year filled with great accomplishments and lots and lots of hard work. Our studio recital was a big success, and I'm so proud of each and every one of you! (Sorry I didn't catch everyone in time for the photo! Next time around!)
At your lesson this week we'll wrap up the school year with some fun summer pieces. Don't forget to bring your tokens - my store will be open for one more week! I'll also be doing some progress assessments for each student that I would love to share with parents if you have the chance to stop in.
I'll be teaching lessons during the summer on a weekly or bimonthly basis or by appointment. Those who take summer lessons will have their first choice in times slots for the coming year. I strongly encourage summer lessons as a way to continue to develop practice habits and prevent learning loss.
Thanks so much to all the hard working and supportive families who have made my career in teaching such a success. I love each and every one of you! Have a great summer!
This week our selection from around the world comes from beautiful Sub-Saharan Africa. Africa has two distinct musical traditions, with northern African music influenced greatly by the music of the Middle East that we studied last week. The Sub-Saharan portion of the continent has its own rich and dynamic musical traditions, and this is the music we'll be listening to this week.
In many ways, the music of central and southern Africa sounds familiar to our American ears. We recognize the complex rhythmic structures, the rich harmonies, and deep, longing melodies from our own experiences with today's jazz, ragtime, blues, and rock music. The influence of African music on the development of these American genres simply cannot be understated.
Traditional African music is bound tightly to all of a community's activities. There is a song and dance for nearly every occasion, from weddings and funerals to births and rights of passage. African music is both communal and ceremonial, and there is little distinction between watching and participating.
Most African music is highly improvised (made up on the spot), and features complex rhythms, vocalization, and dancing. Unlike many of our previous selections, harmony is common in African music, particularly vocal harmonies.
Here are this week's words to remember:
1) Hemiola: A rhythmic pattern of three over two. For example, playing two eighth notes in one hand and an eighth note triplet in the other.
2) Polyrhythm: Playing two or more conflicting rhythms at once.(A repeated hemiola pattern.)
3) Djembe: A traditional African skin drum.
4) Call and Response: A style of singing where one group or person sings a musical idea and a second group or individual echoes or answers.
5) Ostinato: A repeating pitch or pattern played under a melody.
6) Polyphony: Two melodies being performed at the same time. This overlapping often creates harmony with all parts being of equal importance.
Here are some additional selections of this fabulous musical tradition to tickle your ears:
This week we'll be focusing on the beautiful and deeply influential music of the Middle East. We'll be listening for the monophony and heterophony we've previously studied in our travels, as well as learning some interesting new terms that define the characteristic sounds of the region. We'll be discussing how the music of this region influenced the music of surrounding areas, and we'll start learning about musical modes. When you listen to the selection below, think about role rhythm plays in the texture of this music. Is it more or less complex than the music of the regions we've already studied?
This week's important terms are:
1. Mode: A musical pattern. A tonal mode is a set pattern of pitches, and a rhythmic mode is a set pattern of long and short sounds.
2. Maqam: A tonal mode used in traditional Middle Eastern music. There are 72 commonly used maqams, each of which evoke a particular mood.
3. Iqa: A rhythmic mode. 4. Taqasim: An improvised section at the beginning of a piece that introduces the maqam. 5. Microtones: Pitches that fall in between the white and black keys on the piano. Review Terms:
1. Monophony: Everyone singing or playing the same pitches at the same time.
2. Heterophony: Everyone singing or playing the same pitches at the same time with slight variations or improvisations.
Here is an additional sample of Middle Eastern music for your enjoyment:
Due to scheduling conflicts, our group lesson/dress rehearsal will be held on Friday, May 3, from 7 to about 8:30 pm at my house. Our spring recital will take place at the Bozeman Public Library on Saturday, May 18, at 3 pm. Please disregard the dates printed on the studio calendar I distributed last fall. Thank you!
This week we'll be listening to a selection of traditional Chinese music during class. China has a very long and incredibly rich musical tradition dating back some 7,000-8,000 years. Traditional Chinese music has a thin texture (with only one singer or instrument or a small group at a time.) Music was once considered a very private activity, useful for healing and the cultivation of the mind, and public musicians were once not very well respected. Of course, times have changed, and now music is much more openly and publicly shared.
This week's important terms are:
1. Pentatonic Scale: A series of five pitches. The traditional Chinese pentatonic scale uses a particular series of half and whole steps, reflected in the white key pitches C D E G and A.
