Music Moves for Piano: Deep Dive with Janna Olson Part 3

In this last episode with Janna Olson, she discusses the amazing skills developed in Books 4 and 5 of Marilyn Lowe's Music Moves for Piano curriculum.

Use the code AUDIATE for 25% off Janna's webinars Learning through Play: Games and resources for activities to reinforce skills and build audiation and Beyond the Notes: An enriched aural approach to piano repertoire.

Links:
Janna's Q&A on the Music Learning Academy YouTube channel
Janna's community chat on the Keys to Music Learning Podcast - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Janna's mini-webinar on Music Aptitude on the Music Learning Academy YouTube channel

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Introduction to Audiation-based Piano Instruction and Music Moves for Piano

Ready to learn more about audiation-based piano instruction and Music Moves for Piano? Visit Music Learning Academy for online courses, webinars, and resources.

Want to dive into audiation-based piano instruction? Check out Music Moves for Piano by Marilyn Lowe.

Transcript

Hannah Mayo: [00:00:00] Welcome to Keys to Music Learning. I'm Hannah Mayo of Mayo Piano. 

Krista Jadro: And I'm Krista Jadro of Music Learning Academy. 

Hannah Mayo: Join us as we discuss common goals and challenges in the piano studio, and offer research based ideas and solutions to guide every one of your students to reach their full musical potential with audiation. 

Krista Jadro: We are back for the third and final part of our deep dive into Marilyn Lowe's Music Moves for Piano with Janna Olson. Enjoy! 

Hannah Mayo: So what about book four? 

Janna Olson: Yeah, I was just gonna say, can I talk a little bit about book four and book five? I wanted to talk about book three because it just sets the foundation and I feel like you really need it. And it's, I don't know, it's like, for me, it's like the hub, the central part [00:01:00] of, of Music Moves for Piano, as we move and kind of branch out from there. So we build towards it, but it has all these sort of arms that reach out into different areas of teaching. I have this kind of visual picture in my head of it, you know, kind of forming the center of what we do.

 So just a couple of thoughts about book four and book five. So along with the pattern instruction, which again we're not really talking about a lot today, but we embark on keyboard exploration in the various tonalities. So this is super fun. We start with Dorian and Mixolydian in Book 4, and we learn them according to harmonic function.

And I just want to say this loud and clear, we're not learning them as scales. It is so much more practical to learn them with harmonic function, and who knew, when I was taking my theory, that a mode was more than a scale, that it was actually something you could use, and it didn't [00:02:00] belong hundreds and hundreds of years ago in ancient music, right?

It was sort of these two very disjunct concepts like yeah, people used to use modes and now we learn these scales and I didn't know what you did with them. So they we learn them according to harmonic function. We change tunes according to the harmonic function in various tonalities. It's super fun and exciting and it allows the students now... so all those little tunes that we've been using in books two and three begin to be... Marilyn carefully selected ones that she thought would particularly work well and you can do more.

Some of them I find maybe work more or less well than others. So a very critical part of their musical development and skill development. And it opens up a whole world to think, wow, they already know there's more than major and minor, but like now they're really experiencing it. And like Gordon said, we know what something is because we know what it is [00:03:00] not.

This is multi dimensional now. It's not only comparing major and minor, we're now comparing the various tonalities. We practice in Book 4 playing 6/ 4 chords, so 2nd inversion triads, and this is so invaluable. I put it into my lesson plan so that I don't forget, and it is incorporated in many ways in improvisation activities, and we're always learning subdominant, kind of separate from dominant, and then putting it all together, and it can happen immediately, or they might just need time with the subdominant.

We learn intervals. So this is one of the things that we think about in standard method books, that it's very interval based, so students are often learning in a method, thirds and fourths and fifths. So Marilyn doesn't really work with that early on, but when we do learn them, we sing them and we play them, we invert them and it's always in context.

So that's [00:04:00] the critical part. So yes, intervals are important. So we don't want to sound like we don't think they're a critical part of our learning. They're just part of the context of music and we learn them as a tool that helps us in our improvisation, in our overall understanding of the construction of music, and in melodic book work that we do with all kinds of repertoire.

So I kind of divided book four, the things that we see, that are maybe a little bit different are the technique and keyboard geography, which I just mentioned, and then the improvisation and creative ideas, I'm going to just kind of run down a little list, because we could talk about a lot of these in detail, but we can save that for another time.

