So I have been teaching about 45 years, with a few gaps here and there. I have had a WIDE variety of students from super eager to "My Mom is making me learn to play." I have seen a lot of different approaches students take in their practicing, or not practicing. The one issue I have seen in a variety of students of different skills and ages is the ignoring of wrong notes. The first problem in dealing with wrong notes is hearing and recognizing that something is wrong. For fun, if a student is blissfully hitting a wrong note on their second or third try at a phrase I will grab my ears and say "OW! OW! OW! you are hurting my ears!" The student usually looks at me like I am crazy, at which point I ask "Does that sound right to you?" If the student says "yes," this is my response: Some teachers and parents might think I am being harsh or overly dramatic, but this is done in a spirit of fun, and it does make the student stop, listen, think, and be more careful about their playing. And what happens if the student continues to play the notes incorrectly? The wrong notes start to sound correct to them. And not only in that piece of music, but in the next piece they play because melody, scales, harmony are all learned over time. If our ears/brains are not training to hear right from wrong, we will not be able to apply it to any music we hear or play. Being a bit of a philosopher, I have been thinking about how this applies to other aspects of our lives and our thinking. Wrong notes, incorrect information, can sound like the truth if we keep saying/playing it enough. Being accurate is a discipline important in music and in life! Correct those wrong notes so you know how the music is supposed to sound!

October 31st will soon be here, which makes me think of my two favorite spooky pieces of music. The first is somewhat kid friendly: In Der Halle des Bergkonigs from the Peer Gynt Suite by Edvard Grieg. The Peer Gynt Suite is incidental music (not a ballet, not an opera, not a musical) which is the background music to a play by Ibsen. Peer is a young man who wants to go on adventures, but has no money. So he sneaks into the Hall of the Mountain King (a troll) to steal his pot of gold. As he tiptoes through the Hall among the sleeping trolls, searching for the gold, the trolls eventually give chase. The music gets more intense and faster as Peer races from the very angry trolls. He does escape with the gold and goes on his adventures! You can listen at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmtOU9baJtM&t=10s The second is too scary for kids, and maybe even some adults. Of course, you have to be able to understand some German, but I will explain the story to Franz Schubert's Der ErlKonig, The Elfking is a Lied based on a disturbing poem by Goethe. A father is riding home on a dark night holding his young son in his arms.In the forest, the Elfking calls to the young boy to come to him. The frightened boy tells his father he hears The Elfking calling to him, but the father says it is the wind or the mist, and keeps riding. Spoiler alert, the ending is very sad! This is a brilliant piece by Schubert where there are 4 characters portrayed with just a pianist and a male soloist. The piano is the horse, and provides the basic drama. By using 3 different ranges in the solo male voice, the frightened child, the cunning Elfking and the worried Father are all portrayed in such a way that I always get goosebumps. There are many recordings of Der Erlkonig, but this one also includes a translation and an interesting visual representation of the events unfolding. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS91p-vmSf0 Enjoy might be the wrong word, but for sure Don't Listen Alone! ! ! ! ! ! !

No, I never met Jose Ferrer, so this story is not about some grand meeting between a local musician and a great actor. No, this is about my Sunday afternoon pastime of watching old movies way back in my 20's and 30's, and how you can learn to be a better musician and gain understanding from places beyond your music lessons and classes. My college professor at the University of Missouri, Mr. Herbert, taught me all the technical skills I had been missing for the 11 years I had been learning piano from well-intentioned but unskilled music teachers. He also set me on the path to understanding phrasing, accent and articulation which helped me to play more expressively. But understanding the subtleties of playing Classical music and other genres does not happen overnight, and in a consistently upward line of achievement. After completing my Bachelor and then Master Degrees, I was applying what I had learned from Mr. Herbert in my own playing and later, in directing choirs, but my "EUREKA!" moment occurred on a Sunday afternoon while watching the 1950's film "Cyrano de Bergerac" with Jose Ferrer as Cyrano. In a wonderful scene from the movie, Cyrano is trying to coach Christian in how to speak to Roxanne in a way to make her fall in love with him. Christian tries to recite a line Cyrano has written, and he does so without inflection or the wrong inflection and thus without emotion. In frustration, Cyrano grabs Christian and says the line at least 4 different ways, accenting different words and stretching out some words longer than others. Something like this (Disclaimer: this is close to the original, but not exact.) HOOOW do I love thee! How DOO I love thee! How do IIII love thee! How do I LOOOVE thee! THAT'S IT! That is what Mr. Herbert was trying to teach me. It is the essence of phrasing. What do you bring out in a phrase (which note or notes?) Can you stretch or hold the important notes, or play with a little more emphasis?. Crescendo here or decrescendo? Move forward or slow down a little here? A phrase can be expressed many different ways, and it is the meaning/emotion you want to convey that determines your musical choices. It is the difference between playing/singing correct notes only, or expressing an emotion, a thought, a phrase. I started applying the idea to the piano music I was playing, as well as in my choir directing. Over the years, many listeners have complimented me (sometimes with tears in their eyes because they were touched) on the expressiveness of my musical presentations. THANK You, Jose Ferrer! Thank YOU, Jose Ferrer! Thank you, JOSE FERRER!

