How do you teach musicality?
We have all heard it from our beginning (and sometimes more advanced) students that awful, wooden, unmusical playing. What can we do to fix it? If we tell them ... Continue Reading...
Music Education
RHYTHM: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE STRESSFUL
A long time ago, a smart voice teacher once said, “the most important thing in music is rhythm.” That statement still rings true; the elements of music, like a ... Continue Reading...
Tools for Group Piano Online
The advent of COVID-19 has forced teachers to move group piano instruction online. While the online medium is not ideal to teach performance skills, there is a ... Continue Reading...
Music and Nature: Trees
When we’re young and in dance class, we’re told to imitate trees – swaying in the wind, bowing down in a torrent of rain or just standing tall in the cold winte... Continue Reading...
Teaching Via Video: How to Still be “You!”
Our New World Our current pandemic has us all teaching in new ways. I have long thought of online learning as an opportunity, a way to indulge in creativity. I... Continue Reading...
Striving for Excellence in Online Piano Pedagogy: Characteristics of Expert Teachers Using the Video-Conferencing Format
During a recent tour at the Bell Homestead in my hometown of Brantford, Ontario, Canada, I came across an interesting fact. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell set u... Continue Reading...
Remembering what ‘good’ sounds like
On London’s South Bank there is (or at least there was – it’s odd to think that I haven’t been in London since early March) a large banner of the cellist Sheku ... Continue Reading...
What does a Young Musician of the Year finalist have in common with a five-year-old banging a drum?
In the UK, the biennial BBC Young Musician of the Year returned this year with a difference. The Category Finals, broadcast in May, were recorded before social ... Continue Reading...
