Community Chat with Greg Chase (Part 2)

In this episode, we welcome back Greg Chase to talk about how he jumped into Music Moves for Piano, including his challenges and successes. Greg also discusses the importance of early childhood music, how neuroscience supports Gordon’s research, and the important tie between Music Learning Theory, auditory processing disorder, and language acquisition. 

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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: 1:14

Welcome to Keys to Music Learning. I'm Hannah Mayo of Mayo Piano.

Krista: 1:19

And I'm Krista Jadro of Music Learning Academy.

Hannah: 1:22

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: 1:36

We are back with Greg Chase, researcher and teacher from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. Welcome back, Greg.

Greg: 1:43

Oh, thank you. It's great to be here.

Krista: 1:46

So we have a lot to talk about. First, let's just dive into Music Moves for Piano. So how did you introduce Music Moves in your Piano Studio? Did you actually order the Teacher's Book? Or are you part of the club that Hannah and I belong to that did not have the Teacher Book when we first started? Did you go all in? Did you slowly incorporate tell us about that journey?

Greg: 2:09

Yeah, no, I did order the Teacher's Book. And I think that probably came through in Marilyn's email. And she also gave me a wonderful list of all these other books that she highly recommended. So then I ordered those as well. So those were all part of my initial order to GIA publications. So this is probably where the prairie boy is going to reveal itself in me. And yeah, I went whole hog. Yeah, I just jumped in with both feet, and swam for dear life. And if you know what kind of a swimmer, I am, you would know what a site that would actually be. So it was it was full on trying to make sense of it all. It literally turned my teaching on its head. So it completely reversed the whole process. From symbol to sound, sound before symbol.

Hannah: 3:11

That's very brave of you. Congratulations for doing that. I'm sure your your students have benefited tremendously from jumping all in even if you are swimming for dear life, and I am imagining like in the water flailing? It sounds like you're implying that there may have been some challenges along that road. Do you want to maybe tell us about some of those challenges and how you overcame them?

Greg: 3:39

Yeah, there were, I think I think the biggest challenge was trying to figure it out on my own. The concepts made sense to me. But it was putting the pieces of the puzzle together, which I really found challenging. And it did come over time. But it was a struggle. And I think one of the biggest struggles was knowing what the sequence was. And I kept reading everywhere sequence sequence sequence, but kept searching for the sequence, you know, what is the sequence and probably one of the best things that Marilyn said to me or to us, and I think it was in a Facebook post is that she said, treat Music Moves for Piano as a workbook. Don't necessarily think of it as a method. It's not a method, but treat it as a workbook. And I think one of the biggest hurdles for piano teachers in particular is to get over the use of method books. I mean, we were taught with method books. Our pedagogy courses use method books. And they're based on method books, everything is a method book. So by doing that, I think we as musicians have lost something that in this aspect of critical thinking, and thinking of our own thinking outside of the method approach. Now, I need to clarify because this is a broad brushstroke statement that I made. And I know that it doesn't apply to all piano teachers, but rather speaking in general terms, and it did apply to me as well. One of the challenges has been to get a grip on the lesson plans, and to organize them so that they made sense to me. I really do think that probably the first four to five years of teaching, I rewrote every lesson plan using a different medium. One year I used Word and then I moved to mindmaps. Then for a while we had been using Trello as a group, and then back to Word, and then I imported them on my iPad. I have scribbles on my music. And now I use a combination of iPad and Google documents. And that has saved me a massive amount of time in creating my students' lessons sheets, which for the most part does become my lesson plans.

Unknown: 6:00

But I think one of the big his challenges was not really fully understanding what audiation is, or understanding Gordon's skill learning sequence. And I remember preparing lessons. And I remember the first time preparing for a 45 minute lesson, it took me over four hours to do. And I said to my wife, "There's no way I can do this, I can't spend this much time on just one lesson." But I remember preparing lessons and worried that if I didn't have the students go to the piano at the right time, as outlined in Music Moves for Piano, was I then going to affect their ability to audiate? That's kind of the detail that I was looking at and thinking about. And now I realized that actually has nothing to do with audiation. And so reworking these lesson plans for four or five times, I'm still adding more to them. Yeah, you know, it's because really helped me to sort through all that to make them my own lesson plans, so that they make sense to me. And with what I'm doing in my teaching.