So, we're improvising in Dorian and Mixolydian over what becomes a very standard chord pattern. For all of the tonalities, and I like this because you are gonna have a [00:05:00] familiarity when you come back to the other tonalities. So in Dorian and Mixolydian, the chord pattern becomes I - I - IV - IV - I - I - VII - I. And that will be modified when we get to Phrygian, for example, and Lydian, which use a very similar but just different chords.

And I really like that as just the foundation, and then we change it up. You can do lots of different things. Sometimes they naturally form a different chord progression. It's a really fun and important introduction to adding non chord tones in your improv skills, okay? And again, this is what I call a pull down skill.

You can do this earlier on. They can add passing tones into their cadences when they're comfortable with it. So we do this first with cadences, so play a D major cadence and add a passing tone somewhere in that. And we explore all the different ways that you could. And then you do it with the folk song repertoire that, again, you've learned in Book 2 and Book 3.

There are many [00:06:00] other things we do. We create duets, and you begin to develop an awareness of accompaniment styles. And we've already talked about that, all the different ways you can accompany Christmas tunes around this time. You make rhythmic variations with different rhythmic functions. So we've been talking all along in our sequence of learning rhythm, what kind of rhythms.

We've been doing this over and over again and you'll see again why we do these songs to sing and she'll ask that question, what rhythm patterns do you hear? And she talks about doing this with repertoire as well. You're asking students questions. We're asking them, what are they hearing? And that's one of the questions we ask, what is the function of those rhythm patterns. Is it division? Is it division elongation? And then Hannah, you mentioned reharmonization. This is so fun, and it opens understanding. And this is one of those things where I'm frequently noticing when I'm teaching repertoire. So for example, I was teaching the [00:07:00] Debussy Arabesque, No. 1, this last week.

And in the sort of middle section, when we go to A major, Debussy subtly changes the harmony during repetitions. And we get so excited about it because this is really important to Debussy that he wants us to take note when he does that. So those little reharmonization activities build towards that kind of repertoire, the changes in harmony, sensitivity to what it actually, the significance of what it means in repertoire.

And then can I just give you a list of all the different compositional techniques that we start to explore: repetition, contrast, extension, sequences, and later in Book 5, you're gonna have a new appreciation for Bach because there's even more after that, but those are the ones we use in Book 4.

We start to improvise melodic and rhythmic answers with familiar tunes, and here again is something you can do earlier on with the voice. So since we're talking about Old Woman, [00:08:00] you can sing the first half of the melody. (Janna sings) And then let's create a different ending (Janna sings) right? So they can create, they can answer in an improvisatory way.

So we're going to do that more formally in book four, but I think this can happen earlier, especially with the voice, which would be your starting point. Also, we start to create with expanded chord progression vocabulary for improvisation. So I already talked about using the II and the III (chords).

So here's an example of a chord progression that we get to start to work with the I, the VI, IV, V, II, VI, V, I. That's pretty complicated, but now we're going to start to be able to work with that when we're in repertoire and we start to have more than just tonic, subdominant and dominant functions, especially in advanced repertoire.

And I love that we come to that from an improvisatory angle. And then when they're working with it in repertoire, it seems more [00:09:00] natural to just have an awareness of what it actually musically means. So I'm not saying just from a theoretical perspective, what does that actually contribute to the shape and the interpretation of the particular phrase?

We create melodic variations for familiar tunes, so London Bridge is an example of that. There, we begin to do a lot of arrangements, creating three part form with two familiar tunes. So that, they have been doing ABA forever. ABA, short improvs with two, four macrobeat phrases. And then we might repeat that four macrobeat phrase to give it eight macrobeats in an ABA form.

And then we're recognizing that some of the songs we sing are in ABA form, and our repertoire is in ABA, and now they're creating their own ABA arrangements. So you can do that with tunes, and then they can make their own original ABA compositions, and we do theme and variations, and rondo form, which is, that's a lot.

So [00:10:00] you can understand why book four slows down, because especially for students that kind of grab on to this, I've just had some amazing, fun examples of this come out of students who then, it's really quite independent at this point, like I have much less of a hand. This little guy who did his Christmas arrangement, I only really made little suggestions here and there.

He came up with it on his own, like it's completely his own ideas. And then just a quick, brief thought about notation activities. So we begin to notate cadences, rhythm patterns, intervals, chords, and melodies. So we're starting to work with a lot more writing things down. So create a melody and then notate it.

And again, depending on their age and their experience and their audiation, this can probably be happening earlier as well. And let me just launch into Book 5 really quick, and I'm hoping maybe just for people who are listening, this will whet your appetite for diving in and [00:11:00] looking at these, because you can tell I'm pretty excited about it.

