Music Moves for Piano: Deep Dive with Janna Olson Part 1

In this deep dive into the Music Moves for Piano curriculum, Krista and Hannah talk with Janna Olson, a veteran Music Moves teacher, about Marilyn Lowe's understanding of the skills needed to play repertoire and develop a love for music making, what exactly is high level music making, broadening the perspective of the piano teaching journey and the possibilities for students, and separating oneself from the "polished performance" goal of our culture.

Links:
Alberta Piano Teachers Association

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

Krista Jadro: And I'm Krista Jadro of Music Learning Academy. 

Hannah Mayo: 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 Jadro: We are delighted to have Janna Olson back on the podcast today. She is a colleague and a friend, and we truly enjoy every conversation we have with her. Welcome, Janna. 

Janna Olson: Thank you. 

Krista Jadro: Janna is from Edmonton in the province of Alberta in Canada, and comes to us with expertise in the Music Moves for Piano curriculum, advanced repertoire, and the RCM exam [00:01:00] system.

We can't wait to dive deeper into these subjects and to give the listeners a clearer picture of these topics. 

Hannah Mayo: Janna, it's great to have you back. I think if you haven't heard Janna's season two community chat, please go check that out so you can learn more about her background and how she came to audiation based piano instruction.

But I think for today's conversation, a great place to start would be with what I have heard you refer to as the bird's eye view of the Music Moves for Piano curriculum. So could you start by explaining what that means to our listeners? 

Janna Olson: Sure. And I have a couple of sources where this sort of analogy came from.

One of my students came to a lesson, super excited to tell me about this cabin that she was visiting with her parents and her grandparents. And she was trying to describe it verbally to me. And she said, Oh, let me just draw you a [00:02:00] picture. So she drew the street view leading up to the cabin. And then she said, but it's better if I draw you the bird's eye view.

And so then she drew the overhead view of the property and all the little things in the paths that they could take. And it made me think about teaching and how often we're viewing our teaching linearly. We kind of drive up and we see each step as we go along. And it's sometimes hard to see that bird's eye view from the top.

Shortly after Marilyn passed away, I attended our local piano teacher's annual conference. And I always give a big shout out to our Alberta Piano Teachers Association, which is a really phenomenal group of teachers dedicated to ongoing learning. And if you look it up online, anybody can join. You don't have to have credentials to join, and it's a wonderful educational organization. And we're just really fortunate that this year we had the keynote speaker, this would be a year ago now, the Canadian pianist and conductor Adam Johnson, and so he was coming to [00:03:00] us from the advanced music making perspective.

So he played concertos, played a lot of advanced piano music and now is conducting. And he talked about inspired teaching and the development at the early levels. What do we do in order to build towards what he called high level music making? And I'll talk about that in a minute because it's a little hard to define.

And he shared with us a story about the pianist, Zlatislav Richter when he went to study with Heinrich Neuhaus, who was a pretty famous teacher. Neuhaus said that Richter treated each composition like a vast landscape, which he surveyed from a great height with the vision of an eagle, taking in the whole, and all the details at the same time.

And my thoughts went right away to Marilyn Lowe. I truly believe that Marilyn had this bird's eye view of piano pedagogy. And that developed over years and years of teaching, [00:04:00] different experiences, all of her studies. She understood the skills that a student would need to build in order to gain confidence as a music maker, and there's two really important things that both understand and love music. So when we have this bird's eye view, as in our own teaching, in our own music making, our own musical experiences, I feel like we begin to guide our students in a different way. So all of the activities that we're incorporating, building sequentially toward musicianship. And creativity is a big word in my studio.

And I know we can't know the whole picture, but when we know where something is going, it makes it a lot easier to commit wholeheartedly to those early stages of learning and what I call the long haul of teaching. So I think we all know about that. So that's where that whole bird's eye view came along.

But I think maybe the [00:05:00] confusion might be what is high level music making? So if we're kind of building, like, does this mean that we want our students to play a Beethoven Sonata, or really advanced music. Sure, it's possible, but that's just a really small little facet of the possibilities of what we would call high level music making.

