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Keys to Music Learning
Keys to Music Learning
Community Chat with Janna Olson (Part 3)
In this episode, Janna shares her advice for new teachers, including overcoming the initial struggles, fearlessly stepping into musicianship development, enjoying the process, and how Dr. Gordon advised her to handle the overwhelm. Janna also talks about her thoughts on bringing music to life and her favorite thing about teaching using an audiation-based approach to piano teaching.
Book
Learning Sequences in Music, by Edwin E. Gordon
Webinars
Beyond the Notes: An enriched aural approach to piano repertoire
Learning through Play: Games and resources for activities to reinforce skills and build audiation
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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 audition.
Hannah:Welcome back, Janna, for a third episode in our community chat series. We're glad to have you back to talk just a little bit more about your Music Moves piano teaching experience.
Janna:Thank you again for having me. It's wonderful to be here.
Hannah:So in this episode, we'd like to start by asking you what advice you would give new teachers who are just getting started with audiation-based piano teaching, because it can be pretty overwhelming sometimes, as we've discussed in previous episodes, but what advice would you give?
Janna:I'll admit that in my early years of teaching, I found it to be a struggle. And I wondered why it was such a struggle. And I wondered what the purpose was in struggling. And now I feel like I have some advice to offer people because I had to go through that learning process myself. I think if it had been really easy, and just so natural to implement this in my teaching, I wouldn't have as much to offer other teachers. So I just want to be honest about that, that I did struggle with figuring out how to structure my lessons, how to use the time in my lessons, how to focus my priorities. It's easy to get kind of fixated on one particular idea and then suddenly, I realize, "Oh, I'm not really paying attention to the technical development of my students," so there's just so much to integrate, and, and work on. So I found that very challenging. I think that, in it all, I try not to lose the perspective that I'm teaching an individual. I'm creating usually they're small, but sometimes I've got adults too). But I'm having this chance to work with this wonderful human being who has the potential to learn music. So believing that at the core that everyone has music aptitude (you know I'm all very passionate about that) will transform the way you approach learning with each individual students. So we don't base then our assessment of whether the student can learn music on the current achievement that you see when they come in. And maybe their fingers are struggling to even play keys, and their technique is poor. None of that matters. I'm thinking about the individual student, and I really want to learn to like them, and I want them to learn to trust me. So I put this idea of teaching"correctly," off to the side. And I've tried to really get to know that students so that for me, one of my core values is that the relationship with the student comes first. Then as I go, I'm building into their lesson experience, hopefully an understanding of music, aka audiation of context into every part of their lesson. I used to say that I wanted my students to learn to love music, that was my big goal. And after I started to study Music Learning Theory, I thought, no, I really want my students to love and understand music, and not just a theoretical understanding like about music. I want my students to have an internal understanding of the movement and the flow and the expressive qualities of music. So I would advise teachers not to rush. That would be my main advice. I tend to be impatient, and I can see where this would be going. And I want them to learn this piece quickly. But rushing the process usually means leaving out valuable learning steps. I've also learned, having gone through a lot of exams, it's a very goal oriented systems. So I would often have an exam in June, let's say, and you perform pieces and technique and you do your sight reading for an examiner. And then I honestly would not touch the piano after that for a long time because the emphasis was really that one kind of goal throughout the entire year. That's what we were building to. And it took me many years to realize that so much more satisfaction in your learning, in your professional life, is found from enjoying the process. And that the goal is just a little dot along that recital, that performance is just a dot along the line of your continuum of learning. So for teachers to think about that this is not about getting your students to perform beautifully in a festival, or really competently, even being able to improvise, that's not really the goal. This is a lifelong learning process. And it doesn't need to be rushed. Review is super valuable. Go back and play something familiar and make some changes to it. It's so fun to see your students being able to create with existing repertoire that they've learned. And this again, is built in to the total fabric of the Music Moves system is that as you review, you don't go back and play the same thing over and over again exactly the same way. That should also impact the way you practice because you shouldn't practice everything exactly the same with this drilling repetition. That leads to really mechanical performance. So all of that impacts how you experience it as a musician, and as a teacher, and how your students experience it. When you go back review for deeper learning. Maybe I've got lots of advice. So I don't want to overload everybody, but develop your own musicianship, fearlessly create and improvise, model for your students, and be open about your own learning process in it. We don't all have the same set of skills and interests and my value as a musician. I used to think about this a lot, actually. And tell my students this that you getting up and playing that piece of music in that festival is no less important than that person who is in Carnegie Hall right now playing a big concert. Each time we make music, and share our music with other people, it's a valuable experience. And we don't want to put it on a hierarchy of one being more valuable or significant. I'll just tell you the big piece of advice that Dr. Gordon gave me I remember. I probably was a little bit emotional approaching about this, too. In one of my courses, I sat down with him. And I said that it's pretty overwhelming. Like I see all of this potential, but how do I do it? And he his advice to me at that time was to change one thing at a time. So I started with rhythm, I felt like that was so important. And I was so attracted to this process of learning. And like I mentioned before, this idea that shifting weight impacts the way you feel rhythm so profoundly. So I added movement and rhythm solfege in my lessons, and that built confidence with the little short improv activities that we do. And it made me confident then to dive deeper. So just gradually adding. I really approached the tonal aspect of learning a little bit later in my teaching process, I had already a good knowledge of, you know, singing and melodic lines. So I figured I could kind of add that in later once the rhythm piece of the puzzle was feeling more comfortable. So that would be my main advice to teachers.