Hannah: 7:09

That's excellent. I have had many conversations with new teachers about the lesson plan. And there is this great fear and anxiety that a lot of people experience about getting it wrong, or not doing everything, just so or in the right order, or following every instruction in the lesson plan to the tee. And I think this is a great time to remind people that you don't have to do that. And if you just stay within one unit, but perhaps for your own teaching context, maybe you're teaching a particular kind of group or a particular age, or you've got some sort of overlapping format, and you need to make some adjustments, that's okay. As long as you get to everything within that unit, you can adjust your lesson plan. So thanks for bringing that up.

Greg: 8:04

Yeah, and you can do things out of order. You just just need to know, I think the biggest thing is that you need to know what is the purpose? Why am I doing this? Because everything is very purposeful that we do. Everything that Marilyn has in those lesson plans, is very purposeful and has a purpose. And I think realizing that and also being able to fit it in to where it fits within the skill learning sequence also deepens your understanding of why you're doing what you're doing. And again, as as coming from a series of method book. Teaching, what do? We do we kind of just turn the page and do what is on the page. Well, I do this because that's what it says. And sometimes I think we miss the point of kind of questioning, okay, why are we doing this? And so understanding the why of the lesson plans, why we're doing it really helps, I think deepen your understanding of Music Learning Theory, and allows you to have much more purpose, and also know how to deviate even from the lesson plan or deviate some of the activities to still make them very meaningful in what you're doing.

Hannah: 9:17

Right. And we, Krista and I are very interested in this topic about seeing how the learning sequence plays out in Music Moves. And we in our Pattern, Skills, and Sequence Course, we looked for very specific examples of where Is Aural/Oral happening? Where is Verbal Association happening? Where is Partial Synthesis happening? It's kind of easy in the beginning of the sequence, but it gets a little more tricky to pinpoint where are we in the learning sequence when we do XYZ activity. So that is just such a fun research adventure that you get to go on when you do when you really start getting deep into the curriculum. Into Book Two, Book Three, when you really start to see that sequence play out.

Krista: 10:11

And I'm sure Greg with all of your reworkings, I guess we can call it over those five years of going back to the lesson plan and writing them different ways. I'm sure every time you went back, you found something new because every time I have a new student or I do a lesson, a unit again, I'm always finding something new and something brilliant and something that fits into the sequence that maybe I didn't notice before. Or maybe I have more understanding of because I have students that are in books that are more advanced in that unit.

Greg: 10:45

it's just I'm always in awe of Marilyn's mastermind. Sometimes as frustrating as a lesson plans can be, then you totally flip over and go "Wow, what an incredible mind that she had." To be able to put all these pieces together, and to be able to prepare for things that are coming down the road. And to have that foresight of what is needed now, in order to help students later on. And those moments I just find absolutely incredible. And I think it really shows us what kind of a mind she really, really had.

Hannah: 11:28

And you know, in the first episode, you mentioned how music chose you, as it does with many of us. And I remember Marilyn saying one time, she grew up playing the piano, she ended up in music, but she didn't really understand why she was there, because she had other interests in piano was just sort of this thing she did. She didn't expect it to be her life path at moments in her life. And now, have you just saying what you said about her brilliant mind and her ability to see into the future and have this bird's eye view of readinesses. I think that that is why music and Music Learning Theory chose Marilyn is because she did have that kind of mind that could do that. And we are all better for it.

Greg: 12:19

Definitely, definitely, yeah, I know, I owe her a lot for the way that I teach a lot. Yeah.

Krista: 12:28

So you shared some of your challenges. What were some of your successes? How did you know that Music Learning Theory was really working with your students?

Greg: 12:37

Well, the first semester that I took courses at UB, when I was doing my Masters, I was set up with Betha Etopio, where I would record maybe 10 minutes of my lesson, and then I would write about it and there would be a question in there. And then we would meet together, and we would discuss things and she would view my teaching and then make comments on it. And so one of one of my students, who was a transfer student, so not a great reader, but could kind of read. She was having a rhythm problem on a certain passage. So I was kind of working with with her on the rhythm problem with that rhythm passage. And I think that was the part that I had actually recorded and submitted, for Beth to work with me on. And so then she gave me some suggestions of how to work with her. And so then I think I actually saw that student that day. So then I tried those techniques with her. And I was really excited to see how well this would work the following week. Well, the following week, they canceled for whatever reason. She didn't come. And so then the next week, so it would have been two weeks afterwards, she came, and I was really excited to see what was happening. And then she announced that "No, I haven't touched the piano since my last lesson." And I thought, "Oh, no, I'm not gonna be able to see how well this works." And I thought,"Oh, to heck with it. I'm gonna get her to play it anyway." Well, you know what? She played that rhythm passage absolutely perfect. Just from the little bit that we worked on it two weeks ago. So I remember that being Oh, wow. I can't believe that.