So when Adam was talking and I was thinking about Marilyn, I was thinking that this is not limited exclusively to advanced or virtuosic repertoire, which means we exclude musicians who maybe have a lower level of technical skill, for example. So even so called simple music can be made at a high level of musicianship.

So, I probably would connect higher levels of music making with a few things. Beautiful sound, clear phrase structure, rhythmic security, an ability to communicate the character or the style of the music being performed, and this is regardless of the skill level required by the [00:06:00] music. So, Adam said something that really stuck with me. The higher the level of music making, the better the music breathes. That really resonated because we spend so much time in our lessons as music learning theory teachers working to build a skill in our students from the audiation perspective, of breathing, right? And being aware of how important that is.

So when we perform and are really present when we're playing music, it breathes, right? And he used the phrase, the music can be what it wants to be. So there's a kind of a natural sense of performing. So I really believe that skilled performers allow the music to breathe and move with direction and flow. And then you must believe that all students can develop this, right?

The only reason they don't is because they haven't learned to yet, and that they can learn to have [00:07:00] that deep understanding and the breadth and depth of audiation. Gordon, Dr. Edwin Gordon, I'll just make sure I'm making that clear. He would talk about the deeper and broader that audiation becomes the more it reflects on itself.

And it's taken me a while to realize what that means practically, that the more we learn to audiate, the broader and deeper it becomes. It reflects back on itself and you have this incredible process of growing in music, that we, I'm sure you both have experienced this, like suddenly you're hearing things that you never heard before.

Maybe I would just say one more thing about that. That I've also thought about the word musically satisfying. So my teacher in my grad studies would, often comment after performance. I found that musically satisfying. So that did not mean perfect, that did not mean that everything was in place technically, but it meant [00:08:00] that there was a level of music making that reached across from, you know, my little space by the piano to the listener that was out there, wanting to engage in the music that was being played.

And maybe I'll just tell you one more story, because this is about Marilyn. I sat by her during a performance by a 12 year old of the Schumann Arabesque, Opus 18, for those of you who know that, and Marilyn turned to me and said after, that was the finest performance of that piece that she had ever heard.

And I was so curious because she had heard it a lot. This was, she was in her 80s now, and that maybe had been a piece that she played when she was 12. I don't know, she didn't mention that, but she'd had a lifetime of experience. And what made that particular performance so musically satisfying for her?

And it was, it was beautiful, it was engaging, it was unselfconscious. But that has stuck with [00:09:00] me for a long time. I thought about that particular moment as being, okay, is that our goal? I don't think it's just that. I think it's not limited to the performance of a piece of solo music in a setting like recital, masterclass, exam festival. And I feel like as piano teachers, at least I'm speaking from my personal experience, this has tended to be my goal. It's like, I want to get these students ready for this showcase that they go out and they're going to play this piece beautifully. And we celebrate that. The moment of listening to that 12 year old play that arabesque is memorable, but that isn't the only part.

And Marilyn would have recognized that we don't want to limit ourselves to the goal of a wonderful recital performance or high mark in exam. We're missing out then on the myriad other opportunities for music participation within our communities. So that's the bird's eye view. It's like, where are we going? Let's broaden out our perspective [00:10:00] of the journey and the possibilities. 

Hannah Mayo: Just in that introduction, Janna, you brought up so many different reflections that I have actually been having and one of the things that you said early on was about the two goals of understanding and loving music. And so one of the things that I've really been reflecting on a lot lately is how in order to really get over the bridge to the other side of like disciplined practice and taking music study seriously, especially when you're, you start playing on a higher, more advanced level, there's kind of like a drudgery that can happen in practice, you know, like, Oh, I have to go practice again and we know it's good for us, but you don't really get to that moment until you've learned to love it.

And that's the goal. It's like, I have [00:11:00] to get these kids or these beginners on my side first. I have to win them over to the joys and wonder of music making before I have the right to ask them to participate in some highly disciplined, highly strenuous practice regimen. And they have to understand what they're doing in order to make practice successful.

So I think that is just really hitting the nail on the head is understanding and loving. 

