JoyTunes Webinar Notes

Love Leila, she is such an inspiration!

88pianokeys

What a pleasure to have you on board the latest JoyTunes Webinar!  I hope it provided new ideas and inspired you to carry on your revolutionary, 21st-century piano teaching.

Here are links to the apps mentioned throughout the hour:

• Decide Now – the duct tape app: a must in your gamification tool box. Play Piano Charades at your next group lesson!
• Camera – comes “free” with your iPad, don’t forget its power to command focus unlike anything else.
• Piano Maestro – THE perfect power tool app for building strong reading skills.  Here’s the curriculum guide listing all the sheet music available in the app PianoMania_RankCurriculum
• Flashnote Derby – best app to isolate and review note names.
• Multi-Touch Whiteboard – an irresistible doodle pad to review basics.
• forScore– download all the Piano Maestro sheet music into this score reading app. Here’s the user guide: forScore User Guide

Piano Maestro = Power Tool

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Cecilly’s Christmas Tree Landmark Game and Variations

Fun Christmas games using fly swatter

Layton Music Games and Resources

This GREAT game idea was posted by Cecilly on the Yahoo Piano Teacher’s List. I have made up some ornaments with landmarks, and several variations that you can use.

 

 

Ornaments with Landmarks

All Notes on the Staff

Key Signatures

Simple Intervals

Letter Names – including sharps and flats

Christmas Stockings with Letter Names – Just for something different!

Here are Cecilly’s directions:

Just a quick mention of another of my off the bench activities, this one to reinforce my Celebrate Piano student’s landmarks (Bass C, Bass F, Mid. C, Treble G, and Treble C).

It’s a “Swat the Landmark” game.

Materials needed:

1. Flashcards of each landmark note

2. Timer

3. Flyswatter (with a hole cut out of the center so you can see the card it’s slapped on)

To play: lay out all the cards face up randomly on the floor. Seat player on the floor in…

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Great Games for Note Reading

Layton Music Games and Resources

This idea came from Natalie on the Yahoo Piano Teacher’s List, and I just had to post it here as well. These are some great ways to teach note reading that I can’t wait to try with my students. Read on for Natalie’s instructions:

“I just learned how to make note reading FUN! Kids forget it’s theory
and learn quickly through enjoying the game.

Are you dreading teaching identification of notes on the staff? How
would you make that fun?

Well, I just figured out a great way and thought I would pass it
along to the rest of the teachers in the world!

Materials Needed:

1. Construction paper for cutting out quarter notes and half notes

2. Either a plastic table cloth (plain) or anything that the permanent
marker can write on and is large enough to walk on.

Directions:

Draw a staff on your plastic table cloth with…

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Rhythm Blocks

Fun

Layton Music Games and Resources

I have been wanting to make these for years, ever since I read about them in the book “A Galaxy of Games for the Music Class.” (A WONDERFUL resource, by the way!) They are great for showing the relationships between note values, rhythmic dictation, and are just a lot of fun in general. Here are the steps in making these blocks.

First, I bought 7 1/2 feet of 3/4 inch square pine. It was cut to the following lenghts:
8th note: 1 inch (cut 4)
Quarter note: 2″ (cut eight)
Dotted Quarter note: 3″ (cut 4)
Half Note: 4″ (cut 4)
Dotted Half Note: 6 inches (cut 4)
Whole Note: 8 inches (cut 2)

Next, I painted them. You wouldn’t need to do this, but I like the bright colors, and wanted easy identification of the different lengths of blocks.

Using a black sharpie marker, I drew notes…

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It’s October – An On-the-Staff Composing Activity and a Pre-Reading Song!

I love Susan Paradis ! She is a wonderful teacher mentor

Language is Derived from Music: Study Could Aid People with Speech Disorders

Contrary to prior theories that assert music is a byproduct of language, music theorists at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) advocate that language is a derivative of music.
“Infants listen first to sounds of language and only later to its meaning,” said Anthony Brandt, co-author of a theory paper published online this month in the journal Frontiers in Cognitive Auditory Neuroscience. “They listen to it not only for its emotional content but also for its rhythmic and phonemic patterns and consistencies. The meaning of words comes later.”
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The paper cites various studies that show what the newborn brain is capable of, such as the ability to distinguish or basic distinctive units of speech sound, and and such attributes as pitch, rhythm and timbre; hence a child’s ability to learn up to 5 languages by time they are five
Learning the lyrics to music is easier then learning a whole other language in general. When English speakers listen to Korean Pop sensation Psy’s Gundam Style, we do not really know what is going on: but we understand the gist and for those of you who have a car radio, you probably even know most of the lyrics, or at least as best you can through the language barrier.

