New Kindermusik Semester

Starting the week of January 25th a new semester of Kindermusik will begin! I will be teaching a Our Time (toddlers) on Tuesdays at 9:30 and Village (babies) at 10:30.  I’m also teaching Our Time again on Wednesdays at 5:30 pm.   Go to www.harrismusicstudio.com or call 402-423-7121 to sign up!

Olli Fall Recital

Such a proud mama:

http://olliviolin.blogspot.com/2009/10/fall-recital-09.html

Follow the link to a video of our encore.

Student of the Week: Carissa Bohaty

Carissa is an amazing student who has come such a long way in the short time that I have been her teacher.  She has shown an intense interest in the violin since the beginning and even when it is difficult she has persevered and worked even harder.  She comes to lessons week after week with a practice record completely full.  She has a focus that completely envelops her and when she sets out to accomplish something it doesn’t take her long to achieve it.  I’m very proud to be Carissa’s teacher.  Her and her mom work very hard to practice daily and accomplish her goals.  This girl has got a bright future ahead of her.

Student of the week

This week’s star student is Sean.  Shown here with his awesome bow hold, Sean and his mom work really hard every week.  He always comes very prepared and is excited to play.  We had to work very hard to get his violin hold/chin rest/shoulder rest to be perfect and he was very patient.  Now that we have everything fitting we are cruising along.  Today he played Tucka Tucka Stop Stop on the E and the A string and we learned “Chicken on a Fencepost”.  He is an excellent student and I always look forward to his lessons.

Kindermusik Video

This sums up things very nicely.

Children’s Music Academy

I just returned from Denver, Colorado where I was trained to teach an exciting class called Children’s Music Academy (CMA).  CMA is a class for 4-7 year olds.  In the class they learn how to play the piano, read music, count and play rhythm, and play the recorder.  The curriculum lasts for up to 3-4 years so your child is very music literate by the end of the classes.  This is a great primer for private lessons.  The children learn with other children in the classroom and parents also sit in with their children during the class.  It’s a time to bond with your child and allows for kids and parents to socialize with others from the community.  I am teaching two of these classes this fall and I am really excited.  If you would like more information please visit the Harris Music Studio webpage.

Showing off the perfect bow hold

Ashley has been working on her bowhold for a long time.  Everytime she makes a bowhold she wants me to take a picture of it.  So I’m being a proud teacher and showing it to everybody.

Sorry for the blurryness, one day I will learn to use my camera. 

I think her Carebears shirt is my favorite.

Priority Teaching

When I went to the Intermountain Suzuki String Institute in June I needed to re-read Teaching From the Balance Point by Edward Kreitman for my class.  I had read it before, but it meant so much more to me this time.  In the first chapter he talks about priority teaching.  This concept is not new to me, but I think I finally understand how to structure my lessons around this concept.   When you teach the Suzuki Method a lot of times you can get caught up in the pieces. ” The faster you learn the pieces the better you are” is a mentality that students, parents, and sometimes teachers slip into. 

What Kreitman pointed out was that if your posture is poor, or your tone is lacking, then it doesn’t matter how many difficult pieces you can play, your sound will be dreadful.  It won’t matter how difficult the piece, if it doesn’t sound good, then what’s the point?  I learned that I needed to ask myself the question, “what is your priority right now?” during every single lesson, every single piece, every single concept that I teach.   My priority needs to be posture, then tone, and then all of the other things. 

As I’ve been thinking about this concept I’ve tried to start asking it to myself in other situations.  There are a few things in my life like my family, my God, and my relationships with other people that are my priority.  If those things are lacking, then nothing else in my life is going to sound beautiful.

2:00 and 3:00 are full, one more spot in the 6:00 open.

There has been some great response for my Kindermusik practicum classes.  My afternoon classes are all full and I have one more spot in my 6:00 class.  If there is enough interest (like 3 more people would like to sign up) then I will open a 4:00 class as well.  Please leave a comment below if you are interested!

Music and the Brain

Oliver Sacks is one of the premier neuroscientists in America.  He was recently interviewed for a special on PBS called, “The Music Insinct”.   He talks about how music changes the brain.  A selection:

Oliver Sacks: I said earlier that there’s no one music center. And one of the things which is now apparent from brain imaging is that music can involve many different parts of the brain, special parts for the response to pitch, and to frequency, and to timbre, and to rhythm, and to melodic contour, and to harmonic and everything else. In fact you may find that much more of the brain is involved in the perception and the response to music than to language or anything else. One aspect of this is that if one does brain imaging, you can often distinguish the brains of musicians from the brains of non musicians because certain parts of the brain may become so enlarged in response to music that you can see the changes with the naked eye. You can’t say that’s the brain of a mathematician or a visual artist. You may be able to say I think that’s the brain of a musician.

You can view a video of him explaining more about music and the brain here:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/musicinstinct/video/music-and-the-brain/how-music-can-change-the-brain/47/

photo credit