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Keys to Music Learning
Keys to Music Learning
Community Chat with Janna Olson (Part 2)
In this episode with guest Janna Olson, Janna focuses on the audiation-based piano method Music Moves for Piano, including connections to repertoire, challenges she had when first implementing the method, reframing the definition of success, the difference between counting and feeling rhythm, the importance of movement and shifting weight, and answering the most common question parents ask - when will the students read?
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Beyond the Notes: An enriched aural approach to piano repertoire
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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 Hannah Mayo of Mayo Piano,
Krista:and I'm Krista Jadro of Music Learning Academy.
Hannah: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:We are back with Janna Olson today from Edmonton, Canada. She is a member of the Music Learning Academy team, a part of the GIML faculty and a fabulous piano instructor. Welcome back Janna.
Janna:Thank you so much for having me back.
Krista:We are going to jump right into the questions. How did you introduce Music Moves for Piano to your studio?
Janna:Before I met Marilyn Lowe, I had ordered some of the Music Moves books and began dabbling with what was available at that time. Book Three hadn't been published yet. And I had been using some accumulated materials in my early years of running my own studio. I was exploring using a variety of piano methods, but I wasn't feeling settled or satisfied or really excited about any particular standard reading method. And what attracted me initially to Music Moves was the purple preparatory book, which some of you have heard mentioned before, this was the book that preceded the current two volume set of Keyboard Games, A and B. My early piano experience involves short black key pieces, and an emphasis on developing a good feel and knowledge of keyboard geography so that you learn white keys in relationship to the black key groupings. So this was really important to me as a teacher. That came from my first teacher who mentored me as a young teenager, when I was first learning to teach. Keyboard Games was just being developed. And I saw that preparatory book and was very excited. It was exactly what I was looking for and better than my existing collection, which wasn't very sequenced. I also took a look at Music Moves Book One, but I wasn't sure at all what to do with it. And to be honest, I was quite disappointed because I felt like the pieces in it weren't very substantial, and probably not going to keep the interest of my students. And I kind of remember scanning through it, and then closing it and thinking off to leave that for another time. So the process was pretty slow, at first, until I went to my first PDLC course. And then I met Marilyn and after that I kind of probably launched all of my students into some form of what was existing at that time Music Moves with my students, using books. I also really loved the technical approach to playing, it matched a lot of what I believed was important to develop healthy technique, and beautiful sound. So it was slow. But also at a certain point, I just decided this is what I'm going to do with all of my students. And we're going to give it a try.
Hannah:Looking back, I wish I had done the same thing. With all the young kids, it made total sense. Put all the new students in the method, but what to do with my existing students became a question. And looking back, I just for anybody who's going through this, I wish that I had put them in Book One with some Keyboard Games supplement. But I didn't. And I wish that I had. We'd be a lot further along now if I had so if anybody is questioning what to do with their transfer students, start from the beginning with them and just accelerate that pace and keep playing the repertoire along with the early books. Instead of trying to jump in and like a Book Two or Book Three, or like I did with the Keyalities and Tonalities book. Don't do what I did. Go to Book One. Use some Keyboard Games.
Janna:Yeah, I agree. And that's after you've tried it a bit too, you do start to discover what are the effective ways to actually begin to implement it. It's much easier when you can start right from the beginning.
Krista:And how did your students respond to the new materials?
Janna:I think I already had a relationship of trust with my students. And I had been pretty experimental already. So it didn't take too much to say,"Hey, I've been learning this way. Would you be willing to come along with me on my grand experiment and see how this works?" And I didn't always understand exactly the role of repertoire. So maybe we can talk a little bit about some of the challenges, because it is such a different kind of teaching. And it takes I always think it's more of a philosophical change that happens rather than a content or curriculum change. Yes, you are changing the content of your lessons. But if that rides on an understanding like this matches what my core values are, once my philosophy of teaching began to evolve and change, it made implementing it a lot easier.
