Q&A with Krista and Hannah (Part 1)

In this episode, Hannah and Krista answer questions from the the Facebook community! Topics include: books to get when first starting with Music Moves for Piano, what the mysterious "Create with TP" really means, and tips for recitals when students are in Keyboard Games and beyond.

Links:
Music Moves for Piano Books for getting started (Teacher's books and Student books)
Keyboard Games Teacher's Edition
Keyboard Games Student Book A (and B optional)
Book 1 Teacher's Lesson Plans
Student Book 1
Pattern CD (from GIAmusic)
Rhythm and Tonal Patterns from the Pattern CD Book 

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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

Krista: 1:14

Welcome to Keys to Music Learning. I'm Krista Jadro, of Music Learning Academy.

Hannah: 1:19

And I'm Hannah Mayo of Mayo Piano.

Krista: 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.

Hannah: 1:36

Hello, everyone, and good morning, it's morning here. And Krista and I are sitting in our robes. It's cold, even where I am down south.

Krista: 1:46

Drinking our tea.

Hannah: 1:49

And we are between podcast guests. And we figured that since our theme for this season is community, we would reach out to our own community and take some questions. Some of these questions are pretty frequently asked questions, but we never tire of talking about this stuff.

Krista: 2:12

Never.

Hannah: 2:13

And some of these questions maybe we haven't talked about so much in a while. So we have a wonderful list of questions. And our first question is, and very important question is, when you are starting Music Moves for Piano, what books should you get first?

Krista: 2:34

It's an excellent question. And no matter what age your student is, you're going to want the Keyboard Games books, even though they're called Keyboard Games and some people think, "Oh, they might just be for the young ones." They are for every beginner student that you have from four years old through adults. So you'll want these student books, A and B if you can, because you'll more than likely use both books with your students and also the Teacher's Guide. So there's two or three books right there. And what do you think, Hannah about Book One?

Hannah: 3:09

I think if you have older students, or if you have some students that you want to transfer from whatever approach you were using before, and they might be new to audiation skill, I'd say go ahead and get Book One, the Student Book and the Teacher Book, because you might be using it with your older students or your transfer students in combination with the Keyboard Games, or you might use it as a workbook. And the other reason to get both Keyboard Games and Student Book One is so you can compare. Keyboard Games is informal guidance, it's really different. The lesson plan is a little less structured. There's more room for you to put in the activities that you want. You're given a template, but in the Teacher Book One, when you start the more formal instruction series, that is very detailed, very structured, very detailed, step by step kind of lesson plans. So it's nice to see those two things side by side. And you know, you might want to do a little research and kind of read through Book One as you are getting your students started in Keyboard Games, just so you can be ready for what's coming in the future, even if you don't use it right away.

Krista: 4:28

Yes. And if you're getting Book One, the Teacher's Guide, the Student Book, you're also going to want the Pattern CD, and then the book that accompanies the Pattern CD. So when you invest in Book One, there's those four books, well, I guess books/CD that go together. And you can really start using that Pattern CD right away for yourself, listening, echoing the patterns, singing the tonal patterns, chanting the rhythm patterns. It's really good for developing your own audiation as well.

Hannah: 4:59

Yes, and you'll need that Pattern Book as the teacher for when you are delivering patterns. Right from the very first lesson using Student Book One, for sure.

Krista: 5:10

Yeah, so I guess to recap that, we have if you are Same. It does have that long name. investing in Music Moves for Piano, you'll definitely want It's just like oh, I don't remember what comes first... rhythm... tonal. So you'll want that as well. So we'll link to Keyboard Games, the Teacher's guide, and at least Book A if you can get Book A and Book B, but the Teacher's Guide will show you the pieces that are in Book B. And then also Book One all of those so that you don't have to remember all of them so that you can kind of see that difference between Keyboard Games and the formal instruction that begins with Book One. Student Book One, as well as the Pattern CD and the what does it call this a long name, Rhythm and Tonal Patterns from the Pattern CD, I just call it the Pattern Book. right now, on the show notes.

Hannah: 6:04

And if you're really just feeling very committed, and you are just dying to know what's in all of the books, get all of them. And then look at all of them, see where this thing is going. But if you are easily overwhelmed, don't do that.