Shocking isn't it? I just discovered this fact recently. One of my students started playing the Marine Corp Hymn in the Bastien Level 2 Lesson Book. I always like to give my students a miniature music history lesson on a piece, especially one as iconic as the Marine Hymn. It sounds so bold, so brave, and it really gets your heart pumping when you hear a men's chorus singing it accompanied by a brass band. How American! Or not. No one knows who wrote the lyrics, but it turns out the tune was "composed" by Jacques Offenbach, a German-Jewish immigrant to France in the mid-1800's. The family surname was originally Eberst, but Jacques' father changed it to the name of the town where he lived in Germany. Although I have no evidence of this, I have wondered if the father's choice to change his name was in part driven by the need to avoid anti-Semitism in Germany (and the rest of the world.) The tune was used in Offenbach's Operetta Genevieve de Brabant in a comic duet "Deux hommes d'armes." According to the Kennedy Center, there is evidence that Jacques Offenbach borrowed the tune from a Spanish folk melody. So turns out, the Marine's Hymn is not as American as we thought. Or is it? If you think of the United States as a nation of immigrants, which we all are, then it is totally in line with American ideology to sing proudly a tune borrowed from French Opera written by an immigrant from Germany to France which was probably borrowed from a Spanish folk tune. How diverse can a history be? How truly American! Here is the Deux hommes d'armes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NuBVrioKHI Here is the Marine's Hymn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qqv6tzeJ9R4

Most students can successfully learn to play notes, rhythms and basic dynamics reasonably well with a teacher, and sometimes even through videos. But can they learn to play gracefully? I have used the word several times in the last few weeks with students of various ages, and there is usually a "What?" response. They do not know the word. It is not part of our culture. One 10 year old is a ballet student and I asked her when she finished her fast and note precise Minuet : "How do you usually move in ballet? She extended, her arms, and lifted slowly in a relaxed, arcing motion. "We need to play a Minuet like that! " I said. How DO you play gracefully? Good tone, legato, sticky staccatos, paying attention to phrases, lifting gently off phrases, especially 2 note slurs.. Usually dynamics change mildly, not dramatically. Have control of all fingers, so none are "whacking" the keys in the wrong place. The tempo is rarely fast when you are playing gracefully. I love playing blues, rock and roll, dramatic Romantic period pieces. They are "let-it-all-hang- out in-your-face" pieces that can be good for the soul. But it is also good for the soul, to relax, be gentle, to let the music flow without strain. That seems very important to me when so many today seems to want to compete with or constantly challenge others with ferocity and even downright cruelty. That type of emotion is unsustainable, and IS wearing us all out. So let's use our musical studies to take a breath, relax, be grateful and learn to play gracefully.

