alisa – Phoenix Song

What length of time is ideal for music lessons?

Ah, yes, the question of lesson duration.

The length of a private music lesson depends upon the student and the material to be learned.

Typically, the beginning music lesson length is 30 minutes. A 30 minute lesson is good for:

A young child (preschool to age 7) with a short attention span.
A music lesson trial period, when we are trying to see whether or not the student will want to stick with music lessons or a particular instrument for an extended period of time.
An adult student with limited time to practice each week.
A student on a budget.

After years of teaching music lessons, I have found that, as a teacher, I strongly prefer 45 minute lessons over 30 minute lessons. Specifically,

For piano, with a 45 minute lesson I have time to review pieces, assign new pieces, as well as work with the student on piano skill building and on musical pieces played just for fun.
For singing, the warm-up process, which is full of skill-building exercises and techniques, often takes up 10-15 minutes, leaving only about 15 minutes to work on songs. A 45 minute lesson grants a solid half-hour for working on songs every week.
A student who wants to learn more than just one skill from music lessons — for example, also learning to sing harmony, sigh sing, play piano by ear, musical ear training, songwriting — this becomes possible with 45 minute lessons.

Hour-long lessons are ideal for students that

Are interested in building skills quickly.
Schedule 30-60 minute long practice sessions 5-6 times per week.
Want to learn more than one instrument.

Yes, you can learn to sing

…and learn to sing well!

No, singing is not a mysterious “talent” that you either have or don’t have. Rather, singing is a human skill that 99.5% of us can learn to do well enough that we can sing in public with pride, confident that our song is pleasing to our own ears and to the ears of others.

Promise.

Can you speak? Can you shout? You’ve got the basics already.

You do need to learn to match pitch — to sing the same note that someone else is singing or that is played by an instrument. Many — but not all — have picked this up by adulthood. The good news is, this can be learned. (Yesterday, I met a remarkable woman who is nearly deaf — and sings beautifully.)

Ready to start your journey into singing? I’d be happy to be your guide!

US Folk Music Classes for Kids

Looking for general music instruction for a micro-school or home-schooled kids in North Central Phoenix? How about a music class that is designed around familiarity with American folk music!

I was in elementary school in the 1980s. We had a music class three times a week. Unsurprisingly, it takes a while for music trends to get into the textbooks — so the influence of the folk music revival of the 1960s was heavily expressed in our music textbooks. I have enjoyed a lifetime of familiarity with American folk music. I would like very much to share this familiarity with the up-and-coming generation.

The class will include these songs and more:

This Land is Your Land
American the Beautiful
Jambalaya
Yankee Doodle
Simple Gifts
The Star Spangled Banner
Johnny Comes Marching Home
The various armed forces songs.
Clementine
Home on the Range
The Erie Canal
and more!

Please contact me if you are interested in this — this could be done as a class, for a small group, or individually. I am willing to travel short distances, or the class can be held in my home (near Central & Dunlap). And, yes! I am a vendor set up with Class Wallet for ESA students.

ESA Families Welcome – ClassWallet Vendor

I am now approved as a vendor on Class Wallet! I am hoping that this will make it easy for ESA families to seek out music lessons and classes. I ask that the payment fee (currently 2% of the total) be paid by the student account. Look for me on ClassWallet as “Phoenix Song The Music Studio of Alisa Phoenix.” Please contact me if you have any questions or for further information.

