Amy Chaplin, Part 1: Finding your own way with Music Learning Theory

In this episode of Keys to Music Learning, we sit down with pianist, teacher, blogger, and podcaster Amy Chaplin for an honest and thoughtful conversation about her journey as a music educator. Amy shares how her background in choral education shaped her teaching, the moments that left her wanting more for her students, and how she eventually found her way to Music Learning Theory.

We talk about discovering MLT through graduate studies and professional development, the realities of experimenting with new approaches in the piano studio, and the freedom that comes from letting go of “doing it perfectly.” Amy offers practical insights into incorporating singing, audiation, creativity, and micro-progressions into lessons—while still honoring your own teaching style and your students’ needs.

This is a rich, relatable conversation for teachers who are curious about MLT, already using Music Moves for Piano, or simply looking for a more musical, flexible, and student-centered way forward.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we dive even deeper into Amy’s teaching practices and studio work.

Show Notes

Amy Chaplin
The Piano Pantry Podcast
Music Learning Theory (Edwin E. Gordon)
Music Moves for Piano (Marilyn Lowe)
Keyboard Games (Marilyn Lowe)
Professional Development Leadership Conference (PDLC)

Support Keys to Music Learning through the Keys to Music Learning Community!

Join us on Facebook!
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 Jadro: 0:00

Welcome to keys to Music Learning. I'm Krista Jadro Of Music Learning Academy

Hannah: 0:15

and I'm Hannah Mayo of Mayo Piano.

Krista Jadro: 0:19

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: 0:33

We are so excited to welcome Amy Chaplin to the podcast today. Amy is a pianist, teacher, speaker, blogger and fellow podcaster who is passionate about helping music teachers with organization, productivity and teaching strategies through her blog, Piano Pantry, her podcast and her digital coaching series. She shares practical tips and inspiration for educators, and we can't wait to dive into her insights on Music Learning Theory, studio organization and more. So welcome, Amy.

Amy: 1:07

Thank you so much for having me, you guys, I'm excited to be here.

Hannah: 1:12

Can you start by just telling us a little bit about yourself, where you're from, what your music background is, and how you found your way to piano teaching.

Amy: 1:22

Yeah, so I currently live in Indiana. I have been teaching for more than 20 years, ever since I got out of my undergrad. My current situation is I am an independent teacher. I teach out of my home in my basement, and I've got, right now, around 16 students, so I've been slowly cutting back as I'm doing a few more things, but I've been through the whole gamut of 40 students and everything in between. I've also experimented with group classes over the years and did a variety of situations, but right now, I'm pretty well doing one on one lessons.

Unknown: 1:56

My background, just to kind of take you back a little bit, is actually in choral education, which is why I think music learning theory has been interesting to me. So my undergrad was in choral Ed, K through 12, and I taught middle school and high school choir for three years since my very first career, and actually show choir as well, which was not my thing now in hindsight, but that's what I did in high school as a pianist in high school, I always helped in choir, and I taught, and I thought that this is what I want to do, because I'm already doing it. But we all know, none of us end up doing what we ever study in school, initially, it's very typical, which is fine, but teaching choir, I have lots of memories back to that and just things like wanting to do better for my students and teaching them how to hear music and just not really knowing what to do. You know, again, we were doing show choir so so much of it was just focused on dancing and singing and the performance of things, and I wanted more than that. I remember my college teacher. I remember him working us in in choir through these really cool, like, vocal progressions, you know, moving through, like the tonic and the subdominant and the dominant. But the thing is, is, I don't remember at the time, like us verbally talking about what was happening, he would just, you know, have one person sitting on DO, one on MI, one on SO, or one, you know, tenors, basses, sopranos. And then he would say, Okay, now you go up a half step, you go up a whole step. And so we were moving through this, but I was like, how did he do that? Like, how do I know how to do that? But there was no like, Okay, now we're on the sub dominant. Now we're on the dominant things like that.

Amy: 3:32

So I wanted more for my students. But again, I didn't know what it was. I remember going to a jazz workshop, actually, at Butler University, and oh my goodness, that was my first experience of, like, true improv, and how I had no idea what I was doing. I remember the feeling of feeling so overwhelmed by them wanting to stand in a circle and use our voices and, like, just sing something. And I was like, what, I can't even make my voice sing like something random. It was hard, you know, but that was, again, that's just a part of my journey, of these little things that just added up to where I am today.