Unknown: 14:28

And then a lot of the other ones. They're, they're comments from my students. And they're the little comments like sometimes they'll say, "Oh, that sounds like such and such a piece" or "Oh, that has the same chord roots as..." and then they'll go ahead and they'll comment what piece it was. Even an elementary students said to me once. He was in elementary music class, he was at beginner band. He was taking piano with me. And he said, "I just wish everyone taught rhythm the way that you did." And so hearing that comment, I thought it makes sense to him to be able to understand the rhythm. And then I love doing the three or four dot improv activity. And that's where you have your three or four spots on the floor. And we do the rhythm improv where one student (and I think Marilyn outlines us and in Music Moves and one of the units) where one person will just chant the macrobeats, another person will chant the microbeats. And in my case, we usually have three spots, so then the third spot would then do improv and he would do an improvisation. So if there was a fourth student, then they would also do the divisions if we have gotten that far. So I remember and we would literally change spaces. I had spots on the floor that you would move literally move to and that was whatever your job was for that spot. That's what you did. And so at the beginning, I remember having to tell students, I'm sort of going through, you know, ready and move. And it got to the point where one of my students says, "I don't need you to tell me when to move, I can just feel it, I know when to move to the next dot." Because generally, we did about four macrobeat patterns four times, so 16 macrobeats that we were doing, to give them the opportunity to be able to do that.

Greg: 16:38

Another success that I felt that I had is that a student came and said, "You know, I learned to play this piece off of YouTube. But I really don't know what I'm playing. Because I don't know the chords, I just know the notes. So can you help me to understand what I'm playing?" And I thought, "Wow, they understand." So it's not no longer the decoding that we have. But they realize that there's meaning to everything that we do in music. So those are some of them. And it's really the little comments that I get from my students. They're really massively huge in what our students are telling us and in what they are thinking, what they're feeling, how they're audiating music. So I really listen to what students say, between the pieces, and the songs that we do. And because those little comments really tell us a lot.

Hannah: 17:39

Yeah, I also really love this reaction, I have to two most loved comments or reactions between pieces. And the first one is "Oh this is so fun." They don't even realize they're saying it, it just comes out of their mouth very organically and naturally. And the other one is not exactly a comment, it's just a reaction, you see their face, you see, Oh! And they have those Oh! moments so much more often now. And they just get it, you can see it.

Greg: 18:12

And the facial expressions, I absolutely love, because they're worth 1000 words. The comments of "Whoa!" ot the big eyes that are opening. I remember saying to these transfer students. And so I played the first phrase, and then I played the second phrase, and then I said "Is that the same or different?" And the look that I got from these two boys, it was like a deer in headlights. It's like, what we're supposed to listen to music? And I thought, "Wow, I never really thought about that, they probably don't." And we are really asking them to listen at a much deeper level, when when we're using Music Learning Theory.

Hannah: 19:02

Those are all wonderful successes. And it's making me think back to some of the more recent successes that I've had, because we've been getting ready for recitals. And there's one more thing that I want to share that I've seen lately that you reminded me of, and that is about the moving, and my students will be at a recital. And you can see like their shoulders are moving a little bit while another student is playing, or they're doing something like little movement with their fingers. And that that movement that we do in the lessons is translating to them being a good audience member at a recital because they're engaged with the music that someone else is playing. And it's just really translates to becoming an intelligent listener and a respectful audience member to. So that's great. So we get this question a lot. And maybe you have some experience with this. Do you ever have students or parents who are skeptical of your MLT based approach to piano teaching and learning? And if you have, how did you handle that?

