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Keys to Music Learning
Keys to Music Learning
Community Chat with Sarah McCaffrey Ritchie (Part 1)
Hannah and Krista resume their community chats with Sarah McCaffrey Ritchie, owner and director of Songs with Sarah, a music school in Minneapolis offering audiation-based early childhood and piano classes. In this episode, Sarah talks about her audiation journey and discovery of Music Learning Theory and Music Moves for Piano.
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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.
Welcome to Keys to Music Learning. I'm Krista Jadro of Music Learning Academy.
Hannah:And I'm Hannah Mayo of Mayo Piano.
Krista: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.
Hannah:Welcome back, everyone. We took a long break over the summer, but we are excited to continue talking to and learning from members of our community with our community chats.
Krista:And before we start, we want to take a moment to talk about Marilyn, who passed away just a few short weeks ago. For those who may not know, Marilyn wrote Music Moves for Piano. She was also a mentor and a friend to teachers around the world. Building a community was always really important to her. And she spent countless hours supporting teachers and bringing them together through international workshops, conferences, and Facebook groups.
Hannah:Marilyn loved so much to see as growing in our audiation and our teaching skills with each other. She got great joy and satisfaction out of seeing us thrive by working together within the community that she brought together. And we will keep honoring her with our work as we continue to connect with members of this community to learn from them and from their audiation journeys.
Krista:And now we are excited to welcome the fabulous Sarah McCaffrey, Ritchie, member of the Music Learning Academy team early childhood in Music Moves for Piano teacher and owner of Songs with Sarah, a wonderful music school in Minneapolis. Welcome Sarah.
Sarah:It's so nice to be here.
Hannah:We're so excited to have you. Sarah is one of my favorite MLT people. I have to say
Sarah:You're one of my too.
Hannah:I actually got to teach your daughter piano lessons over the summer, which was really fun.
Sarah:True story.
Hannah:Which was awesome.
Sarah:She loved it.
Hannah:Yeah, it was so fun. Could you start by telling the listeners a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do, music background, all that good stuff.
Sarah:Yeah, I'd love to. Again, my name is Sarah McCaffrey Richie, and I am the owner/director of Songs with Sara Music School here in Minneapolis. And talking about myself, you really opened a floodgate there. I'll try to narrow it down and not go too nuts. But my musical background is actually in flute performance. I got my degree from Eastman in flute performance. And at the time, I really wanted to do Music Education as well. But I had a fabulous teacher Bonita Boyd, and she sort of talked me out of But falling into Music Education, oh, my goodness, it's doing teaching. And you know, there was like a minute where I looked back at that, and I thought, bummer, I wish you such a long time ago, I moved to New York City, I did the whole, hadn't done that. But I think my path would have been super different if she hadn't. So I got to learn from this amazing like, I'm going to be a performer thing, you know, that flute teacher. And obviously, I missed out on learning from Dick Grunow, who was at Eastman at the time as the Music Ed like everyone else is doing. And I ended up doing that, but also professor. But again, I think my path kind of wound about and ended up landing me here where I am now. And I'm happy about it. having some really interesting gigs along the way as in, like office jobs, receptionist, answering phones, getting suits, coffee. So at one point, I was like, Alright, I've done this, I'm gonna go back to school and get my K through 12 certification. And that's kind of when it all started. Because at that time, I needed to make money while I was doing a year long program. And I bet a lot of our listeners or your listeners, I should say, it's not our listeners, your listeners. I bet they've done similar programs. And it's intense, you do not have time to work. So what I ended up doing was getting a gig as a Music Together teacher. Music Together has a lot of ties with Gordon, even though it's not Music Learning Theory, but it was my foot in the door. And I couldn't believe that I could sing songs in like Dorian and chant and 7/8, with tiny little So I started implementing Music Learning Theory into my K through five classrooms. I did LSAs, I did songs in all the babies. And it was pretty awesome. And I remember coming tonalities, I moved with them, it was so incredibly fun. And I was not sure how fun teaching elementary music would be. But home to my, like husband, he was like a brand like we were brand it was incredible. And not only that, I loved assessing my students by using patterns. And I think that Music Learning Theory really helped me learn how to look at my students and new newlyweds and we were like chanting in 7/8 together, and he listen to them and be able to like sequentially keep moving them forward. And when you have a classroom of 30 students, that is a jazz guy. So he was like, this is really cool. And so I'm is like not easy to do. But because of Music Learning Theory, I found really simple ways to implement that. And I grateful for that experience. I'm at the same time, I think, really