Active Listening

What do we mean by Active Listening?  

Becoming completely involved with the music that is playing and asking questions as you listen…  Major or Minor?  4 beats or 3 per bar? What instruments?  Are they in tune?  Are they balanced nicely… i.e. do you hear the melody clearly and the accompanying instruments in the background?  What is the style of music? (Latin, Classical, Blues, Stride, etc.)

Why should we actively listen? To fully experience the emotions the music is expressing!  Hear Haydn’s jokes 250 years after he wrote them ... they’re still funny.  Experience the profound sadness Brahms felt when his mother died in his famous Horn Trio.  Groove along with Elvis or Nat King Cole on the piano while they sing and play the blues.  Actually hear the chord changes.  We should actively listen to experience music on a deep, satisfying level. 

Active listening tips…

- While listening, ask, “are there 4 or 3 beats in a bar?” (these are good basics beats to start with) and then count along.

- Clap on beat 1 (or stomp your foot or nod your head… but feel that beat).  

- Clap on beat 1 & 3 or clap on beats 2 & 4.  They are both important to be able to feel.

- Try some clapping grooves while you listen.  

o   If there are 4 beats per bar … Clap

                     

o   If there are 3 beats per bar… Clap   

What is the opposite of active listening?  Passive listening.  A few examples of everyday activities you probably engage in while passively listening to music include:

                                                     Eating                           Exercising  

                                                    Socializing                  Cleaning your home

                                                    Commuting                  Riding an elevator

Passive listening is how many people listen to music most of the time and, while it can be nice, it doesn’t have the same effect on us that active listening does.  Active listening will make you a better musician and it soothes the soul.

Listening Examples

YouTube is a fabulous listening resource.  Pour a glass of your favourite beverage, sit in your favourite chair and actively listen to some of the music below (click on the title to go to YouTube).  Clap or play along for more involvement! 

The list is short (only 5 pieces) and it’s eclectic!  It will give you a taste of active listening and may change how you approach the next live concert you attend.

1. Nat King Cole – Easy Listening Blues – This piano blues is in B flat – What are the I IV V chords in the B flat scale?  If you can find them play them along with Nat. 

2. Elvis Presley – You Ain’t Nothing But a Hound Dog - Blues in C.  Find the I IV and V chords in the key of C and play along.  Play them as sevenths for an even better sound.  (C7, F7 and G7)

3. Haydn – String Quartet No 2 Op. 33 – nicknamed The Joke.  Get caught up in the melody and see if you can hear the surprising twists, disconcerting silences and a concluding “false start”.  You may be confused as to where to applause!

4. Brahms – Horn Trio Op 40  - an amazing piece but the third movement is impassioned and heartfelt.  The trio was a tribute to his mother and in the third movement you can hear his devastation upon her death and if you listen closely… sobbing. Listen to the fourth movement to lift your spirits. 

5. Simon and Garfunkel – Scarborough Fair – cool guitar riffs and harpsichord “counterpoint” (a new word for some… google it).  Are the beats in groups of 3 or 4?

I hope you enjoy your active listening experience.  Please send me some of your favourite music to actively listen to and what you heard when you listened.  I’ll include some of them in the next blog. 

Piano Practice Tip

Repetition is the key to learning a tough spot in your piece of music...except repetition can be boring! 

It's NOT BORING when you make it interesting.  It turns from boring to ENGAGING. How do you make it interesting?

First.... rarely play the whole song when you are practicing.  It's too much NEWNESS for your brain to take in.  Dive in and find the tough spots. Now start your repetition woodshedding.   Select 2-4 bars (no more!) and vary it.  Play it LOUD, play it soft, play it fast, play it   s  l  o  w,  play it sta-cca-to, play it legato.  Invent your own ways that keep you focused.  Now find the next tough spot and do the same.  Finally, repeat these short passages daily as part of your warm-up.  One day won't do it but 3-7 days surely will.

Wouldn't it be great if learning the piece was as much fun as playing it?  With varied repetition it will be!

Finding New Adult Students

Finding new students can be the toughest part of teaching piano.  Why?  It often involves ‘selling ourselves’.  There I said it.  Visions of door-to-door salesmen in hilarious plaid pants come to mind.  These salesmen were bold enough to knock on your door and convince you that your old vacuum was a thing of the past and you must have the latest one.  “Get out there and sell yourself!”  their bosses bellowed.  Fortunately there is a better way.

I owned retail stores for 3 decades in addition to my musical career.  Advertising the stores was a part of the job description.  I attended courses by McDonald’s (yes, the hamburger chain), read oodles of books on selling and worked with great advertising agencies.  I’ll share with you the most important thing I learned about advertising over those 30 plus years…

Sell what your product does for your customer.  Sell the benefits.  Never sell yourself.

What does this mean?  An example is often better than words… 

If you were an adult looking to get back into piano, which ad would you respond to?   

This...

      

Or this?