Janna Olson: I totally agree. And again, another facet of that bird's eye view that Marilyn had was she was quite adamant that early drudgery in practice is extremely damaging and she could quote research and tell you all kinds of stories, but that idea of drilling and drilling at the beginning, she felt would be very detrimental actually.

There are, again, we're [00:12:00] generalizing. There could be many other scenarios where people can thrive, in different cultures perhaps, but it, for the most part, in her experience, it was detrimental to practice like that at the beginning. 

Hannah Mayo: And I've been there too. I've lost students because pre MLT, pre Music Moves, I was coming at it from the perspective of a grad student, you know, a grad student who practices six hours a day. And that is just not the same context. You have to separate yourself from that seriousness. 

Janna Olson: Yeah, I agree. And I think that we also have to separate ourselves from the expectations of our culture and the western culture. And I know for myself and my community, there is a very high expectation that you're going to produce students, if you're teaching well, you're going to produce students that do well in exams, that get high marks, that do well in festivals and performances. [00:13:00] And that isn't the only goal either, these polished performances.

And I remember asking Marilyn, I kept expecting there was going to be a, you know, this magic key that just opened the door. And then everybody just suddenly plays effortlessly, but this doesn't happen overnight. There is a lot of effortless playing that happens, but it's slowly building. She would often say we're taking little bits of experience and knowledge and it's building towards a larger body of experience and knowledge that benefits you in the future.

Krista Jadro: So if we can go back to the beginning of Music Moves for Piano, Keyboard Games, which is that first book, and Book One, make a lot of sense for teachers, for young learners, for beginning students, but how do these books prepare students for more challenging repertoire and for advancing in their studies?

Janna Olson: Yes, and [00:14:00] can I just reiterate that Music Moves for Piano represents a body of work and thought, which I believe is unprecedented among piano material that we have. She had a vision to offer piano students the opportunity to build sequentially toward that high level of music making regardless of what your practice is going to be like at home.

How much practice you do in the beginning, how what your environment, your home environment, if it's supportive, if you have a good instrument. All of those variables, she tried to design something that would override them. So that every student would have the opportunity, not only to just kind of play around at the piano and have some fun, but really build a musical experience and knowledge at a deep level.

And, again, we'll use that word audiation, that that was the goal, always. Knowing that the love and the understanding of music, it goes through the gateway of audiation. Or audiation is the [00:15:00] gateway to that. That's what leads us to that direction.. And I think, we have an idea that we're moving through repertoire sequentially.

This is really something that has been designed within at least our North American system, and I believe even, you know, within Western music, that we've got sequential beginning pieces, and we move gradually through repertoire, mostly probably designed from a technical perspective, that we're moving sequentially, technically, so that we don't ask our students to do things that are way too difficult at the beginning.

And we also are aware of how they play and practice pieces that build foundations for later repertoire. But that the end goal, for me, no longer becomes advanced performance. I'd like to think though, that I offer my students the opportunity to build towards advanced repertoire. And that was Marilyn's goal.

[00:16:00] So, I want to never close doors, to make sure that they are able to have that opportunity if that's of interest to them. But there's so many more avenues open. And we all have our personal stories. I was thinking this, when we're recording this podcast, it's just before Christmas. And so there's a lot of Christmas parties and events.

And a mom told me just with gratitude, she said, we were at our, our company Christmas party and one of the kids sat down and she said, he just played piece after piece, just spontaneously. And that gives me so much joy, because there's a freedom in that. There wasn't a need to have a lot of printed music along with him. I don't think he had any. I think he was just playing sort of everything he knew from his mind and his audiation. And the other scenario that happened this last week was I have a student who is moving towards book five. in the Music Moves curriculum, [00:17:00] but plays a repertoire at about the RCM level eight or nine.

And one of the joys for us was we pretended that he had been asked to play at a Christmas party and was going to get paid, you know, to do this little gig. And he was really excited, even just about the idea. And we created a playlist for him so that he could maybe put together a couple of sets and decided on, keys. What do you want to do? How many times do you want to play that? Do you want to put an interlude here? Do you want to put an introduction? How can you kind of seamlessly go from one piece to the other? And that was such a joy to work with that. We both had a really great time putting this playlist together. And it was hypothetical, but it might not be. I have every expectation that opportunity could possibly come to him.

