Delightful Duets, People, and Closing Social!

What a great year this has been!!  Here's a list of the great presentations:

September -Incorporating Technology in Your Studio - Rebecca Udy
October - Flashcards...and Beyond - Lezlee Bishop
November - No Chapter presentation due to UMTA Conference
December - Improvising with Creativity - Ken Foster (and cinnamon rolls!)
January- Motivation and Stress - Caroline Jennings
February - Breaking the Curse of the Poor Sightreader - Chris Blonquist
March - Smart Practicing Tips - Juliet Preston
April - C Major scale hack plus The Ultimate Guitar Chord App - Patrice Hunt
May - Closing Social Luncheon and Delightful Duets

The first order of business, before we even started eating, was to elect a new president for next two years.  Patrice has served four years and is on the state board as well so she knew her time was up!  The official decree was "anyone NOT bringing something to eat was up for election."  Karen brought the delicious french bread, but she was also elected as the new St. George Chapter President.  She'll do a great job!!

We had so much fun eating lasagna, broccoli salad, veggies, homemade french bread, crackers and dip, all while visiting and playing duets and trios together.  (There were also some yummy desserts!!)

Scales and Chord Hacks!!

Patrice presented on a couple of different ways to make teaching students scales and chords easier.  First hack was a new way to teach students to play C major scale with hands together! 

How many doors do cars have?  Two or four.  Exactly, so "doors" are our 2 and 4 fingers!! 
If you go to a "club" you have to walk in and out of the doors, right?
We have a "club" of 3's.  It's found in the middle of a C major scale (and G, D, A & E!)  And it looks like this:  3's / 1-2 / 2-1 / 3's   (practice playing the "club" a few times...)

Now, here's the saying you repeat aloud, s l o w l y, when playing these scales, hands together, until they're EASY for two octaves: 

"Start / Doors /  3's / 1-2 / 2-1 / 3's / Doors / Start Over  / Doors /  3's / 1-2 / 2-1 / 3's / Doors / End" and then go back the way you came up, repeating the saying!

It works for all five scales (C, G, D, A, E)

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The other hack involved using the phone app Ultimate Guitar Chords.  It's a free app and very easy to use.

Everyone had downloaded the app on their phone, and since we were in the piano lab, everyone had their own piano and headphones to experiment with. 

Patrice uses Hallelujah to introduce her students to this app.  It's easy and a familiar tune for students.

The chords it uses are   C    Am   F    G  and   E7

After making sure everyone can play these chords with close voicing,  everyone played the chords while Patrice played the simple melody with the right hand, which is what she does with her students.  Then they could experiment with playing the RH melody along with the LH chords. 

This is an easy way to teach students chords, and the importance of learning LOTS of them, so they can play whatever they want!!

There are thousands of songs available on Ultimate Guitar Chord app, so options are limitless. 

Smart Practicing Tips

Juliet Preston came down from Orem to present to our chapter on Tuesday.  She had so many great ideas to share.  Thank goodness it was recorded...I need to review!  I hope it's beneficial for you, too!!

BREAKING THE CURSE OF THE POOR SIGHTREADER!

Chris Blonquist came down for a quick trip out of the frozen tundra of Utah County to present to our Chapter today.  He presented some great material and ideas on how to help our students (and ourselves?!) be better sightreaders!!

A few notes from today's presentation:

"At every lesson I will ask you to do something that is new (that you don't know).  Don't let this surprise you!!  This is how we learn!  And LOOK at how far you have come!" 

Notes should NEVER be taught by using mnemonics...the "translation" rate is too slow when you start playing music.

There are 88 keys on the piano keyboard but only 9 landmarks!!  Easier to remember those nine!

(Bass clef = F clef) C2  F2  C3  F3  C4 (RH shares this)(Treble Clef = G clef) G4  C5 G5  C6

The intervals between each landmark and its surrounding notes is: up a 2nd, down a 2nd, up a 3rd or down a 3rd.  Choose the closest landmark, say the interval and direction, then the name of the note you're trying to identify.  Initially, this takes a little practice, but it makes note learning/identification when playing (sightreading) MUCH easier and accurate!

Foster good habits of eye movement:  LOOK AHEAD; DON'T look at your hands

Another important habit:  DON'T STOP...keep playing!!!


The books referred to:  The Talent Code, The Outliers, Talent is Overrated

"It takes an average of 500 hours to master a language.  If you practice sightreading 10 minutes, 6 days/week = 60 minutes or 1 hr.  50 weeks in a year (minus 2 for vacation!) = 50 hours.  Do this for 10 years  = 500 hours, and you might have mastery of the language of music." 

We videoed today's presentation.  It is private, so please contact me if you would like the link.  *_*

MOTIVATION and 2019!

