Instinctive Understanding of Music

I love this! So much. Anybody can understand music. It comes instinctively, just as Mr. Bobby McFerrin demonstrates. Watch and be amazed, just like I was. Now I want to try this in front of a crowd and see if I can show everyone their capability of creating music so simply.

Teaching Piano

Teaching piano begins with learning, playing, knowing, and loving the piano and the music it can produce. Equally, teaching piano begins with learning about, playing with, knowing, and loving people.

                  - True-Piano-Lessons.com

Sometimes, parents find a piano teacher for their child, and start the first lesson with saying, "I don't want my child to be a concert pianist. I just want my child to know how to play." Where do you think a concert pianist starts? The exact same place as your child. That's something the teachers need to understand.

No matter what a piano student expects out of their lessons and practice, the teachers need to start with the fundamentals. Every student needs to be taught the same basic knowledge and skills. Over time, the student will express interest or the lack of, and that's when the teacher can change teaching methods. Pace is also something that differs between students. The teacher cannot rush in to anything. I've definitely learned that throughout this project. It's hard for me to understand why someone is having such a hard time learning something I find very simple. That's when I need to take a step back and remember I struggled with learning things at the piano too. I remember so vividly one song in my Level 3 method book. It was a polka, and I just could not play it! I was practicing that song for 3 weeks before my teacher just said, "Close enough", and we moved on. I have to admit, I've done that a few times myself. Method books include songs that are meant to teach students a certain skill. For example, right now, I have a few students learning the concept of a 5th interval. It's when you play notes that are five notes apart, either one at a time or as a cord. When they play the song right after the introduction of a 5th, I don't care about rhythm or tempo; I care about them playing a 5th. If they do it, great. We move on. If not, they do it again until they can play a 5th. One concept at a time. That's how piano teachers need to teach.

An Appreciation of Adult Amateurs

Matthew Harre

Why is it that the young person's accomplishment seems so impressive but a similar accomplishment by an adult does not? Why it is perceived so differently? It certainly doesn't have to do with the magnitude of the learning accomplishment. If anything, the adult's accomplishment would be even more spectacular.

- Matthew Harre 


This man runs a website called Musical Fossils. I found it really inspiring, actually. My project is about teaching students of all different ages, and he talks about the appreciation of adult amateurs. I think that is so important. Just as he said, why are people so much more impressed by a young person's accomplishment when an adult has to work just as hard, if not harder? 

I love what he had to say about a couple former adult students of his. They shared with him their thoughts on taking lessons as an adult. They talked about the passion they found in music, even though they didn't know why they were still taking piano lessons. One of them talked about how as she first started playing things that sounded remotely like music, the rhythm was uneven, some of the notes were wrong, but she was "beside [herself] with glee". 

That's something teachers have lost. We have become so obsessed with perfection in the field of music. We are upset when we find that we are sometimes limited, even after years of practice and hard work. Amateurs are surprised when they do something right, while the teachers are surprised when they do something wrong. Years ago, the teacher was the amateur. Through time, teachers forget the excitement that creating music can bring. 

A friend of mine is an amazing pianist and avid song-writer. She gets frustrated if she doesn't start and finish a song in one day. I, for one, am very impressed by the work she does and the music she creates. But I think it's ridiculous that she gives herself a deadline for it! Progress in music takes time.

It's just crazy looking back at how far I've come. I remember taking lessons when I was 8. I absolutely hated it. I only went to lessons because my teacher was my friend's mom and we got to go swimming afterwards. Now, I play the piano every single day. Music has been something I have been blessed with, and this project is really helping me appreciate it more. Sure, sometimes I complain about always being the fall-back when somebody needs an accompanist. But taking a different perspective right now, I should be grateful for the development of this talent of mine. My mom is the one that made me go to lessons, and my older siblings are the ones that set the example and showed me how great the piano is. Thanks to them, music is a special part of my life. And I love sharing it with others. It's reassuring to know that it's not too late for the adult amateurs to develop skills at the piano. Music touches a deeper part of people than anything else.