Krista: 6:20

And the Teachers Books we should mention are digital now, which is really nice. So you can have them on your device. And also at the end of the Digital Teachers Books, you can see the student books. So if you want to see what's coming up next, you don't have to buy all the Student Books, you can buy just the Teachers Books and see what are the units are like in the Student Books as well.

Hannah: 6:41

That's a very good point. Yes.

Krista: 6:44

And I think we're ready to go to our next question. This is from the Facebook page. I'm wondering if you can share what it looks like for students at various levels to "create with tonal patterns" in the checklist. This space is the one consistently left blank in my students' books. And right now we're talking about Books One through Five, you'll see on each performance piece, there's a checklist and it says "Create with TP" which means create with tonal patterns.

Hannah: 7:16

Right. And I think this begins to happen about halfway through the book, maybe around unit somewhere between unit 10 and 13. So you might not see it right away. Yes, unit 10. So you won't see that right away. But just to provide a little context, if you haven't seen it, there is a checklist for every performance piece. And the student does many different things like play the solo, play with the duet, play loud, play soft, play separated, play connected. And then there's a three step process with the rhythm pattern where they chant it, perform it, which means to play it on one piano key, really focusing on the beautiful handshape that we like to use, and playing with the middle finger. And then the last is to create with that pattern. And for rhythm, it's pretty easy to do that because rhythm is very concrete. And you can just really play any keys you want. But this question actually gets asked a lot, and I don't think I fully understood it at first either. So this is a great question. The same happens with tonal patterns, you'll have sing the tonal pattern, you will have perform the tonal pattern where they played on the piano. And I usually have them play it in a couple of different registers, just so they can really hear it a few times, and also hear how it sounds in different areas of the piano. And then the last step is to create with the tonal pattern, and I demonstrate a lot. I will come up with my own little creations. Like let's say that our pattern is (Hannah plays piano) let me set a context here. Let's say our pattern was Do-Mi-Do. So the student would sing it, they would find it on the piano, maybe in a couple of places. And then create what does that mean? Well, it means you could use repetition, maybe you use different areas of the piano and just repeat it like this (Hannah plays piano). So, something like that. And so I'll just do something really simple like that. It could even be shorter, you might just take the Do-Mi-Do. And I tell them not to really think too much about rhythm at first. But as we move through the books, I might say, you know, if there's a particular rhythm you'd like to use as you're creating with this pattern, that's fine. But that's really more erring on the side of improvisation rather than creating. So I like to leave it open, generally. I'll do maybe something like this with the same pattern staying in one place. Maybe I'll go like this(Hannah plays piano). And I'll just give them some examples until they start to do it. And most of the time, they will. They'll come up with something. And we're not looking for a magnum opus, we're just looking for using the tonal pattern.

Krista: 10:19

Oh, and I love how this question also asks about the various levels. So I guess two things. One, Marilyn, always said to create with a rhythm pattern. And when I'm creating with tonal patterns with the students, I like to set context for them. So we do choose. We usually create with the tonal patterns in the meter that the piece is in. That's just kind of a natural thing to do because we're already in that meter. So I do set context for them. And as they get older when they're ready, I do have them choose a rhythm pattern as well but I also like them to, especially in the beginning, just focus on the tonal pattern. Because it's new, we do one thing at a time. And for some students, especially when they're first starting that, it's just too much to focus on the tonal pattern and add a rhythm pattern in there. So I do very much like Hannah just demonstrated. And then as they get older say, with "Old Woman" (Krista sings "Old Woman"). There's three total patterns in there. We have So-Mi-Do, we have Re-Fa, and Mi-Re-Do. And some students, because we individualize instruction, some students at that point might take each individual tonal pattern and improvise with that individual tonal pattern, and then we'd go on to the next one. So maybe Hannah, can you be my student? Because you're by your keyboard, and I am not. I don't know what key I'm singing in. What key were you just in?

Hannah: 12:01

I was F-DO. You're close enough.