Unknown: 4:13

Another little part of my journey is with my piano students. I've always taught piano. So actually, when I was doing the choral ed thing as my full time job, I still taught piano on the side, maybe one or two nights a week. I had students after school, and again, you know, playing around with improv resources and trying to get my students doing more than just like looking at the page and reading music. A lot of the resources I just always felt were like there wasn't enough parameters. It was just too open all the time. And that's how I felt about the vocal improv thing. I was like, but what I need some structure, give me something more. So I was like, it's one thing to show my parent my students to, like, play just on the black keys. But they look at me and go, like, okay, but yeah, so like, having just, like, a rhythm pattern and the idea of, like, we're gonna focus on that. Yeah, I feel like I'm going on and on, but there was, there's parameters. So that's kind of my background of how I've come to where I am today, and all these little like things that I've been through, that have wanted me to I've wanted more, I just haven't known how to get there so and I've kept going for 25 years trying to figure this out, and I still don't know if I know it exactly, but I'm still trying.

Krista Jadro: 5:24

And so, Amy, when did you discover music learning theory and kind of, what was that journey like for you?

Unknown: 5:31

So I taught choral ed for three years, and then my husband and I went overseas, actually for almost three years for his job. We lived in Australia, and at that time, I wasn't sure that I wanted to teach choir anymore. That was part of us leaving. I was like, I am not sure if this is what I want to do. I thought about going back to school then, but all they had was a piano performance degree. And I'm like, I don't want piano performance. So I kept teaching piano lessons in Australia, worked odd jobs, came back and ended up going back to grad school when I returned and talked to the teacher at Ball State where I went, and she was the pedagogy teacher, and she was like, Well, have you thought about pedagogy before? I was thinking maybe just general ed or something, some, you know, general arts degree. And I was like, well, I didn't even really know this existed, but yeah, I think that would be something I would be interested in. And they actually had a assistantship available at that time. And it was like divine intervention. It was teaching in my hometown through a community art school. It wasn't like a typical assistantship at the university level. So I was like, alright, this is what I'm supposed to doing. I'm getting goosebumps now even thinking about it. So it was in my grad school classes that I first learned about MLT and pedagogy classes, just through exploring all the different methods that were out there. Ball State was really big in music education, and takadimi was taught at Ball State, and that was my first dabble with a rhythm syllable system. Lot of fabulous things about takadimi.

Amy: 7:05

And then once I graduated and opened my own studio, I started exploring teaching younger students. I had some people that came to me and asked about lessons for like, a four year old. And I was like, gosh, I've never done it before, but I'm willing to try. I considered doing musikgarden, because there's a lot of really great similarities in musikgarden, but I had just finished grad school and paying for that, and musikgarden, you have to pay for the training and that just felt like too much at that time. So I was using Marilyn's Keyboard Games books, because I remember learning them about about them in grad school, and I was dabbling with them, and like trying to read the teacher's guides and figure out what I'm supposed to be doing here, and actually what was like maybe three years later. So this would have been 2016 so it went about five years into my full time studio that I had opened up. I ended up going to the PDLC in Boston. And actually going to that PDLC was kind of on a whim. I had never really considered more training in MLT. And actually, I did't even know if it existed at the time. This is before we had Facebook groups and everything. I think I had read Eric Bluestine's book The Ways Children Learn Music. But my friend Joy Morin was like, Hey, have you ever heard about Dr Gordon and MLT? And she's like, there's a training that's happening in Boston. You know, in the summertime, it's a couple weeks. But I think I'm thinking about going, and I was like, oh, really, I didn't even know that existed, that that sounds cool. Can I go with you? And so we we went, and I won't dive into the experience now, because I know we're going to talk about it in a bit. But just as far as the overall journey goes, and how I'm using it with my students, it's been a very slow one. I've been all over the place with things. I was really torn at the beginning, feeling like I needed to give Music Moves books a fair shake and follow exact lesson plan structure, word for word. I'm like, I'm going to do this. I got to push myself to, like, feel outside of my box. It was awkward. But, you know, sometimes I think we have to push ourselves, like to the extreme, and feel weird doing things, but that's where we found our better place. It's like you have to go to the extreme, and then you kind of pull back, and then you figure out what works. And while all the research behind MLT is great, the biggest thing I've learned is that for me, I have to remind myself to not get caught up in it, and not get caught up and feeling like there's do's and don'ts, and I know that that's becoming much more of the standard in MLT communities, like just, it's not about making people feel bad about what they were teaching before. It's not getting caught up in oh, should I do it like this, maybe that's not the right way to do it. It's just like experimenting and taking what we've learned and trying to apply it to our daily teaching.