“Testing the water” with piano lessons

Will my child’s interest in playing piano be a life-long commitment, or is this a passing fad?
That is a very tough question. There are so many factors to consider – and if you, the parent, is not sure of the answer, I can assure you that I, the music teacher, cannot answer that question either — yet.
Piano is an amazing instrument that can do a great deal. Learning to play piano is not something that is accomplished quickly. It is like a complicated video game with levels that go onward in multiple directions, and there is always another horizon once your reach the current endpoint. For this reason, playing piano can be a lifelong pursuit, one goal after the other – or it can be something where one reaches a plateau, and then stays at that plateau, enjoying the vista for years.
The trick is harnessing the initial interest in the instrument into skills that bring joy and a sense of accomplishment, so that the student enjoys the learning journey. As a teacher, it is my job to work with the student, helping the student find that productive and enjoyable path. The student has to be willing to try out the instructions, willing to put in some effort and work, in order to see the results. At that point we start seeing whether or not the child’s interest turns into something long-term, or the child wants to turn to some other pastime.
Parents are often willing to put in the time, money, and effort to help their child succeed in pursuit of musical goals. However, brand new pianos cost thousands of dollars, and even the costs of books and other materials can add up quickly. Here is the low-cost method to get your student through the first months of piano discovery, past the point of initial interest and (hopefully!) onto the road of long-term enjoyment from music creation.
(1) Instrument:
Your child needs an instrument. It doesn’t have to be the best one out there, but there are some basic requirements that need to be met in order to proceed well.
• The instrument can be analog (traditional piano) or electric or digital.
o Thought should be given to the household needs when deciding between a traditional piano and an electric piano. Does the household move a great deal? Will the piano need to be located on a floor other than the ground floor? Will the sound of the student’s practice of piano be competing with other family activities, such as TV watching, sleeping, etc.? The volume on an electric instrument can be easily controlled with a knob or the pianist can use headphones, and electric instruments are much more portable than traditional pianos.
o If it is a traditional piano, every key needs to be in good working order and the piano needs to be tuned. The damper pedal needs to work.
o Electric keyboards or digital pianos need a minimum of 36 keys and the size of the keys needs to be identical to the key size on a standard piano.
? The keyboard needs to sit at a height of about 28” off of the floor. There are adjustable height keyboard stands, or a table can be used with an appropriate height chair or stool.
? The electric instrument needs to sound pleasant to the ear – some cheap or toy instruments are very tinny or difficult to listen to, and this will make playing it unpleasant.
• Some thought should be given to the chair or stool or bench.
o Traditionally, many piano stools and benches can adjust their height.
o If a chair is used, it should be armless and stable, and promote good posture. (Folding chairs, camp chairs, plush chairs, etc., should not be used.)
o In the first lesson, the teacher will talk about how to determine the correct height of the piano and chair. Make sure that at home the piano student’s instrument and chair and body are all working together to promote ease of playing and proper technique.

(2) Piano method books
For the first four weeks, it may be possible to start with only a lesson book. Check with the teacher on the specific book titles required for your child. (However, there are often deals on book bundles, so it may be more economical to purchase all of the books up front.)

(3) The discipline of practicing music
When learning a sport, a child joins a team and there are regular practice sessions. Practicing a musical instrument requires regular practice, which means coming up with a schedule and sticking to it. This can be difficult because there is no team waiting for the student to arrive at each practice session. When starting instrument study, don’t think that all that needs to be scheduled is the weekly lesson – please realize that regular practice also needs to be scheduled into each day. I am not suggesting that a student needs to slavishly practice every day – our lives often don’t work that way – however, I do recommend scheduling at least 4 or more regular practice sessions per week in addition to the weekly lesson. Make practice time fun – schedule something afterwards that is like a reward – like TV time or snack time or walk-the-dog time. Work the student’s practice into the regular family routine.

“Blanking Out” During Music Performance

In the past few years I’ve been trying to play guitar and sing “off book” – and have had various breakthroughs and setbacks. I have found that having a robust understanding of the harmonies and chord progressions and brushing up on ear-training speeds up the learning process prodigiously. However, at the same time I end up in performance situations where I “blank out” and can’t seem to catch onto the chord progression – not even when it is familiar. One of my sons, Zachary, used the term “wordnesia” yesterday, and since I’d never heard of it before I looked it up. This is the paragraph that caught my attention:

Charles A. Weaver III, whom Matthew J.X. Malady interviewed for Slate, points out that a lot of our daily tasks, including reading and writing, are done on autopilot—and the best way to disrupt one of those automatic processes is to consciously think about it. Thing about playing an instrument or a sport and suddenly asking yourself, “Wait, am I doing this right?” That often leads to blanking out on how to perform a task. The same thing happens with wordnesia, even though we not consciously be aware of questioning what we’re reading or writing. As Weaver explains, “anytime that you engage conscious monitoring of those parts that ought to be automatic, you get a hiccup.”

