All attendees will receive a free CD and there will be door prizes and refreshments as well.  Of course, the staff at Senseney are always great at helping you find music and accessories for your teaching.

Here is the invitation (are you curious about the graphic?).  You may email DeAnn at Senseney to RSVP or you can RSVP on the ComposeCreate FaceBook page as well.  I hope to see you all there!

In case you cannot read the print, here is the information about the event:

Nurturing Creativity and Inspiration

Do you feel you lack creativity or inspiration in your teaching? Do you need an inspirational boost but don’t know where to find it? Do you struggle to be creative in teaching new concepts? Do you feel you are stuck in a rut?

If so, please join us in a practical workshop on nurturing creativity and inspiration in your life and your teaching. Wendy Stevens will be sharing about how composers are not the only “creatives” in music. Every human possesses creativity and can learn to utilize their creative potential in ways that are unique to their personality and ambition. Wendy will talk about how she found the inspiration for her latest books and how she brainstorms for creative ideas in her composing. She will demonstrate how the same creative and inspirational process can be used by teachers to solve student problems, create fresh activities for teaching, and connect with students.

Wendy Stevens is the composer of 13 collections and solos published by Hal Leonard, Augsburg Fortress, and Concordia Publishing House. Her newest publication is titled American Portraits, published by Hal Leonard.

Nurturing Creativity and Inspiration PDF Invitation

Bradley Sowash

Playing by ear is one of those areas of teaching music that often goes overlooked. If you are not already teaching “off the page” alongside traditional reading skills, perhaps it’s because you’ve unknowingly bought into some of the common misconceptions about teaching and playing by ear.

Myth #1
Playing by ear is an innate gift.

Musicians who can play by ear are accustomed to people assuming they were born with these capabilities. They often hear comments like, “well of course you can do it… playing like that comes to people like you naturally.” While it’s true that rare individuals seem to possess extraordinary musical, most of us would self-describe as falling somewhere between “prodigy” and “tin ear” on the bell curve of musical aptitude. In my 30 year career, I’ve known hundreds of pro jazz musicians who play by ear and improvise everyday. As students, only a handful of my colleagues began with anything more than average musical talent. I can also confidently assert that not a single one of them have been hit by lightning somehow instantly unlocking mysterious musical gifts! Rather, they developed their skills through study and practice.

Myth Buster: Musicians who play be ear can do what they do simply because they learned it.

Myth #2
Improvisation is difficult and intimidating.
Many believe that mastering advanced harmonic concepts, unusual scales and complex syncopations are prerequisites to improvisation. While it’s true that advanced musical concepts come to play in the music of jazz masters, students need only know the C major scale and a simple three-chord tune to begin developing their ears. In the beginning levels, it’s not any more difficult to improvise than it is to acquire other musical skills. The panic felt by many classically trained musicians when asked to “fake it” is not an issue for beginners.  When ear skills are are introduced early, students simply regard it as just another aspect of music making along with reading, rhythm, harmony, one, dynamics and all the rest.

Myth Buster: Anyone can improvise. Start your students early and it becomes a natural way to make music.

Stay tuned for Part 2….

Excerpted from a longer article titled “Unlocking the Mystery of Playing by Ear” which appeared in Clavier Companion November, December 2009 and reprinted with permission.

Photo by Simon Tong

I have mentioned “performance classes” several times on this blog.  I try to schedule 2-3 performance classes a year especially right before recital and competition time.  These help the students practice performing before their big events.  Since I don’t charge for these lessons (I charge a yearly tuition which accounts for a combo of 38 private and group lessons), some parents like to view these lessons as “makeups” in case their child has missed a lesson.  Read this post to learn about various ways of handling makeup lessons.   

In addition to using this as a performance opportunity for students, I also use this as an opportunity for non-performing students to sharpen their aural skills.  I hand out a performance class worksheet to each student before a performance and they answer the specific questions about the piece as they listen.  The performance class forms are taylored to ask questions appropriate for elementary and intermediate students.  There is both a long and a short form for each.  Here are the performance class worksheets which are listed on this ear training page:

Performance Class Worksheet (elementary)

Performance Class Worksheet (intermediate)

Performance Class Shortened Worksheet (elementary)

Performance Class Shortened Worksheet (intermediate)

I hope this is helpful!  As always, if you have suggestions for other resources which might be helpful to you, please don’t hesitate to share them!