Hannah:That's how I came into audiation-based lessons. Before I fully adopted Music Moves, I was using the Gordon/Froseth rhythm syllable system. And I was seeing pretty significant changes after just maybe a semester, a year of using rhythm in their existing literature, and then their existing lesson books. And I also agree with one thing at a time, one new thing at a time.
Krista:It's the best way to tackle anything that's overwhelming.
Hannah:How do you eat an elephant?
Krista:So Janna, how has Music Learning Theory and Music Moves for Piano, how has that been valuable for your own piano teaching?
Janna:Well, I couldn't even begin to have enough time to talk about that. I was not really a natural teacher. I taught a lot of swimming lessons. And I can say I loved teaching swimming far more than I loved teaching piano because it was so sequential and laid out. And there were skills that you needed to learn in order to be effective with other skills. And initially, I didn't really see that in the methods that I was using. I didn't see how that sequence was built. So finding Music Moves was transformative for me to be able to understand that hey, there is a sequence here and now I can feel more confident than I'm not leaving big gaps or I can see in my students the places where I haven't maybe quite sequence things properly, and I just say,"Stop, okay, think about that for a little bit" when they're not understanding or something's feeling frustrated, I take responsibility for that. I don't put that on their little shoulders to say, "oh, you should practice that more or why can't you get that?" I really take responsibility in my lessons. So that changes your perspective, as a teacher. Instead of putting all the burden of responsibility on the student's practice, or what we might think of as their level of talent. You know, like I said, you redefine success. And I can honestly say, this year, I am enjoying my lessons more than I ever have in my life. It just continues to grow in its sense of delight, and adventure and exploration.
Unknown:And I think that (this is not a scientific assessment) but I'm feeling like this approach, using audiation and creativity and lessons is meeting the needs of the current generation of students more than any other group of students that have taught. So I have a fairly large number of six to eight year olds this year. And this, I just feel like when they come in, this is something that's so attractive for them. And they get it. And I feel so excited about what I'm going to be able to do with them in their lessons over time. In my core values, again, I've talked about that a lot. I feel like expression in music is one of my core values, like having beautiful sound. And our job as musicians is to express and create art, if you just kind of boil it down to the basics. And I'm often thinking, did that music move you when you heard it? Did it inspire? Did you have some kind of connection, emotion to the expression in the sound and beautiful sound, I really think is closely tied to expression. And all of those little activities that we do in Music Moves with articulation creates an awareness of sound, and the variety of sound that we can use in expression. So I'm not talking about just an emotional, you know, sad connection to the music, we're talking about being able to experience a range of emotions while we're listening to music. So it can be exciting and interesting or frenetic, or deeply moving on an emotional level from maybe a nostalgic or expressive quality that allows you to feel what is happening, the connection in your life at that time. So bringing music to life, I think involves exploring phrasing and understanding the larger structure of music.
Janna:And I recently was reading a quote, about the pianist Richter, where they said, his teacher commented on his ability to see the score from an eagle's eye view. So he saw the whole and the details at the same time. And I've said this to a few people recently that I think that that's what Marilyn Lowe could do. She saw the whole process that it was going to take to we might call it advanced music making when we're hearing, you know, very high level sophisticated performances of standard repertoire or orchestral performances. She saw what it would take to develop the expressive qualities that we need in order to be able to create music at that level and communicate that level to an audience to share that music with people. So how do you do that with a six year old, right? Well, you have that in mind, and you do an activity like think of an animal. What area of the piano sounds like that animal? That's building imagination and an awareness of sound at the very beginning, it seems like a simple game-like activity that we're just using to fill time and lessons, but it's incredibly valuable. And once you can accept that, Music Moves and teaching with an audiation approach, it just totally comes to life. Those activities build towards expressive playing, and organic understanding. So like inside, understanding phrasing, not just counting notes to understand the phrasing, but really feeling phrasing, feeling the units that make up the musical structure. And then all of that variety of sound that we explore right from the beginning, so tremendously impacting. I love teaching in a way that I don't think I ever would have. And I had I've heard you say this before, too, that you were at times on the verge of you know, quitting or giving up and not wanting to teach and not... like dreading lessons. I would have had that experience often from the beginning that I knew this is what I wanted to do. I generally liked it. But now I can enjoy it in a way that I never, never would have if I hadn't been if I wasn't teaching like this.
