The Musical Muse
Blog dedicated to music education, practice tips, health & wellness, and geeking out.
Last month, I was mulling over different areas that I want to focus on in lessons for the remainder of the school year. I concluded: practice consistency, practice efficienty, technical skills, ear, rhythm and sight reading, and finally - theory and keyboard harmony. Find out how I’m challenging my students to tackle these aspects of music learning.
During my brainstorming, the following themes came through: technique, ear/rhythm/sight-reading, and practice frequency. To be honest, those are the key themes every year, but these are areas I really want my students to shine in this year. So, I had to tweak the student challenges and incentives a bit.
This year, I modified my incentive program slightly to incorporate "musician survival skills". These are the areas that we as teachers and performing musicians know are necessary: aural skills, sight-reading, chording, transposition, improvising, technical skills, and practice frequency. They are also the areas that most students either gloss over or ignore.