In their paper, the authors define music as “creative play with sound.” They said the term “music” implies an attention to the acoustic features of sound irrespective of any referential function. “We show that music and language develop along similar time lines,” he said.
Brandt notes in his paper:
“Recognizing the sound of different consonants requires rapid processing in the temporal lobe of the brain. Similarly, recognizing the timbre of different instruments requires temporal processing at the same speed – a feature of musical hearing that has often been overlooked’
Brandt and colleagues hope that further research would shed more light on why music therapy is helpful for people with reading and speech disorders noting that “A lot of people with language deficits also have musical deficits,” Brandt said.
More research could also open new doors to music based rehabilitation methods for stroke victims: “Music helps them reacquire language, because that may be how they acquired language in the first place.”

http://www.counselheal.com/articles/2889/20120919/language-derived-music-study-aid-people-speech.htm
The article is published in the Frontiers of in Auditory Cognitive Nueroscience.

Read more at http://www.counselheal.com/articles/2889/20120919/language-derived-music-study-aid-people-speech.htm#gHG4G0cHYk7wW5H0.99

Playing Music in a Group Significantly Improves a Child’s Ability to Empathize and Show Compassion – Medical Daily

Playing Music in a Group Significantly Improves a Child’s Ability to Empathize and Show Compassion – Medical Daily.

 

Playing music in a group setting on a regular basis significantly improves children’s ability to empathize with others and show compassion, according to new findings.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge conducted a year-long study and found that participating in regular music-based activities from ensembles to simple rhythmic exercises with others greatly increased children’s capacity to recognize and consider the emotions of others.

Photo: Microsoft
Researchers at the University of Cambridge conducted a year-long study and found that participating in regular music-based activities from ensembles to simple rhythmic exercises with others greatly increased children’s capacity to recognize and consider the emotions of others.

• The study consisted of 52 boys and girls between the ages of eight and 11 who were divided into three groups.

One of the groups met every week to interact through musical games developed by the researchers, and the other two, which acted as control groups, either did activities associated with words and drama or received no activities.

Researchers tested children on their level of compassion and ability to recognize emotion in others by employing a few standard and new techniques developed by the researchers like analyzing how children responded to emotion in facial expression and movies at the beginning and end of the study.

They found that children in the music group demonstrated a substantial increase in empathy scores and had a higher average score compared to the other groups.

“These results bear out our hypothesis that certain components of musical interaction may enhance a capacity for emotional empathy, which continues outside the musical context,” lead researcher Tal-Chen Rabinowitch from the Centre for Music and Science said in a university news release.

“We feel that the program of musical activities we’ve developed could serve as a platform for a new approach to music education – one that helps advance not just musical skill but also social abilities and, in particular, the emotional understanding of others,” Rabinowitch added.

The musical activities developed by the researchers were intended to emphasize the components of musical interaction that the researchers believed would promote empathy and foster greater understanding of shared mental states.

Children were asked to mimic or match other players’ movements and musical motifs where researcher used rhythm to encourage synchronized performance so that they would learn how to align and adjust themselves through attending to others.

Researchers believed that by engaging in these musical activities on a regular basis, the children were experiencing states of “shared intentionality” or understanding of each other’s intentions through a common aim or object of attention, which led to an emotional affinity among the children.

The team believes that music and rhythm creates a sense of mutual ‘honesty’ that goes beyond the verbal communication, which allows everyone to feel and share an emotional experience regardless of linguistic skills.

“The point about music is that it can make you feel as though you are sharing the same experience, when you don’t need to be doing the same thing or feeling the same way,” says Cross. “There is a strong sense in communal music that you simply do feel you are experiencing the same thing as everyone else.”