Greg: 20:14

I would say at the beginning, I did. And I know I lost some students because of it. But I would say that it was more because of me, and perhaps not knowing what I was doing, then the reason being because it was MLT. So I really want to make that point clear. And put the blame where the blame really deserves to fall. And so I remember parents saying to me, and this would have been the first year that I was trying to figure it out on my own and doing it. And towards the end of the year, she said to me, "I think my son should be playing songs that are longer, rather than the short little pieces." And she was talking about the folk songs in Music Moves for Piano. So again, that was really on me. As I was just learning how how to teach Music Moves for Piano and MLT. I was learning trying to keep one step ahead of them. There were many things that I missed in the process. And I know that I had had said that Beth Etopio one day in one of our sessions. And she said,"But, do remember that you are giving them something more than what they would be getting if they were doing traditional lessons." And so I had to kind of say that to myself to console myself, you know, in the process. I think I didn't realize the importance of supplemental pieces. And that we were even to have supplemental pieces. So again, that's why I say it was really due to me, and my lack of understanding an approach, and not necessarily to Music Moves for Piano or MLT. Now, I actually have the opposite happen, where parents are grateful for the way that I teach. And however, I'm very upfront at the beginning, of how I teach. So in the initial contact, if it's by phone call, or email, I will tell them that I do not take a traditional approach. And that I take a sound before symbol approach. And then I really equate it to how we learn language. And I go through that whole spiel, you know of the babble, the improv, and that we end up with the reading and writing. And if they're still interested, then we get together for an interview so that they can see my studio, meet myself, and I can meet them. And again, at the interview, I'm very clear about how I teach what they can be expecting in the lesson, the moving the singing, the different activities that we do, the play that we do, how music becomes our toy. And I think when you equate learning music to how we learn language, it's pretty hard to refute the research and the evidence that's out there. And so parents can relate to the process, they see the value in taking this approach. And so many parents with music backgrounds have said, "Oh, I wish I learned music this way." And all I can say is, "I wish that I learned that way as well." For those that do have music background, I do go a bit deeper if I know what their background is. Audiation, the approach that we're taking, Bach, Handel, Mozart, I mean, they took to teaching the same way of music. So there's a reason why we study music history. And I think sometimes we miss that. And there's so much proof of audiation and that it existed from the beginning of time. So in history and piano pedagogy, we learn about Bach gifting the books, the Anna Magdalena notebooks, to her. Why? So that she could really notate the music that was being played in their saloon on the Sunday afternoons, so that she could learn them herself. Or I love the scene in the movie (now I'm really dating myself) from Amadeus, from the 1980s. You know, the movie where Mozart is lying on his deathbed. And he's dictating the concertata to the Lacrimosa, from the Requiem, to Salieri in the movie, which we know really wasn't Salieri in real life. But again, it's proof of audiation and also how we hear the story, how Mozart wrote the overture, Don Giovanni the night before its premiere? And Mozart's response to the question "When are you going to write the overture?" And he said, "Well, it's already written, I just need to put it down on paper." I mean, those are moments that really show us that audiation has existed for a long time. And, and it's a term that Gordon gave us, but it's something that was always there. He coined it in 1975. But it was really new to the music scene for us. And really, Gordon made us aware of it. And he gave us the tools of how to guide our students to audiate.

Krista: 25:08

And this journey of audiation really can start as soon as a child is born, if not before, right? And you said you were going to hopefully be starting some Music Play classes. So before we end this episode, do you want to talk a little bit about the importance of just starting early?

Greg: 25:34

Because I do so much research on neuroscience. So much of what happens in neuroscience, the research, there is Laurel Trainor at McMaster University here. Sandra Trehub at Toronto. There's also some in the US. Some of these great neuroscientists research. The studies that they do, as you're reading through the research, it really proves that what Gordon said, is so accurate and so true. And so I feel that neuroscience is now just starting to catch up to what Gordon knew in the 1960s. And so it's really nice to have that science behind it. What happens in the first year with a child's mind is absolutely incredible. We don't realize what all they're capable of doing. And there's just so much research that shows this and helps us to understand why we want to be able to sing songs in the same keyality, for these young children, because they will it hear something different. It's really incredible how when you get the overtone series, you can have a series of sounds and pictures together. And if you remove the fundamental pitch, the very foundational pitch of one of those overtone series, and you play those series for the children, a four-month old's brain is going to be able to figure out what that fundamental pitch is, whereas the three months old, won't be able to do that. So that's just one of the studies that they've gone into. So they know that something is happening between three months and four months.

Unknown: 27:34

There's another study, a wonderful study, of the Baltic area with the Macedonian folk songs that they have. And where they did this test of children who grew up in Macedonia and were now adults. Then as well, children who were of that age of Macedonia, and then compared it with a group of children or adults who knew the songs but never had it from the ages of zero to five. And so then they did a miss tuned or a wrong rhythm in one of the folk songs that they did. The adults who had learned that song from zero to five, could spot where the problem was. The children who learn that from zero to five, could spot it. But those adults or children who learned outside of that range, could not catch it. And so I thought, "That's powerful." To show you how deep those synapses go in the brain and how those how important those neural connections are, with what we're doing. I could go on! But it's so important. And I would say, the first 12 months, 12 to 18 months, is a critical time period for learning music, with the synapses connections. And then from 18 months to three years, that's a crucial time period for learning. At the age of three, our brain starts to prune, it starts to kind of remove those neural connections that are not being used. And then of course, from age four and five, then again, that's a really important time, we learn more in the first five years of our life than we do the rest of our life put together. Yeah, and so it really is a crucial and critical time for learning music and to get those neural pathways going. And neuroscience is showing this.