liked that gig. And the only reason I moved away from doing that is because I moved away from New York City, I had a as I finished up teaching on my teaching certification and got a Cleo who Hannah, you know, had a summer of teaching with which was great. And she's now eight and a half. And my husband and I were just like, yes, New York City is not going to fly for us gig as an elementary music teacher, I started to really with a kid. And we moved to Minneapolis, and I started my own program. And again, I kind of severed ties with Music dive into Gordon and somebody, one of my friends from Eastman Together, mostly because I wanted to be able to compose my own songs and use the songs that I wanted, instead of basing it found out, I was kind of getting into teaching and she was off of a collection of music. And that is how I got started with Music Play. I remember teaching two classes a week. And thrilled. And she sent me The Ways Children Learn Music by now my school runs something like 11 of them a week. And I have two other Music Play teachers. So yeah, that's been an I mean, that's been an awesome Eric Bluestine, and I read it cover to cover, and just was experience. And that's like, definitely the the rush through version of how I got to where I am now. And then I started like, This is how I wish I had learned music. implementing Music Moves for Piano as well. And that that came out of a parent just asking me, being like, they had a four
Hannah:Sarah, did you have piano lessons as a child or year old that had been with me for a couple of years. And they were like, what's next, I was like, let me like poke around flute lessons, or both? and see what's going on in Minneapolis and where I can send you. And I looked up Music Learning Theory - piano and
Sarah:I did. So I started out on piano and I hated it. I am Marylin's website came up, and I couldn't believe that it existed. And it was so friendly to the Music Play structure, and pretty simple for me to implement. And I just started offering a class or two. And now the school I mean, the school has 300 students. And actually we have more than that, including Music Play, the babies and the toddlers. So yeah, it's grown so so so much. like the classic story. And again, like so many listeners are gonna be like, yeah, that was me too. I had the, the little old church lady that taught me you know, and I don't think her name was Jan, I don't even remember her name. But I remember it wasn't that she was mean. She was strict. That is for sure. I mean, I went and sat at a piano for 30 minutes and plunked away. Reading music was super hard for me. And even though I have, you know, a degree in flute performance from like a pretty good school, obviously, I have learned how to read music. But at the time, I just struggled so much and looking up and looking down. And then they were like, oh, there's that clef and this clef. And I must have been six years old. And I really, really struggled. And so I quit. And the piano playing that I did in high school was mostly to like accompany my own songs. And so a lot of the piano work I did was kind of figuring it out for myself in a way and of course, I had some foundation and the flute...the flute just worked for me, I don't know, I just put it up and made a sound right away and could play it really nicely. And it was only one line but a lot of times I was not really reading that line so much just hearing it and then playing it back. So though so not introducing notation to my students is just very refreshing because of how difficult that was for me, and still is by the way. I still struggle. I think I have trouble reading music on lines and spaces, and I probably should wear glasses more. So I think that might help.
Hannah:But that's a fair point about vision issues, and you know, there's a there's a lot that goes into reading music that a lot of people take for granted like tracking and the left to right and the up and down. And there are some people who just don't have the biomechanics in their eyes to do that effectively. But it is nice that we have this method that accommodates those people too.
Sarah:Yeah, definitely. I feel the same way even think about like my son. So I should probably say, part of me, that's really important. I shouldn't have left this out. I do have an amazing husband, who I love dearly, and three awesome kids. I always say they are my most wonderful composition, the three of them. But I do have twins. And my little boy who's six would always write his name backwards. I'm like, I just think there's something about, like you said, going from left to right that that is something that kids need to train themselves to do with a word. So it's be like, here's the music stuff and read, it seems really intimidating.
Hannah:And there's so much more there than just a word at a time. There's these measures that are chock full of information,
Sarah:And rhythm, and where does it play on the piano? Yeah, there's so much
Hannah:So many layers
Sarah:And the vision thing that you brought up is really, I think that's something we really need to think about with kids, because a lot of children don't have their vision diagnosis for a while. And the piano is so friendly for vision impaired just because of how it's black and white, and the contrasting colors, and the twos and threes, and then to be like, Oh, now you also have to read this piece of music in front of you. It's just like, oh my gosh, this is really overwhelming.
Hannah:You take something really friendly and make it a lot more unfriendly.
