Micro Progressions, Big Growth: Continuing the Conversation with Amy Chaplin (Part 2)

In Part 2 of our conversation with Amy Chaplin, we go deeper into the messy middle of learning and teaching through Music Learning Theory (MLT). Amy reflects honestly on feeling overwhelmed early in her MLT journey, how those experiences shaped her empathy for teachers, and why “micro progressions” have become central to both her teaching and her professional work.

We talk about tonalities, singing, and audiation, the emotional responses MLT can bring up for teachers, and what it means to share research-based ideas without making others feel “wrong.” Amy also shares the story behind Piano Pantry, her organization coaching, retreats, podcast, and her growing readiness to speak more openly about MLT and tonal learning.

This episode is an encouraging reminder that discomfort is not a sign of failure — it’s often a sign that real learning is happening.

Show Notes
Piano Pantry blog & podcast: https://pianopantry.com
Piano Pantry Podcast: https://pianopantry.com/podcast
Instagram: @pianopantryamy
Hidden Potential by Adam Grant
Everyday Musicality Podcast with Heather Shouldice
Music Learning Theory & the work of Edwin E. Gordon
Marilyn Lowe’s Keyboard Games from Music Moves for Piano

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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 Jadro: 0:12

Welcome to Keys to Music Learning. I'm Krista Jadro, of Music LearningAcademy, and I'm Hannah Mayo of Mayo Piano.

Krista: 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 back with part two of our chat with Amy Chaplin.

Krista: 0:38

That's awesome. So you mentioned the 2016 PDLC that I hosted at Brookline Music School that you and Joy came to and what are some of the things that you remember from that experience?

Amy: 0:53

Hard to believe it's been nine years since, well, I'll definitely say I don't regret doing the training at all. I regret that I didn't know more about it getting into it. It was way too much for me at once. I love learning, and I also I feel like I'm a very open minded person, and hope you've seen that, by the way I'm talking today, but I'm a slow mental processor, which, again, which why it's taken me so long to, you know, become the teacher I'm trying to become today. I wouldn't consider myself a nerdy academic. Nothing against the nerdy academics and MLT. We need you people. But I was very overwhelmed, like, really quickly. But I think it was good experiencing that overwhelm, because as I start to talk to teachers more about it, I think that can help to figure out ways, like, How can I not make it feel like the way I felt when I was first learning it? And I know a lot of things have changed since then. I think I was went to a pretty one of the rougher ones years just, you know, as instructors are just learning, how do you how do you start presenting this and teaching other people what you what you've learned. So I think it was just that. And I just wish I had read more books prior. Yeah. So now the food and the travel, it was Boston, which was awesome. Like, I would recommend anybody goes to Boston, like, what a fantastic city. And of course, I'm a foodie, so Joy and I went and ate a lot lobster tails and all kinds of good stuff. So that was my kind of a thing. It was just a fun experience overall. I remember being, I remember standing outside and we were doing, like the singing time in different tonalities, and like we had been, you know, asked to write melodies and all these different tonalities, and you remember the story I told you at the beginning of our conversation here about the jazz event that I went to when I was a choral teacher. That's exactly how I felt at this moment, like I was so overwhelmed, and I felt so like I don't know what to do. I'm supposed to stand here and sing. I don't even know what's supposed to come out of my mouth, because as teachers, I mean, I was taught traditionally, you know, I was taught to just play what I read, and I'm still a really good sight reader, but I had never been given opportunities to verbalize music in my mouth in a free way. And, like, all of a sudden we were doing this, and I was like, I just felt like I have no idea what I'm doing. It felt so stupid. But again, looking back on that now is so good, because now I go, Gosh, it's nine years later, and look at where I am now. I totally understand what it means to sing in Dorian, I could sing you a tune right now if I could, I won't, because I get put on the spot, and then I don't do it right. I get too nervous, but I could, like, I understand the sound of Dorian versus Aeolian much more easily back then, like, was just so many things to wrap my head around, and that's like, part of why I'm trying to be brave. I told you before we started recording, I'm trying to be brave and talk about MLT and my experiences more with teachers, because I want to make it so much more accessible for people that maybe don't even have opportunity to do any training, but that are just, you know, doing their thing, their normal thing, teaching the way that they're taught. And, you know, like trying to help people understand. How can we do more with our ears, with our students, and with our voices, and not just our fingers?

Krista: 4:22

And we've talked a lot before we started recording, and even during this recording session as well, about things that were meant to be, and even though that experience may have had some challenges, like you said it was meant to be, and hopefully those experiences are going to help you reach out to these new teachers, and that's awesome.