Krista: 12:05

All right, make it very high this morning. But I could do it. So say one student, Hannah is going to improvise with the three different tonal patterns individually. So Hannah's my student, "Hannah, can you improvise with So-Mi-Do? She's gonna get ready and ready, and There we go. Then the next one would be Re-Fa. So she's gonna find, Re-Fa. And technically, she's gonna sing it. Play it right. Then she's gonna improvise with it. So let's hear Hannah (Hannah plays). Very nice. And then we have Mi-Re-Do

Hannah: 13:06

I'll do something my students do all the time. When they get Mi-Re-Do, they go(Hannah plays).

Krista: 13:14

Oh my gosh, my students usually will play it and then they'll just go into "Hot Cross Buns." I'm like, "Is that creating something?" They're like "Yes." Okay. So "Hot Cross Buns." So many students will do that right? Take one tonal pattern at a time. But if I have a student that needs to be challenged, I will say "Hey, can you improvise or create with all three of those tonal patterns and create your own tune?" And usually they're like, "Yes, I will definitely try that." So Hannah, can you use all three of those tonal patterns, and create something new.

Hannah: 13:49

I can. I've been doing this a while I think. All right, we've got here I go (Hannah plays).

Krista: 14:10

I love it.

Hannah: 14:11

This song is so deeply embedded in my audiation that I had to go back to that first tonal pattern. Couldn't help it.

Krista: 14:18

So I mean, so there's so many things that you could do with the total pattern, but it's all about readiness, right? When they first played "Big Ben" and there's the three total patterns there, I likely wouldn't say"Let's improvise with all of them now." At the beginning, just like Hannah was saying, I demonstrate so much. Because even if you go back and forth, I don't know if you found this Hannah, but your students will copy what you did in their own way. So if I do an improvisation where I use two different octaves, and they go right after me, a lot of the times they'll do the same thing. Or if I change the dynamics without even telling them, they'll just automatically do the same thing. So demonstrating, demonstrating, demonstrating is really important in the beginning.

Hannah: 15:00

And then there comes that magic day where you're where you say to yourself, "I'm just not going to demonstrate this time and I'm going to see what they come up with," you know, at end of Book One or maybe sooner. And that's a lovely moment, when you hear what they come up with. And they do it without a thought about. It just comes out very naturally, even the ones you're not quite sure about. That's a fun moment.

Krista: 15:24

It is.

Hannah: 15:26

Alright, so good talk about tonal patterns and creating with our tonal patterns. Oh, and just one more side note, do this with your repertoire as well. We know that the performance piece checklist is a model for all repertoire learning. So take this step, take all of the steps, including this one to your rote repertoire, your supplemental repertoire, and whether you're using it for reading or rote or whatever it is, and include those create with tonal pattern and create with rhythm pattern steps. It's really fun. Okay, so our next question is about recitals. What do they look like in the beginning? Great question. How can you showcase to the parents the great internal development that is going on? So how do we showcase something that you can't always see? Which is audiation development? Krista, do you want to start?

Krista: 16:23

I was just gonna ask you if you want to start because you have all those amazing examples on the Intro page.