The first ad shows a solution to what many adults are pondering.  If I start back at the piano will it be fun this time?  Will I be able to play some Christmas carols for my family?...etc.  Of course no one would ever put up the second ad but I have seen subtle versions of it over the years. 

Don’t sell yourself, sell the benefits to your students... the courses you teach and the results your students will get from signing up with you!

Here are some business card size adds to print and post around town at fitness centers, seniors centers, coffee shops, … anywhere that shows off local business cards.  Print them out on regular paper or card stock, add your phone number, and cut them to size.  Click here to download a free printable. Put up a version of your add on Craigslist or Kijiji and always have some cards in your wallet to hand out.  

I’ll leave you with an inventive add posting in craigslist…

                    Established string quartet requires 2 violinists and a cellist.

Warming up at the Piano

Teachers often ask why I recommend starting each lesson with Tea Kettle Warm-up (from Unit 2 in the Play PianoChords Today course).  First of all, it’s fun to play with a band!  Put on the CD and groove along.  Second,  starting with something familiar is a great way to warm-up the fingers and the piano brain.  Third, this exercise changes as students grow.  After your adult piano students have basic fingering and rhythms locked in, you’ll add piano chords in the LH, and eventually improvisations in the RH (follow this link for video ideas).  When that is mastered, play the TK Warm-up in the key of G, then F, then… well you get the idea. 

In tiny steps, you will introduce your adult students to all the major scales plus the I, IV and V piano chords of each of those keys (voiced beautifully)... just by starting each lesson with this simple warm-up!

Ever wondered why it’s called the Tea Kettle Warm-up?  I start each day putting my tea kettle on the stove.  While it’s getting ready to boil I head to the piano and play warm-ups.  They vary with the years but it’s great to start the day with a piano meditation to clear out the cobwebs.  When the kettle whistles, my warm-up is done and the day has begun.

One final tip... leave your warm-up of choice open on the piano each evening.  It will call to you in the morning.  Come and play with me!

Enjoying Crunchy Piano Chords

Crunch chords can be our worst enemies or our best friends.  When we play piano chords, we often come across a crunch chord. Crunch chords are tension chords in music.  Piano chords like dim7ths, flat 9ths, sharp 11ths, and so on are crunch chords.  Their purpose is to create tension and excitement in music.  I liken them to the big bad wolf in Red Riding Hood.  If I re-wrote Red’s story and took out the wolf it would go something like this.

Little Red Riding Hood woke up one sunny day.  She filled her basket with fruit & cookies and headed off to Grandmother’s house.  When she arrived, Grandma gave her a big hug and they went inside and had cookies and tea.  The End.

Do you think many copies of this story would sell?  There is no excitement, no tension.  No big bad wolf. 

Crunch chords create big bad wolf tension.  Here’s the problem... playing crunch chords can sound really bad when we’re learning a piece of music and playing it slowly.  We play the melody & piano chords in our piece, checking every note is correct and sounds nice.  We anticipate the day we can soar through this beautiful music and then BANG... we hit a crunch chord.   It sounds awful!  Something must be wrong!  ...  If you’ve checked all the notes in your chord are correct and it still sounds bad, it’s a crunch chord.  It will sound fine when you speed it up... but sometimes, because we dislike the sound so much, we learn wrong notes instead of the crunch chord. Sometimes we blank out and don’t learn the notes at all.  Most memory problems happen around crunchy piano chords.

 

Here’s a solution:  find the piano chords you don’t like the sound of and draw an angry face on top... or, if you are a better artist than me, draw a big bad wolf.  It will remind you that, although this chord sounds bad now, when you have learned this piece and are playing up-to-speed, your crunch chord will sound great.  In fact, it will be one of the focal points of your piano music.  You will likely enhance it with some extra volume, or ... a dramatic pause!  Most importantly, you will enjoy the music at a deeper level and that crunchy chord will be played correctly and confidently!

Musical Words

Do you remember learning to read words?  Seeing letters of the alphabet in a group… C    A     T.  Sounding them out, over and over until they magically linked up with a word you knew… Cat.

Chords are the words in music... notes in a group that make a sound we are familiar with.  Knowing how to form a chord is as important to playing piano as knowing how to form a word is to writing a list.

There are 12 major chords, 12 minor chords, 12 seventh chords, 12 min^7th chords, etc. AND they all can be played in various ways with 2 – 10 fingers.  The combinations are endless!  That's both fantastic and overwhelming.  Fantastic because it means each of us can find our own voice in music.  That unique combination of chords and patterns that reflect our musical style.  Overwhelming because… where do I start?

 

You start with Major Chords and the Major Chord Groove.  The 12 major chords fall into four groups of patterns:

1. All white   2. Black note center   3. Outside black notes   4. Oddball shapes.   

Practice your major chords in these 4 groups and they become 4 chord-shapes instead of 12 different chords. Groove on them (see below) and they will become part of your musical vocabulary. 

Download your own Major Chord Shapes here.  Click on Major Piano Chords to view a video and if you want to groove with me, go to Groovin on the Major Piano Chords and play along!