Researchers said that increasing the ability to empathize leads to greater demonstration of altruistic behaviors like patience and cooperativeness, which would be beneficial in an educational and social environment.

For example, past research found that children who scored higher on empathy were also more likely to help other being bullied.

“Working with children on social and emotional communication allows them to gain confidence in experiencing another person’s emotional state – and producing a supportive emotional response,” Rabinowitch said.

Researchers hope to replicate their findings in larger and more diverse settings and also in populations that are thought of as having less capacity for empathy, like those on the autism spectrum.

Published by Medicaldaily.com

FOUR CHORD SONGS!!

by Gordon Harvey

I remember hiring a car on a holiday a few years ago. We could only tune the radio to one station, playing popular music, and as the songs cycled by, I started to realise that maybe a third of them featured the same four chords, nearly always for the same length each. It amazed me that that simple progression could inspire such quantity and variety of melodies. So, even if you’ve hardly touched a keyboard before, it mightn’t be beyond the imagination to learn those four chords and give yourself the chance to play the accompaniment to a huge list of songs.

Below is a by no means exhaustive list, compiled with the help, amongst others, of the amazing Axis of Awesome (includes a mild language warning):

Nelly – Just a Dream

Alphaville – Forever Young

Blink 182 – Dammit

The Last Goodnight – Pictures of You

James blunt – Beautiful

Waltzing Matilda

Beyonce – If I Were a Boy

Pink – U and Ur Hand

The Calling – Wherever you Go

Jason Mraz – I’m Yours

Marcy Playground – Sex and Candy

Mika – Happy Ending

Alex Lloyd – Amazing

Five for Fighting – Superman

Maroon 5 – She Will be Loved

Alicia Keys – No One

U2 – With or Without You

Auld Lang Syne

Kelly Clarkson – Behind These Hazel Eyes

Crowded House – Fall at your Feet

Casey Chambers – Not Pretty Enough

Richard Marx – Right Here Waiting

The Beatles – Let it Be

Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Under the Bridge

Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Otherside

Daryl Brathwaite – The Horses

Amiel – Lovesong

Journey – Don’t Stop Believin’

Men at Work – Down Under

A-Ha – Take On Me

Rihanna – Take a Bow

Green Day – When I Come Around

Eagle Eye Cherry – Save Tonight

Toto – Africa

Elton John – Can you Feel the Love

The Offspring – Self Esteem

The Offspring – You’re Gonna Go Far Kid

Andrea Bocelli – Time To Say Goodbye

Lady Gaga – Poker Face

Lady Gaga – Paparazzi

Elvis Presley – Always On My Mind

Aqua – Barbie Girl

The Fray – You Found Me

30h!3 – Don’t Trust Me

MGMT – Kids

Tim Minchin – Canvas Bags

Natalie Imbruglia – Torn

Israel Kamakawiwo’ole – Over the Rainbow

Lighthouse Family – High

Missy Higgins – Scar

Jordin Sparks – Tattoo

Black Eyed Peas – Where is the Love?

Gregory Brothers – Double Rainbow

Train – Hey Soul Sister

Akon – Don’t Matter

Akon – Beautiful

John Denver – Country Roads

Jimmy Eat World – Hear You Me

Hayley Westenra – Heaven

Jack Johnson – Taylor

Smashing Pumpkins – Bullet with Butterfly Wings

Joan Osborne – One of Us

Avril Lavigne – Complicated

One Republic – Apologize

Eminem – Love the Way You Lie

Feargal Sharkey – A Good Heart

Thirsty Merc – Twenty Good Reasons

Bob Marley – No Woman No Cry

In some of the above cases the song may have sections that include other chords, but I’m sure you have a sense of how much these chords allow you to do.
One thing to know about before you begin is called ‘key’. A chord progression can start anywhere on the piano. From different starting places it will sound higher or lower, but still be recognisably the same progression. It’s a bit like having different colours of the same model of car. I’ll talk about two keys – a very simple one and the one Axis of Awesome use, and then we’ll look at finding the chord progression in any key.