Every time I open it, I'm like, this is so fun. So again, in Book 5, we get the technique and keyboard geography. We're expanding out, we're doing Lydian first, Phrygian, Aeolian, and then Locrian. We even get to do some Locrian, which is really fun. So building on what we did in book four. But I think the main focus for me is the improvisation and creativity that we get to do.

So lots and lots of improv in various tonalities and we begin to compare them back and forth. And this is maybe where the trading eights comes from. Sarah Boyd has talked about this. So you trade back and forth improvisation with another player. And for example, two people are improvising but maybe in different tonalities.

So one student in Lydian and one in Mixolydian and you trade eights going back and forth and we [00:12:00] usually plan a meter together ahead of time and then maybe even those tonalities are based on the same DO. They don't have to be but it kind of makes a really great comparison and then you can switch back and forth.

There are lots of extended harmonies. And this is so wonderful because our advancing repertoire is not based on triads of 1, 3, and 5 in the chord. There's so much 7s and 9s, 11s, 13s, but we use them. So Marilyn gives an introduction in a way, even just playing chords with two hands so that you can see how they're built, how they're constructed.

And then she actually encourages the student then to explore other books because she'll say, if you have a student that really is interested in voicing, which becomes our challenge when working with those extended harmonies, she encourages them to start to explore other books that have been written, especially on jazz, harmony in jazz.[00:13:00] 

Changing, okay, and then this is where we talked about blocks, so inversion, retrograde, augmentation, and diminution. I don't think I'm saying that correctly, but you have got, a new appreciation for Bach Preludes and Fugues, especially when you start to create your own short melodies and work with those compositional techniques.

So that again is something I do with students who are particularly interested in composing. We create medleys and variations. We continue those reharmonization projects that we started in book four. And can I just tell you how much I love chromatic mediants? I never did before I started working with book five.

They are so awesome when you're playing advanced repertoire. So, it opens up the students, again, you're not talking about it as a theoretical concept. You're exploring it, you're playing it, and she just has a really practical way of introducing these concepts to the students, so that they are able [00:14:00] to use them right away.

And then you start to see them in your repertoire. And those students who I've taken through into Book 5 start to say, Isn't that a chromatic mediant?" Again, we're not doing it because we want to like use the language and be able to say, "Oh, I know what this is." It's because it brings meaning to what you're playing and you understand it not only from an intellectual perspective, but from a musical perspective.

 I wanna talk about the Schumann piece that I have selected, which we maybe will do at a later time. But, it has a chromatic mediant in the middle of it. And it's relationship, it changes to a key that is a chromatic mediant of a key that you're playing in. So it just, it brings it to life.

There's a huge expansion of chord progressions, so you get amazing examples of different chord progressions that you can use. I feel like we're often bordering on kind of jazz harmonies at times. And then [00:15:00] she encourages students to start to analyze what they're hearing. And I've found that my students almost do this naturally.

So they'll say, "Oh, I was trying to figure out what the chord progressions were for that Taylor Swift song," for example. So they're starting to really do it. And, often they'll come and play things and I'm like, "what is that?" And it's just something they heard. And they have the ability to listen for the chords and the harmony and be able to play it. 

So just quick little bit more about book five. The other huge thing is the accompaniment style activities. So you discover and notate. That's kind of the two things that happen. So we start to say, "Oh, what accompaniment pattern is used for this tune?" And this is why most of the tunes are still simple because Marilyn starts to develop vocabulary of different accompaniment styles that can be used in both triple and duple and uneven meters and combined meters, which we are also exploring in our pattern work, rhythm pattern work.[00:16:00] 

And we try out those patterns. So right now, at Christmas, they're like, "what would work best for this style?" Or "I want to play a second verse of this Christmas tune, so what are we going to use as the accompaniment pattern?" And we might look back at the books and think about what where some of our favorites. And then they learn a very natural sense of coordination because they've done it in a small way without a lot of complications. So we're not dealing with tons of different harmonies when we're learning them initially. So then they're more able to transfer that information when we're dealing with more complicated patterns. 

And I'll just mention the circle of fourths activities. So I don't want to get into why we call it the circle of fourths versus the circle of fifths as much because, essentially, they're very similar.

The circle of fourths, for Marilyn, meant that we were thinking about it in a certain way that was very similar to what we do in music. We play the tonic -dominant- tonic [00:17:00] arpeggios, two handed, in all the major keyalities around the circle of fourths and we say the letter names out loud. So if I start in C, I'm playing a C chord in my left hand and I'm playing a C chord in my right hand and I'm saying C.