Hannah:Yes, we absolutely can talk about some of those challenges and the general reflective mind shift that happens when we start to transition to this audiation-based approach. So what were some of those challenges for you?
Janna:I had had an opportunity to already teach a piano pedagogy class at a local university coming out of my graduate program. And one of the projects we always do in pedagogy classes, probably across North America, is a method book review. So we look at different methods, we compare them and talk about differences, maybe preferences, what type of music is in there. Music Moves is a method, but it's so drastically different from any other set of beginning piano books that I have ever encountered. Most books available right now have a purpose of sequencing the learning process with a notation priority. Music Moves sequences learning from an audiation priority. That means that I think there is a large gap between existing method book material and Music Moves. And there's not, we don't have any thing right now that bridges that easily.
Unknown:From the beginning, I was absolutely convinced that this could be an effective method. Because it was based on the way we learn music. And I also had my own experience of audiation to back this up, I knew I could obviate I knew I felt music, I knew when I sat down to perform that I could, you know, express what I wanted to say in music. But I wasn't sure that I could do it myself. I wasn't confident in my ability to teach it effectively and keep my students engaged and motivated. And learning. And part of this was probably my misunderstanding at the beginning about the importance of using the model that we see in Music Moves with each performance piece. The model we see there can be used for learning other repertoire. And I didn't make that connection, I saw everything as separate little component parts. And now as a much more experienced teacher, things integrate so beautifully. I now spend a lot of time thinking about appropriate repertoire for each student in my studio. And I'm not afraid to prepare that repertoire carefully over a long period of time, probably several weeks, working with repertoire as still a very huge core part of what we do. Music Moves is what I would say is more like our musicianship component. So that's how I will explain it to students who may have not seen anything like it, or to parents, I'll use the term "aural skills" because that's what we often use in university or "musicianship." Those are common words that people hear. So I use that to describe this as what we're doing when we're using this particular book. I've tried to reframe it as different than a reading method. So it's not the same as as picking up a reading method. A few other challenges that maybe I'll just mention quickly. The teacher guides that accompany each student book in Music Moves are the most amazing pedagogical resource that I have in my studio. I really believe there's so much in there. But I ran into the problem common to many teachers, that it felt pretty overwhelming to get through all that content and instructions and details. And Hannah, you have a great phrase for this, you call it the "wall of text." So one of the things that helped me a lot making my own unit charts for each unit in the whole method. And this took me a long time. But I just documented, I read probably every word in the lesson unit plans. And I wrote out all of the small little improv projects and the review options and I just got it all on one page so that I could really see what was the content in each unit and then I began to see sequence that I hadn't seen before. And I found wonderful and crucial activities that bridged my students more sequentially in their learning, but the text was a challenge initially. And now I still can go back and reread and I feel like I find new things that I maybe didn't see before, it's just a lot easier than it used to be.
Janna:Couple more challenges. I was overcautious about the reading process. Initially, I was really afraid that just even putting notation up in front of my students was going to cause irreparable damage. And that's just my personality of trying to be very conscientious in my teaching, I was trying to do everything really perfectly. And I didn't realize that I didn't need to be perfect. At the beginning, I was so worried. And it kept me overly cautious and fearful. I think we're all afraid of losing students that or even worse for me was that they would dislike music and the piano. That was really for me, that's pretty devastating. And Dr. Gordon had said at the beginning to me, I remember asking him this in my first meeting with him. Well, how does reading happen? You're talking about all this wonderful oral content. And he said, oh, it just happens. And to a certain extent, yes, he's right about that. But the piano is, it's so many more times complicated than reading a single line score, for example, that a violinist would be learning. And I can talk about this a little bit more. But I've learned to sequence my notation preparation, in helping my students prepare for the visual part of music literacy, and so much more successfully. But that was a very big challenge, initially, all of that, and my tremendous cautiousness in trying to do it so well from the beginning.