Editors’ Choice Online viewer enables free preview access from web-enabled devices.

PAOLI, PENNSYLVANIA — AUGUST 27, 2010 — J. W. Pepper announced today the launch of Editors’ Choice Online.  This free web viewer enables music directors to preview sheet music, listen to recordings, read product information, make notes, and purchase their selections.  Available on http://ec.jwpepper.com, this new feature gives music directors greater access to Editors’ Choice music and provides the convenience of browsing from a computer or web-enabled phone.  

Editors’ Choice Online is being launched in time for the back to school rush, as Pepper aims to help music teachers prepare for the school year ahead.  Customers are able to page freely back and forth and listen to the recordings.  The magnify feature allows music to be viewed closely on all sizes of screens.   The ‘Share This’ option makes it easy to recommend music or get a second opinion from friends and colleagues on social networking sites. These services are free to everyone with an active Pepper account and will preview as much music as publishers permit.  

By utilizing new technology, Pepper hopes to build on its 134-year tradition of empowering music directors to spend their budget dollars wisely. Each year the Editors’ Choice selections are hand-picked by Pepper’s editorial team from thousands of newly published band, orchestra, jazz and choral works. By providing a greater ease of access to this series Pepper hopes to help music directors begin the new semester on the right note.

Each year Pepper sells printed preview choral books as well as CDs for band, choir and orchestra.  According to Kathy Fernandes, Pepper’s Vice President of Marketing, “We believe Editors’ Choice Online is a key service built so directors can preview music for free, wherever they are.” Further, “We know music directors are really busy people. We sort through a ton of music to help them locate good new material quickly. They can certainly order any music they want from us, but directing them to our Editors’ Choice recommendations gives them a head start in finding great new music.”  

About J. W. Pepper
J. W. Pepper, the leading retailer of sheet music, has been in business for 134 years, with 14 locations across the country.  The corporate headquarters is located in southeastern Pennsylvania at 2480 Industrial Boulevard, Paoli, PA 19301. Find JWPepper at facebook.com/jwpepper or at twitter.com/jwpepper   Follow their music blog at: blogs.jwpepper.com

For additional information, contact:  
Kathy Fernandes
Vice President, Marketing
J.W. Pepper & Son, Inc.
2480 Industrial Blvd.
Paoli, PA 19301
(610) 648-0500
kfernandes@jwpepper.com
www.jwpepper.com | www.pianoatpepper.com

This year, I am not doing an incentive contest per se, but my main goal this year is again to help them play more musically.  I believe that if they learn to do this and it becomes a natural, automatic way of playing, they will enjoy music more and continue lessons longer.  Of course, all the other foundational parts of learning music are still important, but this is again our emphasis for the year.

I am doing a lecture in February and April on how to motivate students to play more musically and will be sharing some of the more practical ideas periodically this year on the blog.  The first resource I wanted to make available is the Certificate of Artistry that I designed for my students this year.  This is a more official looking award and should be more motivating for my older students than the Caught Ya Makin’ Music Cards were. 

One of the nice things about these is that they are easy to collect since they are small and can easily fit in a notebook pocket or taped to an assignment sheet.  Print these on parchment paper (card stock) for best results.  You can put a little star sticker on the star emblem on each certificate.  Since I have more gold star stickers than purple, red, or green, I am going to tell my students that they have to earn 4 gold star certificates before they can choose a purple, red, or green star. 

I hope you can use these in your studio!

So, I visited a Staples and bought a package of 3 Frixion erasable highlighters made by Pilot.  I tore into the package when I got into the car and discovered that these were the ones of which I dreamed!   When there was a more stubborn mark that didn’t seem to come up at first, I simply erased harder and voila…it vanished!  I don’t understand exactly how it works, but I do know that it uses friction to lift the color off the page as opposed to the Office Max “erasers” which appeared to be another wet kind of highlighter which wettened the paper more and didn’t erase the color completely.

Being curious about how this all worked, I read on the back of the Frixion package the following:

Thermo-Sensitive ink formula disappears with erasing friction…[and at the bottom] Do not expose to extreme temperatures (<14 degrees F; >140 degrees F). If highlighter is exposed to temperation that reaches 140 degrees F, the ink will be colorless when highlighting.  To restore color, cool to at least 14 degrees F in freezer and the ink will again highlight in color.