Hannah: 16:29

I do want to start. Alright, so one of a couple of years ago, I'd say, maybe longer now. But we started doing very elaborate arrangements. And it comes by way of taking snippets. That was one of the things that Marilyn imparted. One of her many wisdoms that she imparted on us was the use of a snippet, especially for students who perhaps are not ready for a longer melody or a longer piece of music, you can take a famous snippet, like, for example, just a little snippet of "London Bridge" (Hannah sings snippet). And that's it, and you can repeat it, you can turn it backwards, you can intermingle it with a Keyboard Game, or two, or three, all kinds of stuff. So what I usually ask students in the very beginning is, once they've got a good handful of Keyboard Games under their belt, to tell me what their favorite ones are, and then we, with a lot of guidance at first, but eventually they start to come up with more of the ideas on their own. We make an elaborate, but still playable by a young beginner or an older beginner, arrangement of snippets, Keyboard Games, sometimes I'll ask them, what's one of your favorite songs or I'll ask the parents a lot because parents often know the songs that their children know better than their children know, just because titles are hard to keep up with. And as this is especially fun at Christmas time, if you do Christmas music with your students to ask them what their favorite Christmas songs are. Usually the tops are like"Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," "Up on the house top." You know, these classics, but they're too long and they're a little too hard for the students to play. So we take the best moment of each song, and I let the students decide what the best moment of each song is. We put it all in one keyality oftentimes it's the keyality of F-sharp because you can play everything most everything on black keys. And they've been doing a lot of black key playing. And we make really wonderful arrangements. We do this at Halloween, too. We take all the creepiest and spookiest Keyboard Games we can find and make these elaborate Halloween arrangements. Many times, I'm teaching two children at the same time. And they'll make a really wonderful duet together. And it's just like you take all of this content and you ask the student how they'd like to use it. So that's one thing. And then I'll say one more thing about the Little Gems Creative Primer formerly known as the Little Gems Advanced Primer, it's now called the Creative Primer because there's lots of really great creative things you can do with that book. And there is at least one piece for just about every kind of beginner in that book. Like there's a few pieces that are much more appropriate for a student who's maybe only been taking lessons for a semester or a year. And then there are pieces that are a little bit more advanced and more complex rhythmically and tonally. But also because I know Marilyn, and she was part of writing that book, I don't think she would have any problem with a student not playing an entire piece, but just taking one phrase. And then maybe just keep that as phrase one if they can't remember more than one phrase because that's just not where they are. Take the phrase, improvise something with that same rhythm pattern and then play the phrase again. And then you've got kind of a nice little recital piece for a very young beginner. Older beginners can usually handle longer things. But the process would be the same. You would just you do as much as the student can do in your individualizing.

Krista: 20:51

Yeah, and I'll just add that every recital that I have, I typically choose one thing to educate the audience on And there are also some recitals that I've done after modules. So that makes a really great topic for that recital. So say my Halloween recital. I did two Halloween recitals, and the students created their own pieces. I gave them one

direction: 21:20

Create a Halloween piece. And that was it, we did a whole recital. So that gave me a chance to talk to the audience about how important creativity is and how the students have been creating since lesson one, and how that's developing and look at these amazing pieces that the students are bringing to you today. Another module that I did was a folk song module where all of my students took one of the folk tunes from the books. And we learned how to create a longer arrangement of them. We added introductions, we change tonalities and meters, the students made all these decisions. And then they actually renamed their piece, because it sounded very different at the end. And we had a whole recital on that. So I use that as an opportunity to talk to the audience about the decisions that they made and things that we worked on in class and why we play the short folk tunes, because that's a lot of questions that we get like, why are these pieces so short? Well, because we can learn a repertoire of them. And we can use them just like Hannah was saying, we can use them for something, we can use them for something creative, we can use them to learn new skills. And that's why we have those pieces. So what are some other modules that I've done?

Hannah: 22:40

While you're thinking about that, you made me think of something that our good friend, Karen has talked about before. She calls the Keyboard Games like musical Legos.

Krista: 22:51

I love that.

Hannah: 22:51

And you build with those Legos and say you you combine them, you add to them. You have Legos that are in the Keyboard Games, the pieces are some Legos, but then you also have these other Legos, like you're talking about Krista, introductions. And that's where you can take a snippet and build in repetition. And then all of a sudden, you've got this really great introduction, I'll give you an example. I'm going to go back to my "London Bridge." So if all you're using is (Hannah plays first snippet of Londong Bridge) well, you might just repeat that (Hannah plays). You do it two places, or maybe three places, or maybe four places going up or down the piano. And then you got your interludes, which can also be a little short ideas to connect pieces. And then of course, your ending, maybe your introduction and your ending are related. Maybe they're not. And so you get to have all these really fun conversations with the student. And you give them the options, and then they choose something that they like, until they're ready to create their own options.

Krista: 24:02

I love that musical Legos. That's, that's perfect.

Hannah: 24:06

It's cute.

Krista: 24:07

It is. So, Hannah, we're at like 20 minutes now. Should we sign off for today and have another episode with a few more questions?

Hannah: 24:18

Sure!

Krista: 24:19

All right. Sounds good. So today, we talked a lot about the Facebook group. So we'll make sure to put a link in the show notes. If you're not part of our Facebook group already. It's Introduction to Audiation-based Piano Instruction and Music Moves for Piano. We'd love to have you join the community there. And thanks so much. We will see you soon.