Hannah: 9:46

How are you incorporating Music Learning Theory and Music Moves for Piano alongside your other ideas and methods? Like, could you give us some specifics?

Unknown: 9:59

So I feel like Music Learning Theory has given me more of a way of just understanding progressions in music, just having some kind of foundation outside of just reading progressions that we teach steps and skips first, and we also teach the sound of steps and skips first, and then we teach fourths and fifths. And, you know, we start by, you know, adding one note in the left hand with the right hand and the physical aspect of playing, so it's just having an actual path to learning music, besides just the reading path. Another thing that's been huge for me, and I think it's helped that I initially had the choral background was singing. Like if I could tell any teacher, just do more of this in your lessons. It's just sing, sing, sing, sing. I did a session this past fall with a group and one person at the end of it was, he was just like, if I could just totally recap your talk, it was just on general principles of MLT and how to incorporate them in your lessons. He was like, basically, you're saying we need to sing more. And like, yeah, I mean, it's a huge part of it. So I love using the short folk tunes in the Music Moves books to teach my students about transposition, about creativity and improv, improvisation and having parameters, taking elements from those little tunes and then learning to create with those elements, like I was talking about earlier, not just like giving my students a shot in the dark, only giving them the parameter of what keys to play, but also giving them the parameter of a rhythm pattern, and actually making their brain think about it before they play. So my students understand better what to do when we're doing the creativity aspects of changing up a tune.

Amy: 11:43

I've changed the wording a little bit. You know, in the books, you have a tune, you learn it, you transpose it to different keys, and then you create. So you create with the tonal patterns. You create with the rhythm patterns. I always found it confusing, just using that terminology. So I say to my students, can you play the piece again, keep the exact same melody, but spice up the rhythm or and then we go, okay, now I want you to keep the same rhythm, and we might verbalize what is the rhythm patterns that we hear. And then can you just create a new melody for it? So different notes, same rhythm, and that's how that's worked for us, just changing the verbiage slightly. So, yeah, I don't use the Music Moves books exactly in the way that they're intended, where you kind of go through them, and then you double back over, and then you add a new layer, and then you double back and you add a little bit more to them. I think that's a great way of doing it. My brain does not do well with that, so I just had to adapt to what feels right to me, and we pretty well just kind of go straight through the book. And I think it's important for teachers to remember that it's not a method book. It's more just like a workbook that they're doing it, it can be done alongside what you're already doing.

Hannah: 12:56

I'm really glad you said that, because I think that's people don't always realize that, and there's plenty of other materials that you can use in marriage with Music Moves, and so I'm really glad you said that...continue.

Unknown: 13:12

Well, honestly, it's taught me about how I can approach other music out there. I don't have to have just the tunes and Music Moves to do these things. I can get my students to take the melody of another song that they're using and create with the pattern of that melody. You know, it's just, it's a way of just thinking about teaching, teaching creativity and audiation. So yeah, and honestly, with the Music Move book, I have to say this quickly, one, I love the Keyboard Games. I think it's the best thing she's done. And I will probably do it with every young student, ever. I do the books with students. Most of my students are pretty well in them, but sometimes I'll go in gaps where it's like, we'll do a book, and then we kind of just get doing other things. Or maybe it's like, I just feel like the student needs a break from it, and then like, nine months later we might come back to it the next level. And that has really worked, like, not feeling like, why you just have to go straight through them exactly, and just kind of feeling like, what feels right for my students and what we need at the time. So, yeah, I just wanted to put that out there, because I think a lot of people probably just think, you just go, boom, you know, yeah, I've allowed myself to not feel like I have to, like, just go one after the other, and it's okay to have space in between them.