Hannah:Janna, you reminded me of a resource that is available on the Music Moves website and it's free. There are sample pages from the teacher books, where you can get a feel for just how detailed these teacher lesson plan books. And there is a recently updated, there are some new pages that Marilyn has added that address these challenges that have come up. And on the overview on page, Roman numeral 11. In the overview, there is a heading called Teacher Study to Become Familiar with Music Moves for Piano: Ways to Study Music Moves, Teacher Lesson Plan, Book One. and Maryland has given a pretty concise, it's not overwhelming, it's a concise list of what you can be doing outside of the lessons to prepare and to study that teacher book. So if you are not aware of this page, in the newest edition of the Teacher Book One, it's on the overview, Roman numeral 11.
Krista:And don't be like me and not get the teacher's guides when you're teaching Music Moves for Piano because that's definitely how I started. I said, Oh, "I know Music Learning Theory, I just named the student book." I don't even think I had the pattern book. But it might not have been out yet. I did want to comment though, on the notation. And I would love for you to talk more about your notation preparation as well, because that's one of the biggest questions that we get when we talk about Music Moves for Piano and this aural approach. But I also had so many reservations about even having my students look at the notation of a rote repertoire piece that we were working on. And you hear so many times notation stifles audiation, and and it does and it can if it's not sequenced appropriately. But we don't shields, children, young children away from language and books and seeing words and they still manage to learn how to communicate and to speak with proficiency. So as long as it's sequence, we can show our students notation. This took me a while to realize and I would love to hear more about your discoveries as well Janna.
Janna:Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's always when you are conscientious or you're trying to do things correctly. There's a danger in that too of not always seeing the big picture, you're so focused on worrying about all the details.
Hannah:And Marilyn also was dabbling a lot in just the simple idea of looking as a way of notation preparation. So after you learn the rote piece, have a look at it. And not that you're decoding it note by note or measure by measure, but that you're just bringing your understanding of a rhythm pattern or a particular set of tonal patterns to that notation, and just exploring it with your eyes and just seeing how it looks on a page, and that acts as an absorption for our eyes and our readiness for what will come later with notational audiation. And that's one of our favorite activities for the students, because they really feel like, "Oh, I'm reading music." And I would never tell them that they're not because in a way they kind of are. But that gives them a fun sense of confidence.
Janna:So we all know, one of the most common questions parents ask is, when are they going to learn to read? And there are so many ways... initially I just said, "Oh, just wait, this wait, it will come, it'll come." And I didn't do a lot. But there are so many wonderful notation preparation activities that I do with students. And I love to use the word with parents to say we are optimizing learning that it isn't that I'm waiting or delaying it for some purpose, I'm using all of my opportunities in my oral experiences with the students. So everything that I'm doing, from a sound based music curriculum, I can integrate lots of notation activities into that. So there are some wonderful resources that Marylin began to put together with little tiny 5 to 10, second, integrated notational observations in lessons with students. So for example, when we are looking at Keyboard Games pieces, that notation is in front of them. And it is very important that they begin to for themselves find their starting keys based on that beautiful 88-key keyboard picture that we have at the bottom of each Keyboard Games page. And what comes again, when we get into Book One, especially we see that continued. That sense of developing both a visual and a kinesthetic awareness of the keys on the keyboard, it's crucial for reading, and it doesn't maybe seem like it's directly connected. But it's so foundational. Without that, reading is not going to be fluid, I can just say that categorically. You need to have a sense of how the keys feel in connection to what they look like on the page.
Unknown:One of my favorite quotes that I heard recently at a conference is notes on a page are static, but music moves. And this is someone who doesn't know about Music Moves. But that was Marylin's whole purpose in all of this is that the notes are just a representative part of the sound that we are creating. And so we want to go sound first. And lots of methods talk about sound before sight. But very few will offer you an opportunity to really truly be sound first before sight. So all of those little activities we begin to observe in Keyboard Games. Who starts first, this is your part, this is what you're playing like look at all those little black dots right there. That's what you're playing. So who starts, you are me? So those little markings in the measures before are rests, and I'm the one who starts and then you start and and then in another piece, it's the opposite. So those little observations, they seem small, but they take five seconds. Who starts? And you can look and see who starts.