And he's a probably about just 16 years old, 15, 16 years old. And what a functional moment for me, that functional piano where he's [00:18:00] using what he's learned over the years. Maybe I would also say that I view the Music Moves books as an opportunity for my own professional development. It's a jumping off point, and I would encourage people to continue to dive into them from an exploratory perspective.

So, we can look at them because there's a lot of information in there. Hannah, you call them the wall of text. It can be overwhelming and and I've heard many questions and some frustrations about now how do I wade through all of this? So rather than the negative perspective of oh, it's too much, bite off what you can manage and work through this material from this perspective. First of all, I'll just say having pretty much read through them all, cover to cover, and I still discover new things all the time, but look at it as your own long term adventure in music making and [00:19:00] uncovering a little bit of the mind, the genius mind of Marilyn in what she saw as being skills that would help students become that functional pianist that I'm talking about.

The pianist that really can play and understand. She was always talking about the onion, I don't know if you remember that, peeling back the layers. And so, what does a student need to know in order to be successful with this repertoire? Well, let's peel back the onion and look underneath and just see, is there something else that could form a foundation, and then you peel back another layer and realize, wow, but we could also do this.

And I'll maybe talk in a minute if we have time to talk about some of those specific skills that are little gems that as I teach advanced repertoire, I think, oh, this is easier because we did this. And not that we're, we're trying to make it easy. I think it's maybe that there's an ease of learning that takes some of that drudgery that you were talking about Hannah, takes it out of the equation.

It [00:20:00] becomes much more like that adventure, that exploration, and when I'm working with students in advanced repertoire, I'm feeling like I'm along with them, like we're doing this together. We're exploring the joys of uncovering all kinds of musical features and, you know, details in the music that for me, might even feel fresh, even if I've taught the piece a million times.

There's just one more thought that I had. Don't underestimate the power of repetition in learning. And so I'll be honest that I was disappointed when I open books three to five initially, because I kind of thought that the repertoire was gonna be more advanced, or something was going to change.

And it looked like a lot of the same. The checklists change, but the folk songs look kind of similar, and the procedure of teaching them look similar. And, it took me a while to realize that there's [00:21:00] this slowly building familiarity with a process of learning that takes you deep into the advanced repertoire.

And we can probably talk about that a little bit later in a bit, but I've given you not much specifics, but we're talking about how do these books prepare students for more challenging repertoire? And I can say they absolutely do. And you can just joyfully dive in with your students.

Don't feel intimidated, just bite off what you can do and, and start exploring. Do all the activities on your own. And I know you did that, Hannah. I don't know what your experience was if you got all the way through book five, but there's a lot there. 

Hannah Mayo: We had a little club that would work through a lot of the projects in books four and five.

And we did most of the exploration, creativity, improvisation. But, I mean, just that alone was enough to [00:22:00] fill an hour or two every week. So we didn't get through the entirety of books four and five, but in preparing for webinars and just trying to understand the flow of the curriculum a little better, even though I don't teach books four and five just yet, I had to understand what was in them in order to present the material. So I've gotten to the end of book three and into the reading and writing process. But most of my older students haven't made it to book four because my older students came to MLT when I came to MLT and to Music Moves. So it's been an interesting process and journey, but I want to come back to what you said about, yes, the books can be overwhelming for sure.

But I think that the reframing is very important because when I first got into Music Moves, there were times where I didn't even want to look at the teacher books because of the [00:23:00] walls. I was like, Oh, I'm just going to try to teach from the student books and just not even worry about these teacher books right now because my brain just couldn't even go there.

Krista Jadro: I did the same thing. 

Janna Olson: Yes, I think we all did. 

Hannah Mayo: I think a lot of teachers do that, and that's okay. It's part of the process. But once you get into those teacher books, and when I really started going into it like through PDLCs and through webinar research and study groups and all of these opportunities to really get deep into it, I found it actually quite thrilling. Like, yes, it's a little overwhelming to look at, but when you really just start reading and sort of, like, kind of take it the way you take Keyboard Games, you know, you have these little bite sized pieces rather than long repertoire. You can come at the teacher books in the same way.

