This year I have had a handful of gorgeous beginners taking lessons with me. I’m trialling new material for beginners and I need a cohort of children of different ages, genders, interests and learning styles so I can really test a range of approaches I believe will be more effective than the approaches I’ve used in the past. I haven’t auditioned these new students prior to accepting them into my studio – inviting a diverse group of children to explore the piano and learn musicianship and performance skills with me gives me my best chance of testing my material (as well as keeping me on my toes!). Of all the diversities amongst these beginners the greatest is probably this: some children come from families of professional musicians while some come from families where no one has ever learned an instrument. What does this mean? On the surface it means that I can write “start on F sharp” in a notebook
Being Musical… Being a Music Teacher…
March was a month of conferences for me, the most recent of which was a conference where I had been
Pedagogy Saturday and Permission: A Sober MTNA Conference Post
When one chooses (somewhat chaotically) from 5 possible tracks at a conference, criss-crossing from one theme to another specialty, as
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MTNA 2013: About to Begin
It’s Music Teacher Conference time here in Los Angeles. I’m all checked in to the Disney Hotel here in Anaheim and have just finalised my choices for tomorrow’s marathon Pedagogy Saturday sessions. There are five tracks this year: Advanced Piano/Teaching Artistry, Collegiate/Young Professional, Jazz/Popular, Recreational Music Making, and Teaching Those With Special Needs, and those attending Pedagogy Saturday can mix and match to their heart’s content. Which is just as well, because I’ll be attending moments from each of the tracks (with the possible exception of the Collegiate/Young Professional track, for the obvious reason that I’m not a college student; neither, it pains and entertains me to say, am I a young professional). From surviving and thriving with small hands through to assessing whether/how performers can serve both audiences and composers; from teaching children with autism through to teaching children with dyslexia; from exploring creativity as a teachable skill through to meeting the needs of a YouTube generation; from incorporating popular music into
Music That Resists An Audience
Since my previous post, reflecting on a simple reason why audiences are so small for new music concerts, I’ve had a wave of comment come my way, either directly on the blog (you can read for yourself) or via twitter or rebloggings or facebook sharings, even emails sent directly to me. It was fascinating to see the kaleidoscope of angles taken when referring to the piece. To some it was a piece about the fragmentation of audiences in the 21st century; to others it was about what a venue/artist partnership looks like; to others it was a checklist of great ideas for audience building. And the post has been shared by visual artists, choreographers, jazz musicians and pop producers. Amongst the positive responses are lines like “I’d kiss you. But then people would talk.” (thanks Rebekah!) and “Well written punchy piece by @ElissaMilne delivers knockout blow to new music narcissism then picks it up off the mat.” (thanks Séan). And “What she said”,
A Simple Reason Why Audiences Are So Small For New Music Concerts
Discussions about the small audiences new music attracts have been a constant of my life as a musician since I
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The Hal Leonard Australia 40 Piece Challenge 2013: suggestions for getting started
In 2013 Hal Leonard Australia is running a 40 Piece Challenge. And I’m very excited by this news. The challenge is to teachers primarily – can your students each learn at least 40 new pieces in 2013?! This challenge is not a random, out-of-the-blue event. There’s a massive back-story to the development of this 40-Piece Challenge, which you can read about here. But the point of the whole exercise is to encourage students to learn, perform and experience far more music than our exam-focussed culture usually allows. And to do so in order for students to develop much better reading skills and much broader musicianship, which will lead our students to be more likely to play the piano for the rest of their lives (no matter what grade exam they make it to before they stop taking piano lessons). This post isn’t about convincing you that this challenge is a good idea – there are plenty of posts I’ve written
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Vendetta
Vendetta is a tango. I don’t know that I thought about the tango angle in any conscious way, but tango was exactly the right emotional energy I needed the night Vendetta was composed. This was back in the mid-90s when I was juggling piano teaching, various universities studies, writing and producing music theatre, working as an accompanist for a glamorous gospel singer, doing some quite random recording gigs and goodness knows what else – I can’t really remember. But I do remember – most distinctly – writing Vendetta. My boyfriend at the time had recently decided he needed a break. A relationship-break kind of break. Kind of. I’m not sure what he wanted exactly, other than the chance to date other young women while still maintaining some kind of relationship with me. Think some kind of Sex and the City storyline from which we are all supposed to draw a moral about What Not To Do In Relationships. Well,
Has Parenthood Changed My Teaching?
Back in second half of 2006, and then again in the early weeks of 2007, when I was in my
A small rant about diagrammatic illiteracy in the Arts Curriculum draft document
This has been my longest ever break in blogging since I began nearly three years ago. Family matters have been very pressing, and I ended up shutting down all my projects until things were on a more even keel. During this time, however, I’ve either tried or wanted to blog about any number of things: the Steve Reich retrospective held at the Sydney Opera House at the end of April, the value of learning the melodic minor scale, background information on my piece Vendetta which is currently on the Trinity Guildhall Grade 5 piano syllabus, a post on how I’ve let a student down by not teaching her to read chord charts before now, a review of the Nico Muhly/Sufjan Stevens/Bryce Dressner collaboration “Planetarium” as performed here in Sydney at the end of May, a Top 5 Things Parents Need to Know Once Their Child Starts Taking Piano Lessons list, as well as a discussion of the value and challenge
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Elissa Milne 