Janna:The idea of introducing all of the note parts together is such a brilliant and unique approach. I can't say enough for that. Just recognizing that we can make all of notation apart from rests and other symbols and signs in the music. We can make all notation with five things. We need note heads, we need stems, we need dots, we need beams, and we need flags. And you can create so much notation, just from those five parts. That is so brilliant to introduce it all at the same time. I love then when we can introduce all of the black note head notation in one, all the white note head notation in another. And we just do it in groups. So it makes so much sense to coordinate everything in categories of types of information. And this just works. It's logical. It works, we begin to recognize whether notes are on on spaces in a space or on a line. We talk a lot about the small details of the music like when we're seeing that sign that curly sign that treble clef sign. It means probably we're playing in this region of the keyboard and so just making connections between I mean, areas of keyword, I could talk about this for a long time. And it's probably something you should listen to on a webinar. But it is truly amazing to watch. And one of the things I get to talk about right away here is what are my successes. And for me, a lot of this notation preparation is one of those successes is just learning how well to integrate those activities, in small bits of time. If you're teaching a standard method book, which is sequencing things according to notation, a lot of the lesson is spent focused on notation. So I can do little bits of notation that build incrementally towards this really comprehensive body of knowledge without spending lots of time in the lesson, trying to coach the student in their understanding of notation, in order to make music, we can make music first, and then notation flows out of that process.
Hannah:That was all so fantastic. And I also just want to highlight the idea of the categories like Marylin was all about categories, because that's how our brain wants it to be. And so the reasoning behind introducing all of the note parts, and all of the different notes that you can make with these note parts is intentional, because our brain loves to categorize. And so that's different from a lot of traditional methods that introduce maybe just the quarter note. And then a little bit later, here's the half note. And then a little bit later, here's the whole note or the eighth note. And I think that you really lose that sort of brain filing, whenever you space out the learning of all these different note values. So I too, am a big fan of the note part activities, and all the creative things that students can do with those note part activities and the notes without actually needing to get into all of the counting and the music theory and the things that will make their head spin and that they're not quite ready to fully grasp anyway. Excellent.
Janna:That connects so well to with the other huge key point that I felt was successful for me in the beginning. And that was the connection with learning rhythm apart from note values. Because it has felt like in our you know, theoretical approach to learning what you get when you're, you know, in any university is we're always kind of counting the values of notes approaching it from a mathematical perspective. So huge when I first started exploring Music Learning Theory and thought about what Gordon was saying about rhythm. This was a very large attractive quality about Music Learning Theory to me, when he talked about this concept of shifting weight, in order to be feeling the the evenness of the tempo, or to be able to maintain the flow of the music, that concept of weight shifting, and how to incorporate that into movement that you do with your students is huge. And you've probably had this experience, but I remember him talking about you hear a performance, and you wonder why it feels a little bit off, everything is perfect. But there's just something that doesn't seem to connect and I've learned to recognize that it probably has to do with nerves maybe, it happens to me all the time too. But when you are not audiating shifting weight internally, you play with displaced energy, and Gordon used to talk about that all the time. And when I adjudicate festivals, I hear hundreds of performances every year. This is such a common problem for students is that they're playing with displaced energy. And that probably has a lot to do with nerves. I'm not attributing it maybe to lack of rhythmic control, but there is definitely something connected with how you feel weight, how you use motions that involve weight.
