Tag: Music Lessons

MTAC Convention Recap

Pedagogy

One week ago I had the honor of speaking at the MTAC Convention in Anaheim, CA. MTAC is an association of private music teachers throughout California. This convention featured guests speakers from around the world as well as some inspiring student and professional performances.

This was my first time speaking at a state-level event in California and it was an inspiring experience.

On Sunday I led a panel for students, teachers and parents on “Careers in Music”. The panel featured Loren Battley (Michael Bublé & Pomplamoose), Natalie Hernandez (Quincy Jones Production and Interscope Records), Jim Domine (San Fernando Valley Symphony Orchestra), E.L. Lancaster (Alfred Music and Cal State Northridge) and Joanna Ezrin (Producer, Session Musician and Teacher).

Monday I presented an hour presentation on building excitement in your teaching studio. I was so blown away with the turnout, the people interacting from the hallway and by so many folks staying an extra 30 minutes for an extended Q&A. Thank you to those who were in attendance.

In other news, I’ll be starting the blog up again with some fresh posts soon (as soon as jury duty is over).

Also, I’ve been teaching/consulting folks online over the past year. I really like this format for teaching. Everyone is really improving a lot. I have one opening for the summer. If you are interested in working together, let me know and we can discuss options.

Thanks!

Michael

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Sounding Bad as a Daily Practice

Pedagogy, Practicing

Practicing and performing should not be that different from each other when it comes to our musical approach. I believe that standards for energy, emotion, execution and creativity shouldn’t change that much between our practice room repetitions and the stage. If someone were to eavesdrop on a practice sessions, they should feel like they’re hearing us perform. However, they shouldn’t hear us sounding perfect or even good.

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Always Be the Substitute Playing the Role of the New Teacher

Pedagogy

The first time I hosted a masterclass for my students where they worked with a guest artist, I remember feeling a little confused and disappointed. There were several times during the event when the guest would point out the most obvious things a student needed to do to improve their performance. Because these areas discussed were so obvious, it wasn’t the first time the students had heard about them. However, the students reacted to this instruction in the masterclass way differently than when I had I brought them up in the lessons. It was if they had never realized that these things needed work and they were suddenly eager to improve.

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Take a Picture Part 2 in the "Playing from Memory" Series

Lessons, Pedagogy, Practicing

While a student at University of Miami, I wrote an original jazz tune for one of our ensembles that I was very excited about. I felt the tune captured the vibe of the famous Miles Davis quintet from the ‘60’s… That was the theme of the ensemble. The tune had unpredictable harmonic rhythm, harmony based on modes of melodic minor and a lot of suspended chords, and romantic-influenced melodies. It wasn’t extremely complicated but it wasn’t simple either.

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Who is in Your Top Five? Helping your students by knowing their top five

Lessons, Pedagogy

Our students are typically really into music. As teachers we often assess a student’s musical engagement by how much and how well they practice in relation to what we ask them to do. However, an untapped goldmine for teachers lies in the music students engage with outside of the lesson.

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If I Only Had a Brain Alternatives to Memorizing Music

Pedagogy, Practicing

For many students of music, performing without the printed music in front of them can be a stressful venture. Over the years I’ve eliminated the word “memorized” from my teaching vocabulary – at it has helped my students tremendously. However, for the sake of honoring the tradition I’ve included the word “memorize” from time to time in the post – this is the first of a series of posts on playing without the printed page.

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The Unassigned Assignments

Lessons, Pedagogy, Practicing

There’s an assignment that we often miss as teachers. And it’s one that always makes our jobs way easier – maybe easier than anything we could have students do. Over time it simply transforms our students’ musical experiences and their abilities.

Students should be asked to listen to music each time we see them. It can be done in casual conversations about what they’ve been listening to (or what we’ve been listening to), to more precise assignments based on what you’re working on in lessons.

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Strive to be the Worst Look for growth situations even if they're intimidating

Lessons, Pedagogy, Practicing

Students have often come to me asking if they are “ready” for a musical situation. Whether it be an audition, adjudication, festival, accompanying gig, college program, a certain ensemble, a tour, etc. – my answer is always the same… Participate in as many musical situations as possible where you are the worst one. Be musically overwhelmed as much and as often as possible. We grow the most from these experiences. And if we are taking lessons, earning a degree or just trying to be the best version of ourselves that we can be; growth is the most important thing we can aspire towards.

Miles Quintet

View video of performance below

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