A Mind at a Time

Dr. Mel Levine is a well-known education expert and pediatrician. He wrote this book, entitled A Mind at a Time, to parents and others who care for children to give them a better understanding of learning patterns. I didn't find anything written directly for music teachers, but most of the things he wrote still apply. For example, Levine talks about mind profiles. He put it best in saying: 

Some of our children are blessed with profiles that are magnificently matched to expectations, while others are saddled with profiles that fail to mesh with demands.

To the parents of children that may not be blessed with such a marvelous profile, he counsels to take heart. Don't give up on them, and don't allow them to give up on themselves. Fix weaknesses by pursuing strengths. 

Every child has a creative side. It's up to them to pursue it. Levine says:

In being creative, kids unshackle their minds and discover novel possibilities for self-expression and mental free play. 

Everything I've studied so far in this project tells stories of kids finding an escape in music. But all of them needed a little nudge from an adult figure - either a parent or a teacher. I'm excited to be in that position!

Sometimes, though, students and teachers clash. To address this, one cannot rewire the student, nor can one alter the expectations of the teacher. No one is at fault when there just isn't a good relationship. But how can it be dealt with? Compromise and acceptance. Through all walks of life, there will be people we don't get along with. Unfortunately for some, this begins in an elementary school classroom, or with your childhood piano teacher. Here's a little side-note from my life.

I have 4 sisters. We all grew up playing piano and competing in soccer.  My oldest sister, Jennifer, was a goal-keeper, just like me. As a goal-keeper, you get pretty beat up - your hands especially. Jennifer was really good at soccer, but she was even better at the piano. She even studied it in college and is now a great teacher. When my family moved to Arizona, Jennifer started taking lessons from a lady here. This teacher did not support Jennifer's soccer playing, mainly because of her torn-up hands. This teacher felt that piano was everything. You can't do soccer and piano. That's impossible. She was the kind of teacher that would smack your hands every time you made a mistake. She was a little intense. Jennifer didn't take lessons from her for very long. Why? Because she was constantly being put down by her piano teacher!

Moral of the story: Putting each other down will get you no where.

The next thing that I found really important was what Levine said about motivation. 

Generally speaking, an individual is motivated if he finds the goal attractive.

We are motivated to do something if we feel we can actually achieve it. Otherwise, motivation is nonexistent. But who sets the standards for what students need to achieve? Teachers? Parents? Themselves? We can't let students feel like they have to meet certain standards. That's when self-confidence begins to crumble. They feel they'll never be as good as the person next to them. That's what worries me about having a piano recital. I'm afraid that my students will look at each other's performances and think, "Wow. They learned way faster than I did. I'll never be that good." That is the last thing I want to happen! I want to have a recital so we can celebrate the progress that's been made over the past few months. I always want to stress that EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT. Some minds just aren't made for certain things. My mind, for example, fails at history and biology. Those subjects focus so much on memorization, which just isn't my thing. I work with processes and free-thinking, like math and music. The way I see it, music is just like math. You start simple, learning the fundamentals. Then you're exposed to more difficult concepts which, with practice, will come.

We cannot allow discouragement to engulf the minds of students. 
We want them to succeed.
We want them to want to succeed.

Frustration

I am typically a very optimistic person. But the past week has really gotten me down, and I don't like it! It seems like nobody practices, nobody cares, nobody wants anything to do with piano. Yesterday, I had a student show up for his fifth lesson. I have had him playing Oh When the Saints Go Marching In since the first time he came. Every week, he was supposed to learn it in a new key. He has only learned it in 2 because he still doesn't know how the song goes! I was about to lose my patience with him yesterday. Instead, this was me throughout the lesson: 

I had plans for last night, and I had to drag myself into my car to go because I was just so down from the lessons this past week! It was terrible! I don't teach on Tuesdays because my schedule conflicts with everyone else's. I am so glad I have the day off to just kind of relax and get my head on straight before I have to deal with another student who most likely didn't practice. I don't ask much of them! I really don't! Now I know how my math teacher felt when he would randomly collect homework and only 4 people did it. I felt bad getting lectured for not doing my homework. I feel worse on the other side! This anger may be unwarranted because I wasn't the best at practicing the piano when I took lessons. But I practiced enough where I wasn't at the same place for 5 weeks! Okay, I'm sorry. I just needed to get the frustration out. And this blog is supposed to be a candid account of my journey with this project, right? I wouldn't be honest in saying that everything is going great and that there are no hitches to teaching. Teaching is hard.