Amy: 4:42

Well, and I hope people see that we only learn when we go through pain. Basically, I saw a really good Instagram reel recently, and she was did a beautiful job of explaining, like the starting point and the ending point to being somewhere in the messy stuff in between, and how the frustration, and the pain, basically, is when you're experiencing frustration, that means you're learning, and I think that that's what I hope I'm displaying with that. I'm not trying to dis on, you know, the PDLCs, it was a great experience overall, but reflecting back on that, that was where I was learning, and that was a part of the process, even though it was so hard.

Hannah: 5:19

Amy, you're kind of making me relive my 2018 so that would have been just two years after you. And I think 2016 was the very first is that, right? Krista, the first piano, pdlc, or was there one before that? Was it the same?

Krista: 5:34

I believe there were two before that. Okay, it might have been one or two before that. And then 2016 was the first one in Boston.

Hannah: 5:41

So I also had only ever used keyboard games and looked at some materials and read a couple of books, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into by attending the 2018 pdlc, and I did not know that we had to do all this musicianship and all of the tonalities and the meters, and I did not know that we had to write chants and songs. So if you're considering going to a pdlc, just heads up, you're gonna become a composer, which is a great thing, but it's, it's nice to know it going in, and all of a sudden we're like, dropped in this musicianship time, which was amazing, by the way, and I got I grew so much from it, but I was just looking around like, what are we doing right now? And then people would just jump in, and they would raise their hand if they wanted to improvise in mixolydian or locrian, or whatever it was, and they would just start singing. And I'm just in awe, because I'm thinking like, how are they doing this? But now we can do it, and it's so cool. So yes, pain.

Amy: 6:55

Can I piggyback off of that really quickly. So the thing that has helped me understand the tonalities the most has been Heather Shouldice's podcast. I'm the one that sent her a request saying, will you please do some episodes on tonalities? I want you to engross this in Dorian. I mean to engross this in Aeolian. And her, she's got a little chart that that talks about, how do you define and listen to, like the tone. How do you define like, what tonality you're in? And it starts by, like, identifying what is the tonic chord? Is it major? Is it minor? What's the next step? Okay, now, do you hear a sub tonic, or do you hear a leading tone? And I think when we MLT uses, like, la based minor, so different resting tones, you know, and then it shifts the order, of course, like, you know, half steps and whole steps. And whole steps together. I think there was, I hope I say this, right? I think there was too much emphasis for me on the melodic aspect of it, and struggling with, like, not knowing where, like, if I'm singing in Dorian, oh, I go up a whole, a whole step when I go to the to the, the sixth scale degree, as opposed to when I'm in Aeolian, it's a it's a half step. I don't know. I feel like she just made it come a little bit more alive for me. So anyway,

Hannah: 8:07

It sounds like the micro progressions again, and like, kind of like taking this big thing and, yes, scaling it down to more manageable, bite sized pieces of information. And you know, of course, we love Heather and we love Everyday Musicality. So I'm so glad you asked her to do that. Thank you. So you do some presenting on music learning theory at conferences and to your teachers, I think, both locally and state and maybe nationally. Could you tell us about some of the presentations you've done and what teachers responses to that, and if you've noticed any challenges or common threads when you're doing these presentations and talking to people about Edwin Gordon and Music Learning Theory?

Amy: 9:00

Well, I honestly haven't presented a lot on it. As I said before, I've been somewhat of a reluctant, reluctant vocalist on talking about it, just because I just didn't feel ready to talk about something that I didn't feel like I could probably put words to. I just didn't have enough experience in it, and I wanted to talk about something I was comfortable with, you know. And actually Joy and I, so we have a session that we do jointly called Teaching the Way we Learn: Applications of Edwin E. Gordon's Music Learning Theory, where we just try to present six principles and how teachers can take those principles and apply them to their everyday lessons. So yes, we have presented that, like, locally at states, and I think we've presented it nationally at Spokane, Washington, MTNA conference. But you know, when we first started doing that, Joy brought up. She was like, well, she's like, I've got a rhythm session. She's like, we should do, like, a series of workshops or webinars together where we do this joint session on the basics. And then she has a rhythm focused one, and then I would do a tonal, focused one. And this was, you know, back kind of in the day when we were just, I think we started the session in, like, 2017 2018 like, right after our PDL and, and I was like, I don't even know what I would say. I'm just not ready, you know, to share and to teach on this what I feel like I'm just learning it myself, which is fine. I mean, it was just an idea, um, yeah, and that still sticks in my mind, but it's like, I I feel ready. Like I feel ready. I've got, you know, couple sessions, one specifically on just tonalities and what we talked about earlier, just understanding those baby steps to recognizing tonalities and how I talk to them, about my students. And I also do have a Keyboard Games one that I developed a couple years ago. I did it once for our Indiana State Conference. It's called, I think I called it a new primer. Primer, however you say it A New