I RECOGNIZE this. It happens sometimes when I perform music — most recently at the performance at Beatitudes a week or so ago. A fellow performer started to play Home on the Range. I knew that would be performed in the key of F; and I’ve been playing the song off and on, including in performance, without chord prompts (i.e. off-book) – needing only some text prompts after the first verse. However, I couldn’t seem to “catch on” to the chord progression — I couldn’t play it on my guitar. I recognized elements of it, I remembered fragments of it – and yet, didn’t catch onto it. What was going on?

It is the same mental “mind fart” that I have noticed it many times when I am playing Fur Elise on piano – a piece that I memorized at age 10 and have played often enough ever since that I never forgot it. I hesitate to play it in public, because sometimes – even when I’m at home, playing only for myself – I’ll blank out on a part of it. Sometimes it happens because I start thinking about some other topic while playing the piece, and when I return my focus to what I’m playing, I disrupt the process of playing and can’t pick it back up. I notice it happening with my students – they wonder why they “play better at home” than in lesson.

I’m not even sure what to call it – because when playing music it isn’t “wordnesia.” I’m going to need to research this further – and one of my first goals will be finding the proper name for it! In the meantime, the term “mind fart” can be an apt placeholder.

I already have a couple strategies for dealing with this “mind fart” issue. The first is teaching the “conscious” mind (or “left-brain”) how to do things that otherwise the “automatic” or “unconscious” mind (or “right-brain”) would be handling, so that when the monitoring starts that it doesn’t throw a monkey-wrench into the works. The second is for the monitoring to sneak in slowly and for it to remain somewhat detached – less emotionally involved – so that it remains an “observer” rather than an “interferer” into the process of performance. The first time I did these was when at age 10 or so I taught my conscious mind to observe and learn the process of “double-whistling” – something that I was doing intuitively, unconsciously. Once I had mastered that, I found that by experimenting, my conscious mind was able to adjust the intuitive act so that I could whistle two nearby tones simultaneously. (I haven’t been doing this much in the past 30 years, and it looks like I’ve halfway forgotten how to do it.)

I’ve found that by training the left-brain in music theory that it can actually aid the right-brain process of playing a musical piece, rather than hinder it – but doing so is a delicate process.

I suspect that one of the primary reasons why so many who perform music do not wish to ever be “off-book” is because their nerves in a performance situation cause left-brain interference – which causes mistakes – which causes embarrassment and increases anxiety around performances – which causes more left-brain interference during performance, etc. If they keep their eyes “on-book,” the left-brain is kept busy during performance – it is keeping track of progress on-book, which leaves the right-brain free to focus on making music. Interestingly, music reading – even if it is just utilizing “supports,” such as lyrics and chords – creates a handy bifurcation in the brain, leading to a performance where the music is closer to “perfect.” But there is irony in this performance – because a truly scintillating performance needs the skills of the “whole mind” – not just the right-brain with a left-brain entranced in another activity, such as lyric, chord and/or note-reading. In brilliant performances, the left-brain is fully engaged, observing the music-making, the audience reaction, anticipating what-comes-next, aware of what the body is capable of producing, be it a beautifully sung note or a masterfully executed sequence on a musical instrument. For performance to be fully realized, there needs to be a synergy of mind-systems.

A “Chord Method” for Piano Learning

One of the interests I’ve had since I was a very young child is how it works to “play by ear.” When I was a child, I thought that it was, basically, a “magical gift” that spontaneously appeared in some people. Then, I learned music theory in college and realized that it was possible to label the music that one heard, and “playing by ear” became something that was, in theory, doable.

I’ve thought for many years that it would be appropriate to teach a “chord method” in addition to a traditional piano method – which would support learning to “play by ear” –but I never found one that was appealing. A few months ago I ran across Meridee Winters’ books – and I finally have a method that is teaching the pattern part that is used both to play by ear and to play written pieces with facility

Here are Meridee Winters’ chord piano method books and more information about the method:

Chord Books

What is the Circle of Fifths?

What a very good question! I ran across a video the other day that explains this musical concept very well, on YouTube:

Many thanks to “YouTuber” BradHarrisonMusic for creating this video.

(If the YouTube link is not working, the video can also be accessed locally, here.)