Intelligence

Psychologist Raymond Cattell studied the idea of intelligence. He broke up general intelligence into two distinct counterparts:

Fluid Intelligence - This is basically the ability to reason quickly and to think abstractly. This peaks in our early adulthood, as the graph shows, and as we grow older, our fluid intelligence decreases. We tend to forget things more easily.

Crystallized Intelligence - This refers to the knowledge and skills that are accumulated over a lifetime. It involves learning, knowledge, and skills, and increases with age as we become more and more experienced.

On Mondays, I teach my oldest student. As I taught him today, I really started to notice how age affects one's ability to learn and acquire new skills. For example, we were clapping out rhythm sheets that I do with every student. I could see that in his mind, he knew how it was supposed to sound, but it was really a struggle for him to clap it out. Every time he made a mistake, he would stop, say, "That was wrong", and start over. I started to feel bad for him after a while. He was getting frustrated because his mind just doesn't work the way mine does. Not anymore, at least. His fluid intelligence has really decreased, and I can see that. It's not just that though. I have been blessed with musical talent. I know that. He, on the other hand, was blessed with the mind of an engineer. That was his life before he reached the age of retirement. He over-analyzes details and tends to look at the mechanics of playing the piano rather than just listening to the music he creates. This is pretty much how we work:

His mind

My mind

Music and the Mind

After discussing my independent study with one of my students, she lent me these cassette tapes entitled Music and the Mind. I was not intending on using these as part of my research, but I am so glad I got the opportunity to. They are made by Michael Ballam.

Michael Ballam

He talks about music and its effects on the human mind. He mostly shares stories, which helped me stay focused and interested in what he was talking about. Here are summaries of a few of the stories that stuck out to me:

The Paper Boy

The paper boy in some small town came from a family that had 10 kids. After dinner, they would all pick up whatever musical instrument was laying around (because there were a lot of them) and would just start playing. They would spend an hour playing music that had been written by somebody else, and then would just start "jamming". This jamming could go on for 10 minutes, or it could go on for hours. It all depended on how much they were feeling the music that night. Kids in the neighborhood were really intrigued by that family and would often go over for dinner, not knowing what went on afterwards. One boy in particular was inspired by the musical talent that this family had and went home and asked his father for a violin. Beforehand, this kid was a troublemaker, and was really challenged in school. Soon after he got that violin, he was on the honor roll. The teachers didn't know what was going on, so they called in his father. The father was used to being called in by teachers to discuss the disciplinary problems his son was having in class. But this time, the teachers said something had changed. The father said, "All I did was buy him a violin."

                Albert

When Albert was six years old, his mother signed him up for violin lessons. Like most other kids, he didn't like it. He liked building houses of cards. In school, Albert's teachers constantly called him stupid and told him that he should leave school to work. It's a good thing Albert stuck with his violin, because at the age of 13, that's where he found his refuge. Improvisation on the violin helped Albert overcome his geometric problems. Playing the violin enabled him to have such intense thoughts that he, Albert Einstein, became one of the smartest people who have ever lived. Looking back, people say he lived in the right side of his brain. The visionary, poetic side. His violin helped him merge the two sides, and for almost 70 years, Albert used the violin to relax when he became stuck in his thinking processes.

Music and Deviant Behavior

People say introducing music classes in schools is too expensive. Jackson Elementary School in Salt Lake City, Utah tried it out. The results showed that the children were more interested and focused in all subjects, even if they weren't particularly good at it. The teachers said there was a lot less disruption in their classrooms. Perhaps there is a link between music education and delinquent behavior. Still, the argument remains that state-funded music education is too expensive. Deviant behavior is also costly. A violin will cost roughly $150. How far will that go in a reform school? Just something to think about.