It is not technique, music reading, theory, transposing, ear training, singing while playing, phrasing. Those are all skills I teach and are all very important., The most important skill I teach is - - -listening. I am insistent from Day One of lessons that students learn good technique, how to use their hands, elbows, shoulders, feet to produce the sound that best fits the music. All my students learn to read music, understand at least basic theory, how to phrase using slurs, staccatos, dynamics, etc. etc. But they are not true musicians until they learn to listen to what they are doing and then improve it using all the other skills I have taught them. I have listened to students blissfully playing wrong notes (not just the "sort of" wrong notes, but the "cringing" kind), wrong rhythms, playing staccato instead of legato and vice versa, changing tempo constantly and ignoring dynamics. For beginners, there is a lot of correction that must be done, but even then I do not just tell a student the correct note, or show them how to play the rhythm. In order for them to become problem-solving musicians, I will ask them to tell me the name of the wrong note, then play it for me. For rhythms, they have to clap and say the rhythm themselves, then play it. This takes longer to learn a particular piece, but this way they will become independent musicians. For students who have been with me for 2-3 years, I sometimes just ask them to stop playing. "Go back. Without me saying anything, just listen to yourself, and see if you can play it better" Sometimes they struggle. I might then play the piece, and say "Yell too fast" if I change the tempos. It is a fun game, and makes them more aware of what they are doing. If they are playing slurs and staccatos wrong, I might play the piece the way they did, and ask them to point out when I did not play the staccatos. They then play again, and listen to make sure they are playing with the best articulation. For ear training, one of the games I play is playing the wrong note (or more) in a sample, and the student has to find it and tell me the exact note I played instead. And then there is the importance of listening to what the music is trying to say. If it is a sad piece, what should our tempo be like? After they play, I might ask, "did that sound sad? How can we make it sound sadder?' LISTEN to what you are doing this time." Unless it is a really bad day, students almost always play a piece better when reminded to listen. Teaching a student to listen to what they are doing, can, and I believe, does, carry over in to the kind of person they become. We live in a world where everyone wants to express their opinion in CAPITAL LETTERS no less, but too few want to listen to what they themselves are saying,what it means, and what others are saying, and what that means. Let's all be better listeners.

Learning is not a one-way street. Teachers teach students, but students also teach teachers. I was reminded of that recently while working on one of Haydn's last sonatas, No. 52 in Eb. I was noticing how he was using more of the piano than his earlier works, fuller chords, lots of 32nd notes, and greater contrast between dramatic and lighter sections. As I played, I thought, "this reminds me of Beethoven!" I always teach my students that Mozart and Haydn were friends and influenced each other's compositional style. And I also teach my students that Haydn was Beethoven's teacher As I worked on the Haydn Sonata, I realized that it was composed after Beethoven had been studying with Haydn, and had begun having success in his own musical career. Of course Beethoven influenced Haydn! Beethoven' s strong temperament and musical personality influenced everyone with whom he came into contact. When you have been influenced by someone, then you have learned from them. I do not know why the idea surprised me that the student Beethoven influenced (taught) his teacher. I cannot count the number of times I have learned from my students, just by their asking me a question that made me think about something differently. A fingering, a chord, a phrase. Sometimes they may play at staccato or accent differently than I would, but it still works! Maybe I should try that for a change! I have more knowledge and experience than my students, but their questions and observations make me look more closely and think more deeply. If a teacher is observant, the student is also teaching the teacher how he/she learns. We cannot just use one approach when teaching, and the student, by their response, will show us how best to teach them. Over the years, I have become a better and better teacher, able to work with a wide variety of students and levels. I thank my students for teaching me how to do that! thinking

One of the sweetest gifts a student gave me years ago was a poem she had a written for an English class titled "The Music Machine." It was not about how the piano works, which we had discussed in lessons, but showed how much the student loved music and related to the piano. On a more practical level, the piano is a machine, and it does require an understanding of how the machine works and how good body mechanics can help a musician play the piano easier and better. I always discuss with students that the keys on the piano are levers (one of the simple machines most students learn in elementary school). You press a key which flips a hammer up to strike strings that vibrate and create sound. How fast the key goes down determines whether you end up with a strong (forte) or soft (piano) sound. This is how the piano machine works. While most (competent) piano teachers emphasize good hand position, I am not sure all of them understand why and how it affects the lever/machine aspect of playing the piano. The fulcrum (the point where force is transferred from the key/lever to the hammer) is hidden under the fallboard of the piano. The farther away from the fallboard/fulcrum that the fingers push down on the keys/levers, the more control you have over the keys/levers. If you try to push down a key close to the fulcrum/fallboard, it is very difficult to do so with any control. So why do we curl our fingers. trying to get approximately a 90 degree angle from our middle joint to our fingertips? This is body mechanics and the machine working together. The curled fingers allow each of our fingers to push the keys at approximately the same distance/angle from the fulcrum and creates a more uniform sound. Some music lesson books say to lay your thumb's side on the keys, but that means your thumb is approaching the keys from a different angle than the rest of your fingers, and will make your thumb whack the key! Laying the side of your thumb on the key will also pull down the rest of your curled fingers, ruining your angles. You CAN lift your thumb and curl it so it does come towards the key more like the other fingers, creating the more desired uniform sound. Why do we keep our elbows away from our body and wrists level (no dipping or arching)? Two reasons. First is to support the curled finger position of our hands. Second, so we can move quickly across the keys without any unnecessary up and down motion of our hands or elbows. This allows us to play faster and with more dynamic control. As a pianist and piano teacher, I love music and love teaching. But I also love science. Understanding basic science can help me and my students play our music machines better!

