Yesterday, I taught my first three lessons since finishing the first part of my treatments. While my energy reserves are low, it was good to see my students again. They seemed to have retained what they had been learning, and not a lot of time was needed for review. One young man I teach always surprises me. He doesn't like to practice, and isn't innately musical, but his mind works very logically. When I find something that makes sense to him, it sticks. He memorizes quickly and loves to search for patterns. One particular song we are working on is called Ocean Spray, written in 3/4, with a "motor" in the left hand. But he kept playing the rhythm more like 4/4 (quarter, quarter, half note....instead of three even quarter notes; he always held the third note too long). Counting wasn't helping, so we tried a syllabic approach. We used the word jellyfish, since the song is about the ocean, and chanted jel-ly-fish, jel-ly-fish, over and over...and it worked! It also helped him to play the RH cluster on each down beat correctly, on every "jel." This beginner is 11, so I was thankful he responded so well to a silly afternoon of lessons!
Something new I am trying at my lessons is to shake things up. I recently read an article how the mind retains things better if we work on things for a shorter period of time, breaking it up with something else, then bringing it back later. For example, do some treble flash cards, play a song, do some bass flash cards, song, treble cards, song, bass cards, etc. It makes the mind work harder to retain each concept, rather than becoming mechanical, like when we drill guide notes for five minutes, and ten minutes later they have no clue! I'm still trying to figure out just how to organize my lesson time, and which students this works best with.
