first item of the day....

made it to the garland music teachers association meeting. hoo boy! did i learn a lot. made me want to come home and totally retrain myself to play. this girl whose name i can't remember gave a presentation about tone in music. i'm thinking, it's a piano, what gives? but then she started talking about how she builds a foundation through teaching beginners, teaching them theory without getting too technical. (they know the circle of 5ths before they know what it's called) i told RTO he has to let me teach him to play now. he swears his hands just don't work that way. i'm not buyin' it. i'll have to dig up the outline and post on it, so maybe i'll remember it better. i mean, you always hear that technique is important, but it's boring. or at least it was for me. my theory skills are greatly lacking, but the way she worked through it sounded soooo easy.

it's all about scales. starting with penta-scales. she has her students learn the "scale recipe" Start-whole-whole-half-whole. first, look at the key you'll be starting on, and figure out the steps (before putting hands on the keyboard) then play it. that was something she really stressed... thinking, tapping out, THEN playing. so, start on C, then say okay, the 5th note is called the Dominant, let's make that the first note, or tonic, now. think through steps and play. she also explains how to make it minor by changing the "recipe", lowering the third note.

so once they're comfortable with pentascales, she moves up to, uh, not quite whole scales, or more accurately, scales with two hands. she has them make "octopus hands" basically all fingers except thumbs. so left hand plays the 1st four notes and the right finishes up the scale, oh, and there's the 2nd half of the scale recipe, uh ,i can't remember it. (yeah, i know, i have a degree in what?)

sooooo much stuff. i'll have to dig up more of it later.