You will learn to play songs if you are learning to be a musician, but you will not necessarily learn to be a musician if you are just learning to play songs. I have had a couple of students over the years who started their learning process by watching videos of someone playing a song they liked. They would watch over and over, try a short section, watch again, and try it again. (As a musician and a teacher, I would find that a very painful process!) They came to me wanting to learn to be a musician, but being impatient with the process of learning scales and chords and how to read music (and I move these type of students as quickly as possible through that process), they eventually reverted to watching videos and learning songs by rote. I will not say that these students will NEVER become musicians, but if they do, they will be VERY limited in what they can do. Eventually, after it became clear they were not practicing what I had suggested, we discussed why they were taking lessons, and we decided together that they were actually wasting time and money on lessons. What does an amateur or professional musician NEED to know in order to play and learn music without someone or something teaching them by rote? They need to know the building blocks of music: scales and chords. They need to understand how to read music, how rhythm shapes intersect with the lines and spaces of pitch. They need to understand how to use their hands and body to get the best and appropriate sound from their instrument. As musicians grow and diversify they need to know how a particular style is played: a dotted eight and sixteenth in the Baroque era is different from that of the Classical era from that of the Blues style. You do not get that kind of training from watching videos of someone playing songs, or from someone promising to teach you to "play songs." Rote playing has it's place, as well as ear training and learning to play by ear, but if that is all you are learning to do, you will not learn to be a musician. I tell my students that I am like a parent. My job is to teach you the skills you need to learn music without me, and to be able to use your skills in other situations: choirs, bands, other instruments, and composing your own music. I do not want you to "play songs," I want you to flourish as a musician. I can read this, and you can too, if you learn to be a musician!

You know the driver that "puts the pedal to the metal" all the time? Never slows down, does not know what a brake is? Eventually that driver is going to run over something. Likewise, the pianist who keeps their foot on the pedal all the time or way too much is running over the rest of their musical expressiveness! Why do we use the damper pedal on the piano? It can make Romantic period pieces and Popular pieces sound fuller and more resonant. It can provide color in Impressionistic pieces, blending harmonies and making the sound more fluid. The pedal can connect when our fingers cannot, such as with a jump bass. It can help us create accents when we just pedal on downbeats. But when used inappropriately, the damper pedal can hide bad technique, or hinder good technique. If you pedal across phrases, rests, staccatos, we can no longer hear those elements of the music. (You are running over and killing your music!) Students can get lazy with the pedal down, and stop playing legato with their fingers. If a student is not controlling their fingers well, the sound becomes heavier, more accented in the wrong places, and less expressive. That is why, no matter what the lesson book or sheet music indicates, my students always have to learn to play their music without pedal. Both they and I can then hear if they are playing legato, if they are letting the phrases "breathe" when they lift their hands at the end of slurs, if they are truly playing a staccato. Finger pedaling (learning to overlap notes, especially in the left hand) comes BEFORE using the damper pedal. If the finger pedal and legato is excellent, very little damper pedal is needed. I have had to ask accompanists to not use so much pedal because they were blurring harmonies so much, the choirs or ensembles with whom we were working could not hear the notes they were supposed to sing! So take your foot off that damper pedal and learn to play well! Add it back in only to help your good finger technique! Keep the music expressive!