2. Heterophony: A melody played at one time by more than one instrument or singer, with each performer introducing slight variations
3. Numeric Notation (Jianpu): A way of writing music in which each pitch in a scale is given a number.
We'll be learning to play a traditional Chinese pentatonic scale this week so that you can create your own beautiful melodies. You might want to try writing your melody in Jianpu for an added challenge!
This amazing performance sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a wonderful introduction to traditional Chinese instruments.
Many traditional Chinese melodies depict peaceful scenes of nature and natural events, and has often been viewed as an integral part of medicine. Do you think music can have a healing effect on the body and mind? Why or why not?
Welcome back from Spring Break! I hope you all had a lovely week off. I know a few of you soaked up some sun, some visited family, and some took a stay-cation like we did. Now that we're refreshed and ready for the last part of the school year, we're going to delve into our unit about music from around the world.
In the coming weeks you will be asked to listen to and analyze music from various cultural traditions. You'll learn important terms to help you describe the qualities of this music, and I hope you'll share the activities with your parents at home.
This week we're starting close to home by listening to some music made right here in Montana. Our listening selection in class will be a War Dance song recorded in Browning, Montana, by a group of Blackfoot musicians.
This week's important terms are:
1. Percussion: An instrument that is struck (drum, rattle, xylophone, or piano)
2. Vocalization: Sounds made with the voice
3. Monophony: A group of people singing the same notes at the same time
4. Tetratonic Scale: A scale with 4 tones
5. Vocables: Nonsense syllables (like la, da, di, or dum in songs you may be familiar with)
We also discussed the use of songs for telling stories and transmitting histories, and the use of drumming accents to signal changes in musical sections. Not all of our terms are universal of course, since there are many native tribes with varying and rich musical traditions. I decided in this unit to stay close to home and chiefly discuss musical characteristics of the Plains peoples.
Here is another musical selection for your enjoyment. This song is was performed by the Black Whistle Singers in Crow Agency, Montana.
Have you ever wondered what it takes to become a professional pianist? Are the astounding musical feats of Horowitz, Kissin, Argerich, Rubenstein and others written in their DNA? The surprising answer according to modern research seems to be a resounding no.
No one can question that some people's brains seem to be better at small motor coordination, at understanding the spatial relationships necessary to become a fluent musicians, and even at hearing and understanding the relationship between pitches. Some individuals are better at handling the unique pressures of performance than others because their personalities seem to make them so. However, it seems that the overriding factor in achieving high levels of success is a bit more mundane than all this: practice.
Yep, just practice. A good teacher spends the majority of lesson time training students for what is essentially a repetitive and solitary process. We guide the hand into a position we want students to mimic at home. We train phrasing, articulation, and even note reading so that the student can repetitively practice these elements when we're not around. We try with all our might to minimize boredom by inventing unique approaches to what is essentially repeating a correct motion over and over again. Every note a student plays either fixes a habit or forms one, so practice is the most essential aspect of musical fluency.
Kayla Liechty Paulk quotes an interesting source in her article, "Playing Well With Others," published in the February/March issue of American Music Teacher magazine, page 28:
"In Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers, he references a study in the early 1990's by K. Anders Ericsson and two colleagues at the Berlin Academy of Music. In this study, a group of young violinists were divided into three groups by the Academy's professors: those with the potential to become world-class soloists, those judged as merely 'good,' and those who intended to become music teachers in the public school system. Students from three groups had begun playing at the same age: roughly 5 years old, and in the first few years, practiced the same amount: about 2-3 hours per week. As you can imagine, as time passed, those who are now at the highest level of performance began to spend more hours practicing than the others, until, by the age of 20, they they were practicing well over 30 hours per week. By the age of 20, the elite performers had each totaled 10,000 hours of practice, with the good students totaling 8,000 and the future music teachers just over 4,000 hours. Ericsson did a similar study with pianists and found the same results. He could not find any 'naturals,' just students who practiced more than others."
Very interesting! The students who all began their practices at 30 minutes a day in young childhood went through various stages of growth and interest by the end of high school. Some no doubt remained at that level for the long term and learned to play for enjoyment. Others spent an average of one hour a day (for 4,000 accumulated hours), others two hours (for 8,000 accumulated hours), and the cream of the crop made piano the equivalent of a job (4-6 hours per day.) Not all of us have the desire (or the time) to become world class musicians, but most of us can become proficient or even very good. So the next time you're surfing YouTube with aspirations of playing like one of the greats, make a little extra time in your schedule for practice. It really does make perfect!
( If you want a sneak peek into the wild world of the concert pianist, this cool documentary from the BBC is a fun watch!)