So that got me to wondering if extreme temperatures would affect whether or not the color would stay erased once it had been erased with their eraser and underwent temperature changes.  So, I did some tests so that you can see both the product comparisons as well as the results of my “extreme heat” experiment.

Pilot Test

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Pilot Test Result

Then, here is the Office Max Test:

Office Max Test

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Office Max Test Result

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You can see the obvious difference and which I will choose from now on!   Here is what happened after I baked this index card for 15 minutes at 200 degrees. 

Pilot Test after baking

Nothing happened at all!  So, increased the oven to 300 degrees and baked it for 10 minutes more.  Still, there were no changes, even after I left it out to cool.

So, if you decide to get some erasable highlighters, I would strongly recommend the Polit Frixion brand.  As a matter of fact, I grabbed some at Target…a package of 5 for only $4.99!  By the way, Pilot also makes erasable gel pens!

That was fun!  Now back to the real fun…teaching!

Usman Google Testimony on the Official Google Blog

You ever hear a song that you wish you knew the name of? Usually you can just Google a few key lyrics to find the answer, but when the song has no lyrics, one has to get creative. This was the case a few years ago when I was tasked with finding out the name of that famous circus/carnival music, you know, with the calliope, like, the clown music people usually hum in situations when someone’s just done something silly.. you know, it kind of goes like “doot doot doodle-oodle oot doot do do?” Sorta? Of course it’s more likely that you’d recognize the tune if I could whistle it to you. Except everyone I’d whistled to, despite recognizing the tune, had no clue what the name of the song was.

So, on a whim, I googled it. That is, I went to Google Search, typed in “doot doot doodle-oodle oot doot do do” (without quotes, even!), clicked “I’m Feeling Lucky”—and guess what? It’s called “Entrance of the Gladiators”—also known as “Thunder and Blazes” — by Czech composer Julius Fučík. Good ear, Google, good ear.

She also told me that she had added a number of new games and resources to Piano Discoveries since my last post.  I visited her site and was amazed at what I found.  In addition to the new games she has posted, she posted videos to demonstrate how the games are played!  I spent the next hour printing off games for this fall.  Some of the new ones include:

Enharmonic Snap

Flashy Fingers (for finger number recognition)

Spelling Bee Game (See below for video example)

The Interval Star

Listen Up in the Tree

Circle of Fifths

Visit Piano Discoveries to see other videos like this one:

Well, I was super excited and surprised to learn of a new product: the Sharpie Liquid Pencil!  Ever since it was drilled into me to complete my theory assignments in pencil, I’ve always had a pencil handy.  Though I knew a liquid pencil would be a novelty I had to have, I had a hard time imagining why I would want a pencil that becomes permanent after 24 hours.  My husband bought a package at Office Max for me and I love it!  Here’s why:

• The pencil writes as smoothly as a ball point pen.
• No more breaking leads!
• The package comes with a number of replacement erasers
• I can finally write my Thank You notes in pencil since it will dry in 24 hours.   For some reason, I never have a pen in my purse and eversharp pencils are a must for a composer.  So, now I don’t even have to worry about having a pen handy.
• The “lead” is 0.5 mm, #2 lead equivalent

My students always think my endless supply of eversharps are pretty cool since the 0.5 mm lead makes them think it’s a pen.  They’ll be fascinated with this one too!

Do you have a new “office supply find?”  As a fellow OS Junkie, I’d love to hear about it!

Since prevention of this is always the goal, I thought it would be a great idea to add a number of progressive rhythm drills for triple time.  You can find these under the Teaching Resources/ Rhythm Worksheets section which is under the Wendy’s Piano Studio tab.  There are 6 new worksheets in order of difficulty:

• Triple Time 1 (quarters, halves, dotted halves)
• Triple Time 2 (same, but with more difficult combinations)
• Triple Time 3 (rests added)
• Triple Time 4 (eighth pairs added)
• Triple Time 5 (rests added)
• Triple Time 6 (most difficult)

If you have other ideas for rhythm drills that would be helpful in your studio, please let me know!