You can say, okay, I'm going to read the introduction today and then put the [00:24:00] book away. All right. I'm going to read unit one today, put the book away. And then I think what, maybe a missed opportunity that I didn't realize until not that long ago, in the grand scheme of things, is to take notes. Like you have these little white spaces and margins in your teacher books and I would constantly be writing, Oh, this would work with this repertoire piece or this unit. If I go back and forth between the teacher activity time, I can do this project from the student book if I want to kind of mix things up. And I'm always writing down little ideas that I have in the teacher books. So I think if you're not doing that, start doing that. And it just helps you, get to know the material and how it can sort of interweave within itself in new and creative ways.

You don't have to just go down the list in the teacher books. You can really utilize that content in your own creative ways that work [00:25:00] best for you and for your students, too. 

Krista Jadro: And Marilyn always said, too, in going through the teacher's books and familiarizing yourself with the content, to not read it unit by units, but to take the time to read it section by section.

So, starting in Unit 1 and reading all of the activity times from Unit 1 through 20. And then doing the same thing for Keyboard Geography and Technique, Units 1 through 20. And also, I guess pretty recently, probably like a year or so ago, I started making my own checklists, which really forced me to look and, and notice, oh, wow, this is repeated here.

Oh, this comes back here. Oh, that makes sense to why she did that. So down the line, making your own checklist. And I've had teachers ask if I can share them. And I'm like, oh, I would love to share them. But I learned so much from doing them that I feel like I'm doing a disservice to share them because you just learn so much by doing them.

Really diving into the material and once you get going it doesn't take too long to do. 

Janna Olson: Yeah, I agree. I did the same thing [00:26:00] and I think my general growth in working with the materials has been the freedom to apply what I'm seeing, the principles of learning that we see in laid out in the teacher's guides more broadly.

So just knowing that I'm not limited to this. For example, you'll start to insert repertoire pretty soon in book one, even. And maybe even when you're doing Keyboard Games, if you've got other outside repertoire that you're doing, you're starting to put it into your activity time and you're engaging with music on the same kind of principles that she is given, which feel somewhat formulaic in the book, like we feel like we're following the same formula.

But after you've done that formula for a few times, you start to understand this is a valuable sequence, and today I can mix this up a little bit and do it just slightly differently, or I can spread this learning process out over several weeks rather than putting it all [00:27:00] in to one section. And, and the value of doing many, many little short pieces and learning short songs is that gives you so many tools to deepen the learning and with those short elements, either a song to sing or a performance piece, that give you the freedom to learn deeper skills earlier that you wouldn't be able to do with repertoire because there's just so much more to learn.

So I could talk about that for a long time, but I think I'm just saying diving in and understanding what is happening. This gives you the bird's eye view that Marilyn had when you can look all the way through in the categories, like you said, where's the keyboard geography and technique going. And then don't be afraid to say, this is actually, there's another skill here that's really important to me in something that I've been successful teaching.

Well, incorporate it. There's nothing, it's not going to hurt the students. I'll give you just a tiny example. I was thinking about this week is, that we often play double [00:28:00] thirds in repertoire in small ways, so like a two note slur that's a double third. So, for, I'll just say letter names, a C and an E, followed by a D and an F, and you're playing them in a blocked way.

So, that could be something, if you think, you know, I need my students to get familiar with that, those patterns, you can teach it through repertoire, or you could incorporate it a little bit when they're learning Springtime. Maybe .You could do a little bit of the double third. So, that's just a very small example of something that you may, as a teacher, see important, and then incorporate in. 

Krista Jadro: And we just had a question, or more of a comment, I think, on the Facebook group about maybe some higher aptitude students being a little disenchanted with the shorter tunes and wanting to do, you know, longer pieces, and the teacher was supplementing with repertoire and everything.

And I find with those students, I tell them, this is why Marilyn included this piece. This is what we're going to practice with it. It's a [00:29:00] shorter piece, so it's easier to practice and go deeper exactly, what you're saying. And for my higher aptitude students, or ones that are just questioning, why are we doing so many short pieces? They're like, oh, okay. And then all of a sudden it's, it's okay, because there truly are so many purposes behind these shorter tunes. 