Last summer I moved to a different house, leaving behind a wildflower garden, roses, hostas, rose of sharons, and many other plants that I had watched grow for several years. In my new home, there were NO trees or flowers, just a few (stinky) boxwoods that are too big for me to pull up. From my experience at my old home, I knew I needed to start working on plants right away, because it would be at least 5 years before they became the garden I would enjoy. As I have planted and already watched some plants die (chewed on by bunnies), and others yet to take off, I realized that gardening, like learning or teaching music share a lot of the same need for patience, perseverance and wisdom. It's Going to Take Awhile Neither gardens nor students blossom overnight. Plants may seemingly sit in the ground for 2 years without seeming to grow. Students are beginners for just as long. Unless the plant is sick, it is growing roots below the ground. Likewise, a wise teacher is laying a strong foundation of good technique, theory, and basic skills. I have seen arborvitaes take off and shoot up after 4 years of slow growth. Likewise, some students, working regularly, suddenly are playing "real" music after 2, 3, or 4 years. Don't Try to Force Growth Yes you need to water, fertilize, pull up weeds, but only enough to keep the plant going. Letting the plant grow is the hardest part of gardening. Likewise, with students, you have to correct just enough to keep the student learning, but let them figure out some things on their own. Criticizing too much can paralyze students, and stop their musical and intellectual growth. Sometimes It's Just Not Working Out Maybe the plant needs to be moved to a different location. Maybe the climate has changed. Maybe you just need to pull it up and try something else. I never just use one learning system with a student, but pull from a variety of resources. If one is not working great, I try another. It is rare, but sometimes I realize I just have to let a student go. Usually, it is because of commitment issues, either to practicing or lessons or a combination of both. If that should happen, I wish all my students the best, and hope that someday they will be ready to try again. It's Worth the Effort When you start planting trees and plants around your house, you are dreaming of the day when the tree will shade your patio, and you will see butterflies and hummingbirds fluttering about your roses and wildflowers. You are excited, but you know you have to be patient, and just keep plugging away at caring for your garden. When you start music lessons, you are dreaming of the day you can play "Fur Elise" or your favorite Beatles song. It is easy to get discouraged by the years and effort it takes to learn to play well, but it is worth it. Too many students get tired or bored before they reach that point. There is nothing like being able to sit down and play a piece of music well, except maybe the satisfaction of sipping your morning coffee in the shade of the cherry tree you planted while gazing at your purple coneflowers with bees buzzing about, pollinating the gardens of the future.

At the age of eight, I started piano lessons with great enthusiasm. My parents had an old upright cabinet grand (I am talking HUGE) given to them. It was out of tune and some of the hammers would break off periodically, but I would sit down and pick out tunes on the piano. My first lesson was great. The teacher gave me the red John Thompson method book, showed me keys, fingers, and notes and had me start playing a song. I went home and practiced all week, and was excited to return to my lesson. I played the song proudly. When I finished, the teacher paused a few seconds, then said "Did you practice this week?" Suspecting something was amiss, I nodded silently "Yes." 'I don't know WHAT you practiced." And there went my enthusiasm for piano. It seems I had gotten the keys mixed up, and had played the pattern correctly, but started on the wrong notes. Now, this article is not about where the teacher went wrong or the problems with the John Thompson method, and there is plenty to discuss. This article is about how I started practicing again. I was then and still am a very active person. I preferred to be outdoors riding bikes or playing pick up games of kickball or basketball with my neighborhood friends, rather than indoors. So after my unfortunate second piano lesson, it became my routine to have my lesson, play outside all week, wait until an hour before my lesson to run home, practice a few minutes, then walk to my piano lesson. It was ugly, in a quiet sort of way. The teacher never yelled and she was not one of those "ruler slappers" about whom you hear stories, but it took a long time for me to get through a simple piece. This went on for over a year, and I wanted to quit piano lessons "soooo bad", but that was never an option in my parents' household. So what changed? My moment of truth came at a lesson when I was stammering my way through a piece and the thought "this sounds terrible" popped in to my head. I finished, and the teacher did not say anything, but just sighed, deeply. I felt bad for her. I thought to myself, "she should not have to listen to this every week." So out of my guilt, and compassion for my teacher, I started practicing, not a lot, but regularly. And then I found out, "I'm pretty good at this!" And then I practiced more, and found a lifelong love of not just music, but playing, singing, and just overall participating in music. Should you make your child practice and continue lessons -- yes! At least for awhile. You never know when they, like me, might suddenly blossom and find their lifelong love of music. Maybe your child will discover that when you do something for others, you are often giving yourself a gift! Happy practicing!