Hannah:Yes, I definitely was seriously considering a complete profession change and going back to school in Arts Management. Yeah. And I, then I found Music Moves. And I started trying it because I couldn't just give up teaching. It was like how I paid my bills. So I started using the Keyboard Games. And I mean, I was hooked after a year, I was like, "oh, no, I don't want to stop teaching. I want more than ever to be teaching piano."
Janna:Yes, yeah. I totally agree. And I maybe could comment just a little bit on some of the results. Because, I mean, we often say, "Okay, it's process-oriented and and we want to minimize this result thinking," but if it wasn't producing something in students, if I wasn't seeing growth and musical expression, I wouldn't be doing it. So there has to be some emphasis on okay, what are we actually building towards, and now I have students that are in books four and five in the Music Moves. And I should maybe just explain that by the time you get there, they're also playing an awful lot of other repertoire. So the Music Moves becomes a component part of their lesson. And I'm often adapting activities or improvisation, activities that are linked to their books, but are integrated more into maybe something they're working on at that particular time. So one example of a student who I was able to. (I'm more successful now with my middle school, early high school students, where I actually really did start more comprehensively with them. So I've had them maybe for, you know, six or seven years seven). And they are often fully functioning pianists. The things that I hear them able to do are remarkable. And not all of them will be playing Beethoven sonatas. But most of them can pretty competently play standard repertoire. You know, like a Chopin nocturne, or more advanced sonatinas.
Unknown:One of my students also is able to function as a middle schooler in her church, playing as part of the music in church, creating. I've said sometimes those students they come in and I almost can't, I almost don't need to teach, they almost teach themselves, like lessons just go along, like, Oh, can I show you this? So I've made a mash up with three of my pieces that are really quite unrelated to each other. And this is how I connect them. And I thought about this. Or, you know, when I'm bored, I heard this the other day. A student said, "when I'm bored, this is what I do," and proceeded to show me an improvisation in what we would say, 5/8 or uneven meter. And he said, I'd like to use that rhythm because it's so much more interesting. There, if they're overlapping lessons, they're playing off of each other. And I sometimes have to say, "Okay, guys, let's do some activities, because I have things that I'm hoping to do with you today." But they're working with each other and playing off of, "Oh, you did this. And then let me try this." And there's just so much creativity, and the connections that they make with everything. Even when I was teaching online during COVID, there were times when I would just sit on mute for a little bit, because one thing reminded the student of another thing, and so then they're off kind of playing something else. And then that connects back to this. And then I'm not even sure how we got to where we were. But there's just so much connection that happens with, "Oh, that makes it sound like this." And then we try that. And it's really phenomenal to see. I can just encourage teachers who are working towards getting students to move through into more understanding of other tonalities and more creativity. This is it really, truly is a delight and joy to teach as you build towards more advanced levels.
Hannah:And you kind of touched on a couple of things. You know, there's a lot of why questions that come up, like why is it this way? And why are we doing this? And why did they do it part sounds of dissonant in Keyboard Games and that reminded me of the dissonance in the duet parts of Keyboard Games. And what you were talking about with exposing these students to such a large variety of sound from a very early stage in the lesson process. And the thing I've noticed about my students is that they are not interested in playing little C major pentascale pieces they are just because it's just not interesting enough for them. I'll play and say "do you like this?" And they go, "No, it's kind of boring," and that's not to put down C major pentascale pieces, because there's a lot of really good ones out there. But it just kind of shows you where their sound environment lies. And so that's one thing like, why why do we have so much dissonance in these pieces? And why do we play with sound so much? That's why. And then the other thing you said about that sounds like something else. And then it just kind of goes on and on and on. That's another reason why I think Marilyn wanted to establish this library of familiar tunes and this vocabulary of familiar patterns, is because when you have that, you can make all of these inferences about either music that you come across in your environment, or the music that you end up creating and improvising and how it just spirals into this really fun and exciting activity.
Janna:Yeah, I totally agree. It's just really fun to see making connections. I think that it's just such a delight to me when the students are teaching themselves. And that's when we talk about that independent music making. Eventually, you know, the very familiar quote, everybody says, "you're trying to teach yourself out of a job," but you really are trying to build in students an independence that probably I'm hoping that my students far surpass me in their audiation ability. When we get into,(you've probably experienced this too, I was gonna mention that) the exploration of other tonalities that can happen at the keyboard is so enlarging for students. Their audiation and their appreciation and their love and attraction to other tonalities is, is huge. And I feel like when we get there, that idea of when you hear Dorian, you understand Minor in a new way. And when you hear Mixolydian, you understand Major in a different way. And they all start to interact together and the way it's sequenced in the Music Moves material allows for them to get there in a very natural way.