Unknown:I remember Gordon saying tapping toes makes you tense. And clapping is not an effective activity for learning rhythm if you don't already have a sense of that internal shift to the weight and it makes it possible then to feel a symmetrical space between beats so that you're shifting your weight and that allows you to keep the space between the beats so now we're getting into this whole concept of how time and space and weight interact together and that's what produces the flow in the music and I'm just so convinced in my own playing and and watching all of the music making that can happen in your lesson, whether it's tiny short improv activities or longer performances. All of it is impacted by that understanding of how we learn rhythm in our body. And it was very attractive to me. And I would say very successful. Maybe I can also say, I know I'm talking a lot. But I remember some of my students doing a conservatory exam. And the examiner commented how my students had great rhythm. So that feedback was really valuable to me in the early years, because you can't always see it, it's so incremental, my students didn't wake up after a lesson and suddenly have great rhythm, like this was a long process. And
Hannah:This reminds me of a story with some college students sometimes it's years of building activities into your lesson that provide a student opportunities to experience rhythm through who are used to seeing notation. And when I explained to them movement and experience those elements of the flow and the the weight shifting. These are not necessarily students that were that our shifting of the weight, like you talked about, like if practicing a lot, either. So I think we have this concept that, oh, if they just work hard enough, they're gonna, you know, you shifted this way, and then you shift it that way, that's a perform with this great sense of rhythm. So that was a really big eye opener for me. Sometimes, after an adjudication, they'll measure. And all kinds of things can happen in that space. Like get this comment, "oh, you're counting so well." And they're looking at me like, "What does that mean?" And I have to interpret it for them. So they understand that the person we might be shifting and thinking microbeats Du-de Du-de, listening to them could hear that they were playing rhythmically, but I tell them, it's far more important that and it would look like this, or we might have divisions or you're feeling the rhythm internally, then that you were counting or counting out loud or counting in your head. So that's elongation, and those would look like this. But that feeling is a a huge success for me, and also quite a big shift in the way I thought about teaching. physical representation of what is happening in a measure. Or rather, I should say that measure is a notational representation of what is happening in our bodies when we shift from left to right. So that's a thing, I think that is taken for granted that the power of that shifting your weight from heel to heel in all of these movement activities that we do when we're doing our rhythm pattern instruction. And it's hugely life changing.
Janna:Yeah, I agree like that the whole approach to rhythm is is revolutionary for me, and for my understanding. And I like how you said about, you know, like approaching through the body, and then the notation starts to make sense in relation to how you moved. And I think someone recently was talking about the notes on the page are like the composer's choreography of what the music is supposed to sound like. So I use that with students and with parents quite often, just think of that as the way these measures are arranged, or just so that our eyes can make sense of it in a way so that we can then translate that easily into sound.
Krista:So it sounds like you've had a number of successes in your studio that I'm sure the parents are observing with not only their child, but maybe when they're going to recitals and with the other students as well. But did you ever have any students or parents who were kind of skeptical of what you were doing and have this MLT-based approach to piano teaching and learning?
Janna:I was really fortunate in that. I think the parents were gently skeptical at the beginning and would often ask questions, but I didn't experience pushback, and I didn't lose very many students over this. The ones that I wasn't able to reach were often coming to me with such a traditional approach to learning that it was a little bit difficult for them to get comfortable with the creative activities that I wanted them to do. So that was more me not always being able to really see where the student was at initially. But I love that I can teach to individual student needs. This idea of understanding the student and teaching to individual differences allows me to tailor a program of study which is based on student interests and motivation. But at the same time, I have a lot of activities that I engage them in that build audiation skill sequentially. So I've really found a balance over the years of being able to do what I know the student needs, but also connecting that with what they want to do and what they're interested in. And I think also what's helped me with working with parents is that I I have to also learn to teach with my own areas of interest, too. So I've been really open that I am a classically trained pianist, and I love the literature of the piano. And that is something that I would love my students to love as well. And so if many parents want their students to learn repertoire that is considered to be classical. That's a pretty broad category. But that's helped me now to build familiarity across my studio with certain pieces of repertoire that I love. I think, Hannah, you were talking about that recently, somewhere about the Benda Sonatina, how you love teaching that one, and I want your students to love it too. So I do something very similar with pieces of repertoire, where I know this is really generally a successful piece of repertoire and useful for students to learn. And I like them to hear each other play it and then they want to play it too. And I know Marylin did that a lot with her students. They heard other students playing repertoire.