Janna Olson: Absolutely, and I'll share another little practical example. So a parent sent a video to me last night of their student, of their child playing in church. This is an eight year old Book Two student, high aptitude.

And he was playing Angels We Have Heard on High as his little Christmas tune this year. And we had worked on it. Again, it's hard to sometimes nail down timeline unless you're really planning ahead to like mark down exactly all the stages of learning. So I can't remember how long he's had it, but I know we always begin with tonal patterns and rhythm patterns.

And I do this really fun activity at Christmas. I, we have a big party. Paper chain in the [00:30:00] studio and every time you engage in an activity for Christmas tune, you write that activity on a link and then you can put it on the paper chain and add to it and it's really really long this year. So that way I can get them to be motivated to do some of the preparatory activities, but this student. What blew me away was he took the bass line pattern of the chorus of Angels We Have Heard on High and incorporated that into an intro so his left hand played the bass line and his right hand played a repeated note and it was kind of a bell like so he he created his own introduction. So this is something that we really start talking about intentionally doing this in books four and five but he started to, because I know this is a possibility and he's high aptitude, he did that.

And then he played the melody with his left hand at some point. He decided how many verses he wanted. He created his own arrangement of Angels We Have Heard on High. [00:31:00] Beautifully. I thought about Marilyn because I thought she would have just absolutely loved this because it wasn't over the top. It was tasteful.

It was well coordinated. It was rhythmic. And it wasn't overly complicated for his age. It was beautifully done. And it took all of those elements that we do in those pieces. We play the melody with our left hand. We eventually are working with the elements of the music to change them and edit and adapt them.

So this is what can happen with high aptitude students with the simple and short pieces, is that we go deeper. And so it gives them an opportunity maybe to even be playing chord roots with the right hand while their left hand is playing the melody, which is hard even for me to do. You know, switching melodic material over and they get an understanding of harmonic structure that you don't have an opportunity to get when you're studying more advanced repertoire and there's so much more.

Yeah, I could go on, but I totally agree, [00:32:00] Krista. And there's ways if you delve a little bit deeper then and use your own strengths. Look at what Marilyn has suggested in these books and then think about the possibility of incorporating those if you have older transfer students that are still working through books one and book two.

We can incorporate much, many of those activities into the early level. 

Krista Jadro: I hope teachers take some time to really kind of sit with this. I can't remember exactly what he called this high level of musicianship, what it really means, because that child that you just described, maybe he's not going to play advanced repertoire.

Maybe he will have no interest in playing advanced repertoire, but he is well on his way to playing with a high level of musicianship and artistry. And the 15, 16 year old you were talking about before, you know, I was probably playing at a very similar level to him when I was in high school. But don't put me at a piano [00:33:00] without music in front of me and ask me to play a set of Christmas tunes in a variety of different keys.

That would have terrified me. I would not have been able to do that. At that point, I mean, that is a phenomenal gift that we're giving our students to be able to do that and to really have music inside of them and to have that confidence to be able to do that as well. Yeah. 

Janna Olson: And Krista, that was my experience too.

I was playing very advanced music when I was in high school. I don't think it was that I couldn't do it. It was that I didn't spend time doing it. And I assumed that because everybody around me tended to do it naturally, that I just couldn't do it. Right? So, I feel very strongly about giving my students the confidence that this is absolutely possible.

We call it the Anytime Anywhere Playlist. So, they can sit down and play anything. And I do, now, especially at this time of the year with Christmas coming soon, I try to improvise every day and create with [00:34:00] tunes and just let myself make as many weird sounds as I need to in order to just explore and just gain that confidence to be able to play pretty much any tune in any key is my goal.

To be able to sit down and play for sing alongs and be able to expand my repertoire. 

Krista Jadro: This concludes part one of our deep dive into the Music Moves for Piano curriculum with Janna Olson. Join us for part two where we continue our discussion on audiation based piano instruction with Music Moves for Piano books three, four, and five.

Thanks and see you soon!