Hannah:Yeah, the faces they make when you change a minor song to Phrygian. They go "Oh, I like that."
Janna:I know I've so many times wished I had like a camera shot of the look on their faces when you when you have something that's unusual, or they even when they change the tune to minor for the first time. Like, honestly, there's this certain expression and they look at me like it's pretty fun.
Hannah:Okay, Janna, I think you've kind of touched on this last question a little already, a lot maybe already. But if you had to pick your absolute most favorite thing about teaching piano using an audiation-based approach, and the Music Moves method, what would that favorite thing be?
Janna:Well, I'll cheat and maybe I'll say a couple of things. Because I think I've already touched on the first one. I love how well it builds towards expressive creative music making. We can create beautiful and interesting music in every lesson. I'm not waiting for months, for a piece of music to be polished and perfected. In order for them to be making beautiful sound. I can truly teach with sound as a priority. I don't just give lip service to this idea of sound before sight, I really truly can make it a priority. In every lesson. Early in my teaching, another core value was teaching from the inside out. And being willing to allow a process to happen. I sometimes think and I had still have this tendency but to put a bandaid overtop of a performance for example, to make it sound better in order to you know, please the examiner or the adjudicator to make it sound correct in the eyes of my colleagues. And I'm really learning not to do that, to let that process happen, to have a deeper purpose in teaching pieces of music, that are building towards development of skill rather than the perfection of skill at that given moment. When that starts to happen, my students I see this fearless approach to creating and performing and being a somewhat anxious performer and someone who is fairly cautious and fearful in performance and sharing my music, I am so thrilled about how my students play effortlessly without music. And it's not that they drilled the memory, you know, mechanically. It's that they have such an a foundation of learning, because they started with understanding the context of the music.
Krista:Janna, I think that's a perfect way to end our chat
Unknown:And we always go back to that. And again, that doesn't happen overnight. But this building of this understanding and inner sense the Adi ation of the context of the music, allows them to feel very confident when they're performing. Ideation builds a harmonic awareness. And for us at the piano, this is incredibly important. And harmonic awareness then means that they have much more natural expression. I have a lot of mentors outside of the Music Learning Theory community and I have a chance very often to perform, myself, in masterclasses for teachers still. I keep making myself learn and perform. And so often they're speaking, just in a different way, the same language that I see in Dr. Gordon's writings and in Marylin's curriculum. It's just says it from a different way. One of my mentors has been Marvin Blickenstaff and one of my favorite quotes from him is"Music is the expression of the entire human experience through organized sound." And that connects me so well to what Dr. Gordon's purpose was in researching and Marylin's intent in designing a course that builds holistically to expressive music making. So all that singing and that moving in lessons develops, in students, a natural sense of the flowing and the breathing qualities of music. And I have a really great quote that I'd love to maybe wrap it up with. This is from learning sequences in music, which is really the book we all refer to when we're talking about Dr. Gordon's, (the body of his) research and his writing. He's talking about his goal in researching and writing. So he said, nonetheless, are talking about all of the theoretical understanding that eventually happens. He says, "My goal in researching and writing about Music Learning Theory has been and is to show that it is indeed possible to teach students to joyfully comprehend music they hear, music they have heard, and music they will hear. In Music Learning Theory, learning music takes precedence over learning about music, and musical thought takes precedence over thought about music." And I think that sums up really well what I'm thinking currently about my teaching and what's going on in my studio. today. And we want to thank you for taking the time to talk to us. You truly are a pillar in this community. And we all have so much to learn from you. So thank you so much for being here.
Janna:Well, thank you so much for having me. I am incredibly privileged to have colleagues like both of you and I am so grateful for your support. You make me a better teacher. Just all the things you are doing in your own teaching and in supporting this wonderful community of music learners.
Krista:And for those listening remember, Janna does have some webinars on the Music Learning Academy website. And if you have not watched them, I highly suggest that you register for the first one. It is Learning Through Play: Games and Resources for Activities to Reinforce Skills and Build Audiation. The second Beyond the Notes: An Enriched Aural Approach to Piano Repertoire. And we hope to add some more webinars or workshops with Janna in the future as well. If you have any questions about all of this, this audiation-based instruction, Music Moves for Piano, please join our Facebook group. It's called Introduction to Audiation-based Piano Instruction and Music Moves for Piano. Hannah and me are admins there. Janna is part of the group as well. Come with your questions. It's a great group of supportive teachers. So thanks so much for joining us, and we'll see you soon.