Hello students and families. It’s nice to see you again. I took a week off to think about the topic that I wanted to address next. I’ve been busy going green and helping the environment. I’m still figuring out how to tie it all together for music making. My students are doing amazingly well. I marvel at their stick-to-it-ness. But, as I have reiterated before, ‘it’s a new day for piano lessons’. For years, I’ve been advocating for fun lessons. Now I can say that there are different and varying levels of “fun”. It’s not a word to take lightly. My idea of a fun lesson is apparently not my students’ ideas for what they consider fun.
For instance, I like to use repetition as part of my performance practice. My students do not. My students like to use auditory learning as spontaneous piano learning in real time. I do not particularly care for this. It puts me on the spot and I feel like I’ve been somewhat ambushed…lol. However, I’m glad to learn more about how my students learn. One of my professors once called my work “pioneering”. I’m flattered but more interested in seeing what the end will be in my students’ learning. They seem to be serious about YouTube learning. Also, I’d like to clarify something that I stated in the last post about my students not listening to me. What I meant to say was that some of my students prefer to follow their own path and question my guidance. I let them go their own way and rather enjoy seeing them wander back to ask questions or ask me to clarify something that they’ve discovered about music making on their own. That’s what I meant to say. So, Serious Fun is a thing. I embrace it and I take it seriously where my students are concerned. It’s fun to see them make their own choices and then ask my opinion. I do wonder though if I’ll ever have a studio full of serious students wanting to study Hanon, classical and the traditional way of learning. See you again soon. Peace. – C.
CMajor's Classroom 