Amy: 14:29

I have really liked incorporating the idea of LSA's as what I would call an audiation warm up. And I've heard other people talk about this in your lessons. This year I've been pretty well solidly, like I told my students at the beginning of the beginning of the year, at the start of our lesson, the first thing we're going to do is this little audiation warm up, so we can teach our ears and our minds how to hear music. And it's very short, and sometimes it's only a rhythm pattern that we might do, and generally, I'll pick like one thing. So maybe we might only be echoing the rhythm and then playing it on one key, and then, you know, playing it on a five finger pattern and creating with it, or something like that. I don't do too many layers with it. Or, like, if we're doing a, you know, tonic/dominant pattern, I might only do something where I have them echo the first note, or I only have them echo the rhythm or the resting tone back to me. So it just depends on how much time we have. Sometimes I like trying to do a to do them, like a rhythm and a tonal one together, and then I tie them together. So we do the rhythm pattern and then we do a tonal pattern. It's like, okay, so now let's take that rhythm pattern that we did like this, pick one of these division patterns and create with this tonal pattern that we just echoed things like that. So that's been really nice just having, I don't know a dedicated time where I'm just like, I make sure that we have that audiation time and it's done and I feel good.

Krista Jadro: 15:48

I find the same thing Amy. Sometimes, if I don't start with some kind of up away from the piano where we're moving or singing or doing patterns, then I get so into everything else that we're doing. The lesson is over, and I realized I didn't, I didn't have that time with them. So I agree. It's really nice to set that routine, and then you hold yourself accountable for doing it, and you remember to do it. And the students, I think students thrive on routine, and if that's you know, if you're doing that every single time, then they'll come in, they'll expect that, and you'll see progress. I also find that I naturally, sometimes not between books, but I naturally have space from the Music Moves books, whether it's, you know, because we're doing maybe a module on Christmas music, or maybe they just finished book three, and, you know, book four is around the corner, but we're really into repertoire, and we're really into reading, so we take a break from the books. And I think that was a really, really important, important point that you made, that it doesn't have to be like because when I when I feel like I have to get through them fast, I'm not the best teacher. I just am not. So you know, knowing your students, knowing yourself, that's that's really important.

Unknown: 17:03

Yeah, it's good for me to hear that you say that that's good that you something you do too. That makes me feel better. And the thing is, is I feel like my students almost do better in the old like the the books that are like books three and four when I wait so they've been in lessons for a few years even., You know, they just, they they nail it so much more where it feels like, if I push students into it too soon, it's too much. And with the LSA's that I was talking about, I've even tried to use like, Okay, what am I I'm learning here, and how can I create something that works for me? So this year I've, as I've been trying to do those at the beginning of the lessons, I just built, like, a little progressive checklist for myself, like, what's the first things that I'm going to go through in tonal and then, you know, what type of things, you know, resting tone or then the next thing would be, like singing the first pitch, or singing creating their own pattern. So just kind of, I've written out a whole like progression for myself, and it allows me to more easily keep track of where the students are in those and then next to their thing in my little spreadsheet, I just put one, two or three, which tells me basically how well they did, like which patterns they did well with. So if a one they they did well with just the easier, what I would consider the easier patterns. Two was they did pretty well with the medium difficulty patterns, and a three was they just nailed all of them, even the hard patterns. And I try to not get caught up. I'm not really good with the whole keeping track of, oh, I taught them this pattern, and now it's familiar to them. And now with unfamiliar, I've had to, like, let go of that, because that was just too much for me. I know in my mind now, like, what patterns are more difficult? Which is, again, a beautiful thing about learning about music learning theory, just kind of having some structures and some paths to difficulty in music, and then just adjust on the spot based on what the student can or can't do. Like, for example, I know about you guys, but I find students really struggle if I put say, if I'm just doing a macro microbeat pattern, and there's a microbeat at the very end, like, let's see just and then they have to echo. It's a little bit more difficult than if I leave a macrobeat at the end. It's like they have more time. So just noticing those things in my students, and that's a very typical one that I notice in everybody, that if there's, there's too much going on on beat four they struggle to echo. So that, and that's how I know if they're doing really well. If they can take that beat four and do a more difficult pattern at the end, going into echoing, then they're they're doing really well.