Hannah: 29:48

All of this talk about neuroscience really gets me going. It is so exciting to have science that explains why we're doing all of this and to have science that supports our decisions. And it is a good time to mention that Gordon knew this before anybody was even ready to accept it. And a lot of people had some pushback about his theory and his approach. But he knew, and I'm so glad that he stayed in that struggle. And also Marilyn was a huge advocate for neuroscience research and seeing how we connect neuroscience to Music Learning Theory and how we're teaching at a very early age. And I also was having some conversations recently about how I only take new students age four to six. Just because that's just where I am in my life. I've clarified my values and this is what I'm supposed to do. We're supposed to take them young and grow them up. And there are teachers who just can't believe that because they wait until they're six or seven years old to even start lessons because they think that students aren't mature enough to handle lessons until they're six or seven. And what a missed opportunity not to put a four year old or a five year old or to have early childhood music experiences. So this is so important.

Greg: 31:26

Even even for language development, the early child years are so important. And Nina Krauss at Northwestern University has done so much work with auditory processing disorders and music. And so with auditory processing orders, it actually turns into developmental dyslexia. And so with dyslexia, we always think that it's a visual thing. And it can be, but it is actually an auditory issue, because students will not be able to hear all the different sounds that they have. And true confession, my son was diagnosed as APD (auditory processing disorder). It is hereditary, I suspect that I myself have auditory processing disorder. I know when I was mentioning some of these things to my mom, she said, "Well, it sounds like all of us." So I thought, "Oh, okay, so there's something there." And even going back to what I said in the last episode about my first piano teacher, not understanding a word that she said I go, "Was that the auditory processing disorder that was kicking in for me, that I really didn't understand." She could have been talking to a totally different language, as far as I was concerned. But it's so important for early childhood what music does, because there's so much to do with time, right? Rhythm. And the sounds that we have, even with the words that we have. And so there's such great research.

Unknown: 33:04

And so when you see the testing that they do for auditory processing disorders, and you see what we do in Music Learning Theory, it's such a beautiful match, that we are separating rhythm patterns, and that we're separating tonal patterns. Well, that is only going to help these children. And part of the remediation process is just that. It's that they will be given a certain rhythmic pattern that they end up having to repeat, they will be given certain tones. And again, these are not the the tones that we have for piano, but the pure tone. So there aren't any overtones. The tones that they have, that they either sing back, or they have to identify. So all of those things that they do in the remedial process for the older students of APD will then work as well with what we're doing for early childhood music classes. The problem is that they can only test so far. They are starting to have some success with testing three year olds, but as soon as you know that there's a problem, you want to start dealing with it. And so that's why knowing this, I have a number of three year olds that I have worked with, who are at risk or have been diagnosed with auditory processing disorder. And so then you're able to help them and it's absolutely incredible. We worked in two 12 week sessions. So we'll have 12 weeks and then we'll have another 12 weeks, and the audiologist will do what we call a CABR. It's a brainstem response. It's a test that she does before. And then a test after the 24 (weeks). I had one student, one child who went through it, and weekly, you can see the changes that were happening in his vocabulary of being able to speak. And so when you take a look from the first session, to the very last session, the 24th session, even just in 24 sessions, the amount of language that he had acquired, is just absolutely incredible. And I've seen that in a number of the kids that I work with. So again, that goes back and into the importance of early childhood music. There's a lot more that's involved in that than just learning music. I mean, it helps them very much with their language acquisition. And again, there's many studies and reviews on this that we could do a whole episode on just this. It really is incredible what happens during that age.

Hannah: 35:51

We may have to, in the future, have you back for an episode just on all these neuroscience and scientific connections between learning theory and language and the brain and all of the research that is out there. I think people would eat that up. Maybe you'll come back?

Greg: 36:13

Oh yeah, for sure.

Krista: 36:15

Well, thank you, Greg, so much for being here today. We would love to have you on for one more episode to hear your advice for teachers that are just kind of coming into it, or even ones that have been teaching this for a while now, if you would like.

Greg: 36:32

Oh, yeah, definitely. I'd love that.

Krista: 36:34

Wonderful. So, if you are not already a part of our Facebook group, Introduction to Audiation-based Piano Instruction and Music Moves for Piano. We hope you can join us. I know it's a very long name. We have a lot of teachers in there, including Greg, who are there to support one another. It really is a wonderful community. Thanks so much. And we'll see you soon.