Primer: 10:52

Audiation-based Lessons for Young Beginners, and it's pretty much focused on Marilyn's Keyboard Games books, because I want those books to feel accessible to all teachers. So I've only gotten that one out a couple of times because, again, I'm just starting to do more of this so but overall, as far as your question on how teachers respond when we present on it, I think overall, teachers are very interested and intrigued by the principles of MLT. And I think there's always a lot of, you know, aha moments, like just the idea of teaching the resting sound to students, it's like, Oh, interesting. I never thought about it like that way. Or just, you know, starting with tonic and dominant sounds. So in, like I said earlier, just the whole singing thing. That one that teacher at my session was like, if I could just boil down what you're saying, like, I just need to sing a lot more to my students. So I think overall it's been good. I like that MLT gives more terminology to us. But in a way, I think that is kind of hindered things for some teachers, because you have to undo the way, you know, like saying the word keyality, what I still struggle with that one. I totally understand the point of it, and it makes sense. Yeah, so just having new words for things is good, but also just takes time to stretch its legs and to impact a community and a way that we've been doing things for how many years. I do have one instance, I have to say, where I was presenting a session, and a teacher asked a question I answered. I mean, it was a very cordial thing, but they ended up kind of storming out. I think she just felt kind of like it was so different than anything she had taught. I think she just kind of maybe felt a little bit, I don't know it was interesting. Everybody else in the room said, you did not do anything. I handled it very good, but I did have that one experience of someone just not liking to hear it. So. I think it can bring up a lot of feelings when you're hearing about this and what the research says. And you know, all these different activities that you might not be doing in your lessons, but you think, Oh, maybe I should be doing those in my lessons, but I have, there's just, there's a lot of feelings with Music Learning Theory and learning about audiation. It's easy to feel defensive. I mean, when you like, Yeah, I mean, it's changing a whole new way of learning. And that is not the goal to make anybody feel like what they're doing is wrong, because we only know what we know in the moment, you know. And I might have experimented with things that maybe aren't the best way of doing things now that I know, you know. So yeah, so I do regret that went a little instance, but, I mean, I don't think I did anything particularly wrong. I wasn't being, you know, yeah, pushy about it, or anything. So, yeah. It does happen.

Krista Jadro: 13:41

It does happen. I'm actually haunted. I did a presentation once a group of teachers, and somebody asked me a question, and I'm so haunted to this day by my answer, because it kind of just like, I don't know what I was I was thinking in the moment, and I answered it, but I was like, oh, that's probably that wasn't the best it was, it wasn't the best answer. So it happens. But anyway, Amy, you do so much. You have your studio. You've done these presentations, but you also have a blog. You have. You're doing presentations on organization which I really need and will likely join one in the in the future. You have your podcast. So maybe let's start with your blog, Piano Pantry. What inspired you to start it and what is on it?