Krista Jadro: 19:43

I remember being tied to the EMD so strongly because I came from the elementary general, yeah, I came from the elementary general background, and there was so much reliance on, well, if they sing the easy pattern, then you give them the medium pattern. If they sing that one then you give them the difficult pattern. I remember talking to Marilyn, and she was like, you'll just know. And it was hard, it was hard for me to accept that at first, like, No, I have to know which ones are. I have to know which ones to give the students. And you'll just, you'll just know. And then she's right, you'll just know exactly like you said.

Unknown: 20:18

But I think you have to also go through that process of learning. It of actually kind of doing the hard thing, of like feeling like you're tied to the easy medium and difficult, and learning what those actually are, but you're right. The more you do it, the more that you just learn on your own what the easy medium and difficult. You don't really need somebody to tell you that, right? Just observing your students. And one thing I observed for my students is that four macrobeat patterns in triple meter when you're doing divisions, is not a good introduction. I just don't like doing that. I'm like, this year, I'm done. I'm like, when we introduced triple meter divisions, we do two beat patterns for quite a while, yeah, and I did a long time on those four beats, and it's just a struggle. So, and I'm okay with that, you know. So that's one of those little things.

Hannah: 21:02

So I would say the final thing that MLT has really helped me as a teacher is to just understand a progression for how I want to teach technical work to my students. I love that Marilyn's method gave us a different approach to what we teach first in lessons by focusing on the tonic and dominant melodic cadence, so that students have the context of the actual sound of major tonality as the starting point. And then I believe she also does like the cross hand arpeggios and then the scale. And so, you know, for a long time, I stopped doing five finger patterns as the very first thing that I ever did, and I did all of that as the very first thing. And again, everything that we do is just experimenting. It's like taking what one person, I mean, somebody, you know, how many years ago told us that we should start with five finger patterns, and then everybody just did it. And then, you know, Marilyn's says, well, we should start with this. And so I did that. And so then I take what I'm in like, I'm informed and now by both of these approaches and like, going, Okay, but what works like, what, what in real life works for me and my students. And I have then taken that and felt like I finally have been able to build my own like, progression of technical patterns for my students that works well, taking little elements from like, looking at, what does the RCM program out of Canada do? Like, what do they expect of students to progress? What's all the method books do? What does Marilyn's suggest and why? And then building something that I feel like works for my students. So anyways, I don't have to talk details exactly, but I just, I think it's so important for us to remember that we shouldn't feel like there's a right or wrong answer in things. I think there is multiple ways to get to the end result. So I'll leave it at that. And I think especially if you're teaching students that come to you at a maybe an older age, you know, if they're not coming to you at age four or five, where five finger playing would be out of the question. But like, if they're coming to you at eight or nine or 10 or teenager or adult, then it's they have more dexterity. They can get to these technical things a little quicker, and they want to so badly, so to withhold that from them, could also lead you down a road you don't want to go down. So I can totally appreciate that approach.

Unknown: 23:25

Yeah, I love that and and also, like you said, thinking about the age of the students. You know, say you did, you know, at the beginning teach scale is the very first thing. So if it's an older student, fine, you can teach the crossing right away. But if it's a five year old, teach them the C scale, but only using finger three. Like there are so many more micro progressions to how we can teach, and that's one word that I've been using a lot in my teaching. Like my approach to teaching note names has become so much more about micro progressions, not just oh well, you are now learning all the notes on the staff. Well, we're going to practice only four notes at a time, though, and repeat, repeat, repeat, and just baby steps. So okay, let's learn to play a scale. But let's play first with finger three, if you're four years old, and then, you know, maybe we'll, you know, chunk thumb, and then finger two and three, thumb and 234, and then, then the next step is playing every finger. So you don't have to just jump straight into learning to play a scale for every student, things like that. So I appreciate that. Hannah.

Krista Jadro: 24:24

I'm curious what are some of the differences that you noticed in your students once you started to apply Music Learning Theory concepts and Music Moves for Piano to your lessons,

Hannah: 24:37

They just feel music more. I see them like, move to it. They respond to it more. They sing more. I've got this girl, she's a senior, and when she's like, even just sight reading something, she sings along as she does it, you know, and so just those little, tiny things, wow, yeah, my students, they are learning things. Students that have been in lesson or five or six years, and they're like, in book four, they can just play in Dorian and Aeolian, and no big deal, you know, like they, they're excited by learning different tonalities too. It's, it's, it's exciting. Join us next time for part two with Amy Chaplin, thanks so much. We'll see you soon.