And then what is C the dominant of? It is the dominant of F, so I'm going to F and I'm playing an F broken triad in one hand and in the other and arpeggiated and then I'm saying "F is the dominant of B flat" and off we go. So you're playing around the circle of fourths. So, super useful, and, and don't worry about the controversy between, you know, calling it the circle of fifths or the circle of fourths.

We're just more familiar with the circle of fifths. That's what I grew up with, but I really love this. So if you practically work with it, it's going to work for you and you'll understand where she's coming from. And then you can actually even do this with one hand, like a triad blocked, and chant.

"C is the [00:18:00] dominant of F, and F is the dominant of B flat," and you kind of just chant around, or sing it if you want. Chant around the circle of fourths. You have to keep dropping your voice down if you're singing it, so I think that's maybe why chanting worked. And then you improvise around the circle of fourths.

So the right hand, left hand arpeggios and accompany a right hand melody. You can use Hot Cross Buns for a set of variations around the circle of fourths. You can just point out that any triad can be preceded by the dominant. So the dominant of V of the V chord is the II chord, et cetera. And we write and play those dominants on every triad for every scale degree for your chosen scale, whatever scale they want to choose, they're comfortable with that.

And then find tunes that use it. So like even We Wish You Merry Christmas is a great example. Like the chords are in relation to each other. So that's pretty much what I [00:19:00] have to say about book five, from a practical standpoint and you can see how much of that builds into advanced repertoire. 

Krista Jadro: So it definitely is a lot of information learning about books three, four, and five, but I urge teachers to, after you listen to this, listen to it again.

If you want to dive deeper into this kind of scope and sequence, Hannah has an amazing webinar that goes through Keyboard Games through Books 5, and, you know, dives into all the different parts and talks a lot about this as well, because it is a lot. And if you're teaching Music Moves for Piano now, I hope as you were listening to Janna, you heard some things that you can bring down to your students because there are many things that I take from those books, such as the modes, and we've been talking a lot about Old Woman, and it was very recently that I had two Book Three students reviewing Old Woman, and I showed them how we can play [00:20:00] this in Phrygian.

How does it sound different? Or how we can play this in Aeolian. And they loved it because they're so aware of what they are hearing and they've been exposed to the modes before, even if it was all the way back in Keyboard Games and kind of sprinkled throughout the other books. 

This trading eights too. I've done very similar things where maybe we're on two different pianos and I'm improvising and they're improvising. And it's very simple. But, these can be readinesses for diving deeper into it in Books 4 and Books 5. 

Hannah Mayo: They're also great for transfer students who might already have a lot of playing ability.

Maybe they read already. Maybe they can navigate the keyboard with fluidity. It's great to bring some of these, Book 2, Book 3, even Books 4 and 5, projects that down to those transfer students who might need a little bit more substance. A little bit more advanced substance, I should say, than just what might be [00:21:00] going on in book one.

Janna Olson: So I know I've overwhelmed you with a lot of information and I hope you can feel less overwhelmed and more excited about the exploration. It's taken me years and years to work through this material. And I would just love to encourage you at the beginning, if you're at the beginning of the process of learning, wherever you are in this, to see it as an adventure rather than this body of material that you have to grasp and be tested on and, you know, sort of the academic side of learning.

 Make it a part of your own musicianship, the exploration process. And just remember, you're not injuring your students in any way. You're only working for their good and their benefit and learning to adapt what you have to offer to meet their needs and to build into their future. So we really are teaching that [00:22:00] individual first.

Krista Jadro: We always love our conversations with Janna Olson, and diving into the Music Moves for Piano curriculum with her was no different. If you're interested in learning more from Janna, you can catch her Q& A on the Music Learning Academy YouTube channel, her Keys to Music Learning Community Chat from Season 2, and her two webinars on the Music Learning Academy website called Beyond the Notes: An Enriched Aural Approach to Piano Repertoire, and Learning Through Play: Games and Resources for Activities to Reinforce Skills and Build Audiation.

You can get 25 percent off these webinars using the code AUDIATE. If you're interested in the Music Moves for Piano curriculum by Marilyn Lowe, we encourage you to check out the website and materials at musicmovesforpiano.com. And if you have any questions about Music Moves for Piano, you can ask in our Facebook group Intro to Audiation-based Piano Instruction and Music Moves for Piano.

Thanks so much and we'll see you [00:23:00] soon.