Amy: 14:26

I started the Piano Pantry blog back in 2016 and I'd been teaching my full time studio for like, five years at that point after grad school, and I was just, you know, I was always a person that loved being online and reading other blogs, and I just felt like, why there's stuff I want to share. I was kind of feeling like just this itching feeling to share what my experiences were and good things that I was, you know, doing, and thinking, well, teachers might want this resource and so forth. So I, I actually asked my friend Joy Morin about it, who was already she was blogging, and she's like, Well, of course. Start one. It's like, I needed permission, or just someone to say it's okay. You have things to say, you can start a blog. So she actually helped me come up with a title, which was kind of fun. We did a lot of brainstorming on titles, because I like to cook. So I was like, Maybe someday it'll take that direction. And so just trying to find a play on words on that. And I really didn't know what I was going to blog about at the time. You know, again, I've got the piano teaching thing and then the food thing. So I was like, what path is this going to take? And I just tried to let it go naturally. Like, what am I interested in? Like, what do I feel like sharing? And yes, I ended up doing a lot on and I still do on organization. I did a big series on Evernote back in the day, on studio management, just like running a business, I like talking a lot about that. I have dabbled in some MLT stuff. Like I shared a couple resources on my website. One's a Happy Birthday by Ear, like, just a progression for working students through the steps of learning Happy Birthday and just having a little bit of a kind of worksheet to go along with it, and a Christmas by Ear book as well. So yeah, now I do digital coaching like you mentioned. So I have both an online version and a retreat in person version of the same coaching series. But I do. I've been doing that for two or three years now. I think this will be the third this is the third year where it's focused, literally on just our workspaces. So every week is a different focus, your device, your computer itself, your files, media, the fifth one, online content, and then email. And I walk through like, just a process of clean up and mindset for like, future ways of thinking, of setting up structures. And then we work on just getting down to the bone and cleaning up those spaces. So the retreat version is super fun. It's in my home in Indiana. I love to host and cook, so it's been a beautiful marriage of the two. So people come I've had anywhere from, actually, two to six teachers at a time is about as much as I can handle, because it's very hands on. It's not like just going to, you know, a PDLC, like I'm the one person and I'm right, right next to you, like looking at your computer going, Why do you have five Google accounts? Things like that. So it's a very hands on, but it's lots of fun as well. You know, we just have a good time and and I cook for you, and so forth, so. And then Joy and I started doing a workshop on using Notion in as a teacher. I again, like I said early in the days, I was big on Evernote on my blog, and now that has morphed into Notion, and so we have a whole workshop on just getting you going and lots of templates and stuff to help you manage your studio.

Hannah: 17:36

I would love to come to one of those retreats someday, because you'll see my email inbox and you will cringe.

Amy: 17:45

I don't know. I've seen some pretty, pretty hefty ones.

Hannah: 17:49

It's in the five digit. It's in the five digit.

Amy: 17:55

Oh, I've seen more.

Hannah: 17:56

Oh, wow, amazing. That makes me feel a little better. Okay, so you have your blog, and you have your workshops, and you have your podcast, Piano Pantry podcast. It is, I guess, an offshoot of your blog. And so what inspired you to start the podcast?

Amy: 18:16

Yes, I wanted to do a podcast for so long because I was a podcast junkie, and I still kind of am. Probably back in 2019 is when I first started getting the inkling to do it. But just life wasn't it just wasn't the right time of life. Of course, then three other people start a podcast before me. If I had done it when I wanted to do it, would have been like only the second piano teacher podcast after Tim Topham. But it didn't happen. So I just didn't win life aloud, I went from a weekly podcast this year, I've moved it to every other week. It's just a better life balance. Weekly was what I wanted, and I'm glad I had that foundation, but yeah, every other week is so much better. And it was the same with my blog. I didn't have one one particular theme. That's just a marriage of everything that I am. So it's a little bit of life. It's it's organization, it's studio, business management, it's, again, I'm trying to do more, more music teaching things with teachers. I've got an episode on teaching Happy birthday by ear. I've got, I think, a jingle bells by year one, I did a little audiate Lavender's Blue episode, just wanting to introduce that side of me to students more so.

Krista: 19:30

And what advice do you have for piano teachers looking to streamline their studio and improve their workflow?

Amy: 19:40

I think there's not one answer for this. Organization is such a personal thing, and that's what I try to teach. Yes, I give teachers ideas and structures and stuff, but how we work? You know, we have our personalities behind it. We've got our life situations behind our workflow. Just what I would say is, if there's something that you need to streamline more improve, is just pay attention to like, how you're feeling about things in your space, whatever it may be, whether it be maybe your schedule, how you lesson plan, how you onboard students, like what right right now feels clunky to you, and just not quite right. And then see if you could just change one thing about it. It doesn't have to be a total overhaul. Can you just maybe tweak your schedule? Maybe you need Friday afternoons off, or, you know, maybe you are tired of lesson planning, and you need to experiment with instead of doing it every day, that you sit down on Monday mornings for two hours and do it little things like that, just paying attention to how you feel and what doesn't feel right and what doesn't feel good, and then seeing you can just change one little thing about it.

Hannah: 20:45

I like that that goes along with this concept of, like, micro progression. We keep coming back to that theme, yes. And since we're on the topic of advice, as a person who has had not an easy road, because it's never easy in this music learning theory journey. But what advice might you offer piano teachers or music teachers who are curious about music learning theory or music moves for piano, but are a little hesitant or overwhelmed or nervous?