First key

For the first key, I’ll assume you’ve had just a handful of Simply Music lessons. One of the very first songs you’ll have learned, and the very first accompaniment project, is a song called Honey Dew, which uses the chords C, Am, F, and G. That’s another very popular chord progression. These are all the chords we’ll use for this project, just in a different order. Change it to C, G, Am, F and you’re done!

Second key

This key starts on E major. If you’ve started the Simply Music Accompaniment Program, you’ll know this is a triangle shape (white on the bottom, black in the middle, white on top). Next is B major, a curve shape (white, black, black). Next is C minor, a triangle, and last is G major, a straight line on white keys.

Any key

A particular 4-chord song might be in any key, that is it might have any major chord as its “I”. If you want to play the song in any key, you need to know a little more. The progression is referred to as I, V, VI, IV. Thinking of my earlier analogy of car colours, if C, G, Am, F is “Red Mini Cooper” and E, B, C#m, A is “Blue Mini Cooper”, then I, V, VI, IV is “Any Mini Cooper”. You need to know how to find the I, V, VI, and IV chords from any starting note. A Simply Music student who has learned about I, IV, V is nearly there – the only chord they don’t know is VI. The easy way to do this is, from the V, bring your bottom note up by a whole step. This note is the VI. From that note you simply build a minor chord. As a Simply Music student, you should know how to make a minor chord, but if you haven’t learned that yet, it’s easy too. Make a major chord then move the middle note down a half step.

Although it’s all pretty straightforward, you might as well use your learning tools to simplify things as much as possible. Using the chord shapes might help you memorise the sequence visually. So, starting from D, the chords will be D, A, Bm, G and the shapes will be triangle, triangle, curve, straight line. These shapes are not intended to tell you every detail, just to serve as reminders of what you’ve already worked out.
The great thing about this skill (called transposing) is you can change the chords to fit your vocal range. And while you’re at it, why not come up with a melody of your own? Unlike Axis of Awesome, you needn’t wait 40 years to write a hit song!

Technology and KIds

Excerpt from an article “iChildren: How Apple Is Changing Kids’ Brains”

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/03/21/iChildren-How-Apple-Is-Changing-Kids-Brains.aspx#page2

This is Your Child’s Brain on Apple
But according to many experts, so much screen time can have permanent effects on the brain. The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages any media use by children younger than two years. David Hill, a pediatrician and a member of AAP’s Council on Communications and the Media, and author of the forthcoming book, Dad to Dad: Parenting Like a Pro , agrees and recommends that any child over the age of two limit screen time to two hours a day.

“Evidence suggests that viewing the sorts of rapid fire images present in videos or video games can lead to future problems in children’s ability to concentrate,” he says, adding that some research suggests a strong link between media exposure and ADHD. He says problems are likely to surface when the device is used as a substitute for communication between parent and child. A YouTube video last October showing a one-year-old trying to use a paper magazine like an iPad proved how impressionable children could be. The video has over 3.5 million views to date and thousands of heated comments.

“You’re basically horsing around with your child’s brain chemistry in a way that’s not very good for him or her.”

Jane M. Healy, an educational psychologist who specializes in the effect of computer technology on growing brains and author of Different Learners: Identifying, Preventing and Treating Your Child’s Learning Problems , feels technology offers no benefits to young children. “All indications are that instead of increasing their intelligence, it’s going to dull it down,” she says. What’s most important for a young child’s brain development is interacting in conversation, a skill that children preoccupied with an iPad, cell phone or computer fail to practice, she says. “It’s language that will later help them become physicists, scientists and imaginative computer programmers.”

The type of learning that comes from responding to a stimulus that involves having a child’s brain directed instead of open-ended play, is a very low level type of learning, says Healy. Further, these devices can be addictive, so children long to spend more time with them. “You’re basically horsing around with your child’s brain chemistry in a way that’s not very good for him or her,” she says. Texting or online communication often supplants face-to-face time that older children need to develop social skills, resulting in difficulty with interpersonal communication, says Elizabeth Englander, a professor of psychology and the director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center at Bridgewater State University.

But Nancy Willard, director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, says technology is here to stay, so parents can’t shun it. “We need to make sure kids run, play and interact with others. If their lives are in balance, the use of these technologies will simply increase their repertoire.” That’s the argument that technology developers are sure to continue making as they continue profiting from this fast-growing industry.