Tips for transcribing music

Transcribing music – some tips —
(1) write the notes on a staff as circles, in order, with more or less equal spacing. Write the words/syllables under the notes.
(2) Go to your text, set a slower, steady beat (tap, beat with hand in air, or use metronome) sing or speak in rhythm.
(3) Mark in the text where the beats lie. Does a beat line up with a word or a syllable? If so, mark it. (I like using straight vertical lines for this — it creates a visualization of the beat.) If a beat falls where there is no word, draw lines between the words to indicate the beat.
(4) Once you have this, sing/speak in rhythm to find the stressed beats — the goal is to determine the time signature, measure locations, and to see if the text starts on beat 1 or some other beat of the measure. Mark the stressed beats and/or measures in the text.
(5) Transfer the measure information to the written music with the whole notes, writing in bar lines and the time signature. For now, write in quarter rests for beats that occur where there is no text. If a word/syllable clearly lasts less than two beats, color in the notehead and add a stem. If the note is two beats or longer but less than four beats, add a stem.
(6) sing the song to the written music, refining your notation to fit usual written musical conventions. If your song does not subdivide the beats beyond eighth notes, this is usually pretty easy. If the song includes sixteenth notes or triplets, it can be more complex — expect to need some practice with simpler songs before doing this easily with more complex songs.

Practicing: frequency, scheduling, and duration

Yes, it does need to be discussed — how long should a student practice, how frequently, and how does it become a good habit? I’ll answer all of these questions.

Unfortunately, I cannot simply give a pat answer here — there is no “silver bullet” music practice regimen. However, from my own study of music and twenty years of teaching others, I’ve learned a few things over the years about practicing music.

The weekly goal of practice sessions should be 5-6 times per week. Life happens, and not all of our intentions pan out — with a goal of 5-6 times per week, the student should end up with no fewer than 4 practice sessions per week. My experience has shown that a student that regularly practices fewer than 4 times per week (one time per day) will not make meaningful progress from week to week.

For this reason, I generally provide students with practice records, outlining what needs to be covered in practice and how to do it, with room to mark off each day that it is done. This helps facilitate communication about practice between student and teacher. Also, as a teacher, if a student comes to lesson and clearly has not learned something from the prior week that was included in the practice sheet I need to know whether or not this lack stems from (a) lack of understanding of the material or (b) has simply not practiced sufficiently to master the concept. How I address the issue as a teacher differs greatly depending upon the underlying problem.

This brings up another issue — frequency of practice. As a general rule, it is crucial to practice either the next day after the lesson, or at most the second day after the lesson. This is because the student needs to be able to remember what was covered in the lesson in order to practice it effectively. Yes, a practice sheet helps, but it doesn’t completely solve this problem. Practicing the very next day or the second day after a lesson should be worked into the student’s general schedule.

Which leads us to scheduling. It is important to schedule music practice into your day. If it is left as a “I’ll practice when I get around to it” — most likely, the student will not regularly get around to it. This is the same for children and adults, irrespective of how much enjoyment they derive from music practice. Young children will require a parent to help work music practice into the household schedule, and may require support from the parent to practice effectively. Plan for this. Older children may still need a parent to help add practice into their schedule, to prompt for practice, and perhaps even work rewards for music practice into the usual schedule. For students of any age, it works best if music practice comes regularly after or before other scheduled activity — such as, music practice starts about 20 minutes after getting home from school, once a snack has been eaten or 30 minutes after returning home for work. After music practice, another enjoyable activity starts such as video games or dinner.

Last, we get to duration of music practice. Generally, attempt to get to all of the assigned practice, within the limitations of the student’s attention span. A very young child (age 6 and under) may only practice for 10 – 15 minutes. Some kids with short attention spans may be benefitted by two 10-minute practice sessions daily. Older students and adults will have the attention span that is longer. A half an hour of daily practice can be expected, with a lot of personal variation. Some students may breeze through most assignments, and require little time. Some students may struggle through most assignments, and need a break after 30 minutes. (And the same student may fit into both of these categories on different weeks!) Some students may enjoy improvising or “playing around on the piano” after completing assignments, or reviewing past pieces — other will not. All of this is normal. I suggest focusing on quality of practice sessions — was all of the material covered? were all of the steps followed? — rather than on quantity of practice sessions. Practice records can facilitate parents in following up with their children on what was practiced.