Sarah:and a lot less creative.
Krista:So you told us about how you discovered Music Learning Theory and Music Moves for Piano? What about your audiation journey? So you mentioned in Music Play that you were singing in Dorian, chanting in 7/8. Were you comfortable with this right away? Or did you need to practice? Can you tell us?
Sarah:Definitely. I was very comfortable with it, because I can hear something sung and sing it back pretty quickly. So that was really nice. For me, I'm going to assume I have a higher tonal aptitude than rhythm aptitude. But that was great. But then if I had to sing patterns in those different modes, that I needed to work on. And that's something that I mean, I every Music Learning Theory teacher that I meet says they are a far better musician than they were before they started. As you say, their audiation journey. And that, like 100% is me, I could not tell you, you know, 10 years ago, like, oh, what? This is a beautiful Dorian song, I would Like, why would you stop anyway, even if you did master it? have been like, Oh, this is nice. This is nice. Um, I think and full disclosure, and I wonder if any of my rudimentary theory peeps, that Eastman are ever going to listen to this, but I was put in the lowest theory class at Eastman, with a lot of jazz people. And I thought that was so interesting, because I'm like, Well, you guys are all really good. What are you doing in here? And it's just because they had learned mostly by ear training, I think, and so they couldn't they maybe they didn't answer some of the questions, right. I'm like, you guys should not be in this room. But I remember, at Eastman for the first time hearing something in five and I had played things in five. I just never thought about it. I'm like, I'm just playing this really pretty piece. And to be like, Oh, this is uneven. And this moves like this. And that song is in Mixolydian, or, Ooh, that sounds different. That's Locrian. That is all something I've developed in the last decade. And it's been super fun. I think it was always in there. I just hadn't dug it out yet. But yeah, and learning from the PDLCs through GIML. And obviously, Music Learning, Academy, all of all of that. All the people I've met, it's constantly being challenged. And I love that because I don't think music is something you ever just master, you've got to keep working on it forever. So forever and ever. I can I can put some other music teachers in front of you. And you could ask them that. I'd love to hear their answer.
Hannah:But I want to come back to what you were talking about with Music Play. And, you know, we're talking about how we're going to continue honoring Marilyn, and she was such a big proponent and a champion of the Early Childhood strand of the Gordon Institute and of Music Learning Theory. She took a lot of inspiration from Music Play when she developed Keyboard Games. And I think that's just I wanted to mention it earlier. And I just wanted to throw that out there that she was loving that early childhood and you could tell, because it's so baked into Keyboard Games and into Activity Time. And so if anybody hasn't looked at Music Play, I'm really trying to do a shout out to Music Play. For anybody who's listening who hasn't explored those materials. They are amazing, especially if you are teaching young students.
Sarah:Absolutely. And I will say, you know, when I met, Marylin, I had already had a lot of contact with her. She was awesome on Facebook, and would answer every single question. And so I feel like we already knew each other. And I already knew she was a twin mom, which made me you know, we kind of have like this little secret bond, all the twin moms out there, shout out to all your twin moms. But she met me in Wisconsin in 2018, I think 2017. 2017. I was sharing some of my nerves about jumping in on on piano. I think I had done it for a year or two on my own. I'm just not a virtuosic piano player. And I feel like maybe I'm in the wrong spot, because I was clearly sitting with a bunch of piano people and she stopped what she was doing. And she was like, you absolutely should. And this is so important that Music Play, teachers are kind of adding on with the Music Moves, so you can be with your students for even longer. And I think one of the coolest things about my gig is that I will have a baby start with me at zero. And when they're four, they come into my Music Moves classes, and then they stay with me for Book One, and sometimes Book Two. And then they if they want to keep going, they get passed to a teacher that maybe is going to be able to help them achieve a little bit more on the piano. But the fact that I have students that I have taught since birth, who are now eight and nine years old, and it's incredible. It's also very, very hard for me to let them go when it's time to. But I know it's best.
Hannah:Oh, man, Sarah, that is just really beautiful. I have some students that I haven't started from birth, but they've been with me since like three or four years old, and they're getting to the age where they're really starting to blossom. And like you can see the future with them. And it's just so exciting to have them to get to watch them grow and develop like that. So we didn't really hear a whole lot about your music school. So we'd like to hear more about that maybe in a next episode. If you'll be back. I'd love
Sarah:I'd love to come back.
Hannah:Thanks so much. We'll see you soon.