Preparing fo Performance by Gordon Harvey

The most common opportunity for Simply Music students to play for others is in their shared lessons. They are a safe way to begin experiencing performing, but the game-changer is when a teacher holds a concert or recital for all their students and guests. Following is some advice I give early-level students about preparing for concerts.
The best way to maximize the likelihood of a successful experience is to be thoroughly prepared. The more work you do before the day, the more comfortable you’ll feel on the day. Of course, that boils down to just playing your song a lot, but there are other things you can do to prepare:
Choose your song well ahead of time, and start preparing as soon as you know the event is coming up.
Choose wisely. A student concert isn’t about showing off how well you can conquer Rachmaninov’s Third! You should make sure your song is well within your ability. It’s not as if you don’t have plenty of comfortable pieces to choose from – look at your amazing Playlist! It’s also a really good idea to have a backup – prepare a second piece as well.
Create a comfort zone. However well you can play at home, it’s possible that you won’t sound as good at the concert. After all, it’s a different environment with a different instrument, and the time you’re most anxious to do your best seems to be the time you’re most likely to make a mistake. I always say if you want your song to be 100% perfect at the concert, it needs to be 120% perfect at home. How well do you really know the song? Perhaps you could try to play at home in ways that deliberately make it trickier. Here are a few ideas:
•See if you can play your song with your eyes closed.
•Deliberately play too fast – if you can play it at high speed, it’ll be within your comfort zone at normal speed.
•try playing too soft or too loud.
•try playing from a point you don’t usually start from – if you’re using the sheet music, close your eyes, point to the page and play from wherever your finger lands.
•Focus on something you don’t usually pay attention to. How are you using the pedal? Are you gradually speeding up? When you play a chord, do all of the notes play at precisely the same moment? These are the sorts of tiny details most people won’t notice, so you needn’t be preoccupied about them at the concert, but observing them during practice sharpens your skills.
Play whenever you can for friends, family or at school. Perhaps you could arrange a mock concert.
Listen for those spots where you most often make mistakes. Get the magnifying glass out and look for the error. Spend extra time on that part and find a strategy to master it.
When you make a mistake during practice, try to keep on going rather than stopping to correct it. Most people might notice only half of your wrong notes, but they certainly notice when you stop. You might be used to stopping to fix mistakes, but as a preparation technique, try pressing on regardless, even if you play wrong notes. Imagine yourself as a runaway bulldozer in a field of flowers – it’s not going to stop to crush a daisy it missed. Of course, on the day you’ll be more considered, but getting used to playing through your mistakes is a skill you’ll always value.
For most people, the biggest fear is of making a mistake you can’t recover from, and finding yourself frozen, with no way back into the piece. It’s helpful to establish signpost moments in the piece – places you know well that, if you find yourself stuck, you can go directly to and get up and running again. Practice starting from those moments so you can minimize the dead-air time if calamity strikes.
For me, the most immeasurably wonderful skill is the ability to lose yourself in the music. Develop that skill. Regardless of whatever specific projects you have, I urge you to spend some time in every practice session just playing; improvising or freely interpreting a written piece without judgement. Listen to the music as if you were listening to another musician – pay attention to the music, not how you’re playing it. This is what it’s all about. Give yourself regular reminders of what you’re doing it all for – you always wanted to be part of the magic that is music.
On the day, remember this: the audience is more interested in you succeeding than failing – they are there at least in part because they like music, and they might also be a little bit nervous on your behalf. Really, you’re not on your own up there. They are with you – you are among friends. Spend a moment before you play to look at them, experience their support, seek out friendly faces and see if you can sense your connection with them.
Take comfort too in the fact that nerves are a reality for even the most seasoned performer. Chopin said “I am not fitted to give concerts. The audience intimidates me, I feel choked by its breath, paralyzed by its curious glances, struck dumb by all those strange faces.” Barbra Streisand gave up performing for 27 years after forgetting song lyrics at a Central Park concert.
If Streisand can make a mistake, there’s no guarantee you won’t. Luckily, unlike most scary pursuits, no-one will be harmed if something goes wrong. Give it a go – it could be the beginning of a whole new dimension to your lifelong companionship with music.