Unknown:That helps a lot with even parent engagement, and they see how well liked the lessons are for their students. I think, here in Canada, we have a very entrenched exam program. And there are lots of positives to having an exam program. There's a pretty comprehensive and holistic approach to learning. There's many things that you can learn from doing exams, and I found options for my students. So that also helps with parent concern, like are they ever going to be able to do an exam or play in the festival. So I found safe and very supportive options that helped me be able to not have to carve out a lot of time in the lesson to teach to an exam program. So hopefully, that's helpful for some teachers who I know in different parts of the world have have pretty standardized curriculum that they're dealing with. I'll maybe just say, one other thing is, that my own journey in this has been involved with reframing my definition of what success is, and being able to communicate that with parents. So I've learned to point out to parents in maybe really short informants times during lessons, the truly incredible skills that their students are developing, and how these build towards independent music making, and there's nothing that makes me happier, than seeing my student respond with something that I haven't taught them before. So this process of learning and being able to make things their own has been so incredible to watch. When you have a seven year old, who can identify harmonic function, that is amazing. And, and I point out to parents, how truly significant that is. Many university students are struggling to be able to hear the difference between a tonic and a dominant function in music. And most of my young students are learning how to do that comfortably. And I think this has come a little bit from also my own developing musicianship. So being able to hear for example, that a student is responding in an improvisation with a division/elongation pattern, let's just say that I haven't taught them. So I hear them making those inferences for themselves, where they're, they're actually taking the familiar vocabulary of patterns we've been working with and they're now creating with different patterns. So as I see that, I'm also able to point out how significant that is in the learning process. And for me, that's even better than, you know, a highly polished performance of a standard piece of repertoire is how they're developing their own independent voice and their own creative and expressive music making abilities.
Hannah:I think that's one of my favorite parts about feel like I say that a lot. That's one of my favorite parts about Music Moves. But there's gobs of favorite parts. But that is a really big one is the the independence that happens. And when your students come to lessons, and they tell you "oh, there was a piano at this place I went to and I just started playing it. And people watched and they clapped." Or "I played the piano at my school because we were having show-and-tell and there was a piano there in the music room. And I played this song for that." And like that never happened before Music Moves.
Krista:And teaching it has given me more confidence for sitting down at a piano without any music or going to a party and "Can somebody play Happy Birthday?" "Oh, yeah, of course I can. What key?" You know, these are things that I was very fearful of doing in the past, but my audiation and my confidence at the piano have both grown tremendously by teaching this way.
Hannah:And the procedure by which we teach all this repertoire that we learn from that checklist and the performance pieces, and the instructions for the songs to sing, has helped us retain as the teacher. Like I can retain all of my students music now. So I don't even need a score half the time because I can just remind them, "oh, it goes like this."
Janna:Maybe I can just leave you with this thought today that you do not have to be a highly skilled or highly trained pianist to work with this. No one wakes up in the morning suddenly being able to play the piano. It always comes from building skills, which happen over time and are best worked on when they are sequential.
Hannah:And the same is true for piano teaching. No one wakes up in the morning, or no one is born, knowing how to teach piano. And you don't have to be this great, experienced degreed pianist to teach this way, because we have a brilliant pedagogue, basically, in our pocket with this book. And if we just follow her instructions we can too also become brilliant pedagogues. So I think we have so much more still to talk about. But we'll wrap up this episode, and I'll remind our listeners about the two webinars that Janna has on the Music Learning Academy website. And those are Learning Through Play: Games and Resources for Activities to Reinforce Skills and Build Audiation and also Beyond the Notes: An Enriched Aural Approach to Piano Repertoire. And Janna, we'd like to have you back for a little bit more discussion, because it's really getting good now.
Janna:Well, thank you so much. It's so fun for me to be able to talk with you and articulate some of these important learning things that have happened to me over the years.
Hannah:Yes, thanks so much. We'll see soon