I can't think of a better chapter meeting to have at the beginning of the new year than today's!! Caroline Jennings presented some fabulous information about what drive's children (people) and what drives them away!  She also gave some excellent resources.  The most important to read is:

The Self-Driven Child by Stixrud and Johnson, 2018

The authors would seemingly not work together since Stixrud deals with clients suffering from ADHD, ADD, Anxiety and Depression, while Johnson deals with clients who are in the high powered ACT Prep category wanting to obtain admission into Ivy League schools, but also suffering from Anxiety and Depression.  What???  There are correlations?  You bet!!

Here are just a few of my notes, but the whole powerpoint can be viewed below.  I highly recommend it!

Caroline's Powerpoint

Autonomy = Motivation    When a child feels empowered, able to direct his life, is responsible for his life, enjoys/suffers the consequences of his decisions, he is motivated.  When we take away autonomy (aka agency?) stress occurs.  Stress leads to fear, and fear almost always leads to bad decisions!


What causes stress?  NUTS!!  (keep reading! *_* )

N  Novelty - stuff that's new and not familiar

U  Unpredictability - things that there was no way of knowing would occur

T Threat to Ego - when a person's safety of confidence is questioned

S  Sense of Control - losing the ability to make choices


Three types of stress were addressed:

Positive Stress - motivates growth
Tolerable Stress - builds resilience; brief periods of high stress WITH loving support
Toxic Stress - frequent/prolonged stress  without loving support

There was SO much more.  I hope these notes are helpful!  I know I'm MUCH more motivated to pay attention to my teaching, and all relationships, to make sure I'm helping my students identify what THEY want to learn.  Sometimes this takes practice and work because students aren't always used to being asked...they're used to being told.  (After coming home from this chapter meeting, and applying the information to my 5 afternoon students, I was thrilled when some of my teenage students left saying, "I LOVE THIS!!"  I do, too!!!)

2019 AIM Program coming soon!!!

All teachers that have students participating in the 2019 AIM program may find the following files useful.  (Rowena Bunce from the Bridgerland Chapter made up Levels 1-8, and gave me permission to share these.  I think they are a great resource!)  Take a look and feel free to print them out and use them:

AIM Reference Sheets

There are many more resources available on the UMTA Website.  If you are new to AIM, go to the state website and start looking around.  There is a wealth of information there!!

An excellent Christmas Concert was performed Thursday evening by Dr. Nancy Allred, Dr. Ka-Wai Yu, and Emily Workman.  It was a wonderful evening of Christmas music performed to perfection!!

          

Circle of 4ths and Cinnamon Rolls!

Today we had a delightful presentation by Ken Foster from the Sandy Chapter on Creativity, Improvising, Knowledge, Evaluation, Composing and more.  We were able to stay a little longer than usual since there was no college class coming in right after us...we love Christmas break!!

Ken had SO much information to share with us, and a lot of it I need to review and think how I want to use it in MY studio...so the greatest part of the presentation, for me, was HIS LINK!!  He told us we could find everything he was talking about on his website, and he was right!!!  Here's the link:

KEN FOSTER'S WEBSITE LINK

I just went and looked at it, and there is so much helpful information there.  I hope you'll go take a look.  Our chapter meetings sure help us be better teachers by giving us more tools to use!!  AND we had a great turnout, with 12 teachers there in addition to Ken.  It was so fun to meet some new individuals, and to get to see so many of our colleagues!

Last, but not least, we had some really good cinnamon rolls, too.  Here's the recipe!

Dough 3-1/2 oz pkg vanilla pudding + milk amount shown on box 1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted 1/2 c warm water 2 TBS instant yeast 2 TBS sugar 2 eggs 1 tsp salt  6 cups flour (Makes about 3 dozen good-sized rolls)

Icing  4 oz cream cheese ¼ c. butter/margarine 1 tsp almond extract 1 TBS milk 3+ cups powdered sugar Mix until smooth.  Add a tad more milk if the icing is too thick.  Or add more pwd. sugar if not thick enough.

Add the dough ingredients in large mixing bowl (I usually double the recipe!), except for flour.  Add 5 cups of flour...let it mix really well, then gradually add the last cup of flour...just until the dough barely cleans the sides of the bowl (it make take a little more flour...just don't make it too dry!)  Mix for 10 minutes, then pour into a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let raise 'til double.  Punch down a bit, and let raise again.  

When ready, roll dough out on counter, about 6" wide and 30" long... (pour melted butter [1/2 cup?]) on dough, then spread cinnamon mixture (2 cups br. sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon) on top of butter.  Roll up tightly, to form long "snake" and cut with dental floss.  Place on greased cookie sheet to raise until about double, then bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.  Should be golden brown.