Amy: 21:20

I think it doesn't like, just, just start doing something. Don't feel scared to do it, and don't feel like, just because you start learning about it, that you have to do it and even start using it in your lessons. Just start reading about it. Like, look follow groups online. Of course, we always tell everyone read Eric Bluestine's book on the Ways Children Learn Music. Read through Marilyn's lesson plans. Yeah, it's a lot, but I think just engrossing yourself in the ideas of other people, without feeling pressure to actually change your lessons right away, is a first step. And then maybe just experiment with one little thing, one little idea that you see that's interesting or unique. Yeah, take those baby steps. I should say, I have to share this. I know we're coming to the close here, so it's probably a good time to do it. I just finished reading Adam Grant's book called hidden potential. I don't know if you guys have read that yet, but I totally recommend it. I love all of his books, originals. I can't there's another one. I can't think of what it's called anyways. So as this quote, I just I, I saved it like I have to talk about this on the podcast. He says, becoming a creature of discomfort can unlock hidden potential and many different types of learning. Summoning the nerve to face discomfort is a character skill, an especially important form of determination. It takes three kinds of courage, to abandon your tried and true methods, to put yourself in the ring before you feel ready, and to make more mistakes than others make attempts. The best way to accelerate growth is to embrace, seek and amplify discomfort. So I just feel like that totally recaps everything that we just talked about. Yeah, so that is again on in Adam Grant's book, hidden potential.

Hannah: 23:17

I just put it on my book list. Thank you for that also. Thank you for that quote, because I I'm at a point in my life right now where I really needed to hear that quote. Yeah, it's pretty good. So looking ahead, do you have any upcoming projects or new ideas or workshops that you're really excited about that you'd like to share?

Amy: 23:39

Yeah, so I think I may have mentioned this earlier. I have some ideas brewing. I don't have anything necessarily published yet, like ready to go for teachers, but in the works of my mind is a session on tonalities and just understanding them and making the process of understanding the differences easier. I'm also working on my own technical progressions book, which I've been working on forever. I think I've told people this for, like, I don't know, several times in different podcasts and stuff, for like, two years. I feel like I gotta stop saying this, or people are gonna know I'm never getting this done. But someday, someday, I don't know what, what form it's gonna look like, and how I share it with teachers, but I'm still experimenting with it myself, honestly, you know. So it's not ready to share when I feel like I'm still kind of in the place seeing what works. So it's more it's a whole like leveling system on on progressions through technical patterns and playing off of Marilyn's ideas, as I said before, but making them my own with technique stuff, I just feel like my students do really, really well when I focus on one pattern, and then we play it in multiple keys. So like the shape of, and I got this from Marilyn, the idea of going from the one to the four chord, 141, but then I play that, we play that in, you know, 678, different keys, so they get used to that shape of, okay, your pinky moves up a whole step, and then a half step. In the middle. But when we're in minor, then we do all the minor so we do a bunch of majors, then we do all the minors all together, and they notice more that pattern. Okay? Then when we go to a minor, from the minor one to the minor four, you go up a whole step in the middle, and then a half step on the top. So again, this is that whole micro progression of instead of just, I know, like some of the piano method books, go straight into one, four or five chords and like, 10 different keys in book two. And I'm like, students are not ready for this. This is too much. So I love the idea of, like, first my students learn tonic and dominant, and we practice that in multiple keys. They learn the shape of of playing a chord progression, the melodic cadence in multiple keys, and then we practice the one in the four chord, the movement from that to multiple keys, and then we put it all together, 145, you know? And I even do baby steps in that, like the dominant chord, with just the shell first. And then we do the dominant chord, the three note one, and then in the three note five, seven. So I'm really excited about that, and trying to work on some visuals for students, again, inspired by Marilyn and the visuals that she did with all of her keyboard skills and her keyboard skills books. So I'm so thankful to her for just paving the way to some of these new ideas. But yeah, that's what I have in the works, and we'll see if they ever happen.

Krista Jadro: 26:18

And we look forward to it. Amy, so how can people find you? I know you're on Instagram. Do you want to share your blog and also your podcast?

Amy: 26:27

Yeah, of course. So piano pantry.com you can find the link to the podcast is there as well. Piano pantry.com forward slash podcast, basically, is where all the episodes live. And then on social media, I've got my piano pantry page. You just look at piano pantry on Instagram. Unfortunately, it's@pianopantryamy, because someone else had piano pantry, but it's an account that's like, nobody's even using it, and I don't know how to go about like, so yeah,@pianopantryamy, on Instagram.

Hannah: 27:00

Amy, it has been really great to get to know you better today, and to hear about your background and all of these really exciting projects that you have your hand in. And Amy is a member of our introduction to audiation-based piano Facebook group, and we hope that if you're not a member of that group, that you'll come join us, and thanks so much. We'll see you soon.