Music … playing and teaching

StandUpFclef has moved to String Thing Music

Peace and good tunes

I received a comment to my post of June 29th titled “Lesson Plan”. The comment read “Hi, I’ve been a violin student for 6 years. I haven’t heard of the play in pitch method. Please tell me more about it.
Tommy D.”

My response was “Hi Tommy, Play in Pitch is an ear training method that I have developed for my violin, viola, string bass, and cello students. It is a simple and very effective way for my students to play along to a CD of scales and scale exercises to promote ear training. At first the student plays to match the pitch of the recorded scales and later moves on to rhythm exercises and harmonizing with the scales. I will soon have this effective method available to students and teachers of the violin, viola, and cello.”

I am hopping to have the “Play In Pitch” method available by the start of the next school year.

Peace and good tunes to you, D. Patrick

This post is compelled by the comments left by Paul R. on my July 26th post titled “True Pitch”. Paul’s comment are very correct, therefore, I feel the need to be more concise about my teaching method.

Part of the “True Pitch” post did entreat teachers to make learning scales a part of their lesson plan. And I did say “… I have all my students warm up with scale exercises. These scale exercises are structured to each students abilities, and, accomplish many goals. A few of which are, it warms the muscles in our hands ...” In Paul’s comments he was referring to a Dr. Gilles Comeau’s studies where he … found in his research that doing scales and arpeggios for a warm-up is for the musician like starting with a sprint for a fast runner. I couldn’t agree more that is why I mentioned in my post … (note; we start out with some simple finger, hand, and arm stretches first). Below is a basic outline of a 30 minute lesson plan. I try to develop each lesson to fit the needs and desires of the student but the lesson plan itself stays pretty much the same for example:

1. 5min: unpack instrument, tune-up, then stretches starting with finger stretch, hand stretch, wrist, foreman, shoulder and upper body stretches.
2. 10min: for my fretted instrument students we do exercises with the chromatic scale to help develop dexterity and coordination between the right and left hand then it’s on to scale exercises often accompanied with a short verbal theory lesson pertaining to the scale or mode we are working on. For my fretless students, violin viola and cello, we do ear training exercises with the Play In Pitch method. This is a great method that trains the student to recognize true pitch and at the same time basic scales, again this too is accompanied with a short verbal theory lesson pertaining to the scale or mode we are working on.
3. 10min: the current lesson plan such as tunes, songs, pieces, and/or techniques, etc.
4. 5min: part of my studio’s mission goal is to have fun so I like to end with the student playing a piece of their choice, lesson related or not, then pack up.

My hour lesson pretty much follows the same routine.

Peace and good tunes to you, D. Patrick

A necessary component to being able to play a fretless instrument in pitch is being able to sing in pitch. Throughout my past training the quality music teachers I have had pretty much said the same thing, in a nutshell, “to be a good musician you have to hear it before you play it”. In other words to play in pitch you need to hear the note in your head then play it. To help my students gain this ability I, at the beginning of each lesson, conduct “Roll-Call” . Roll-Call is based on the musical development of each student and ranges from simple tasks to more complex tasks. An example of a simple roll-call would be the playing of a single note on the piano and having the student sing that note back to me. This will advance to my playing a melodic interval (a 3rd or a 5th) and having the student sing back the two notes (in time naming the interval as well). Next they graduate onto harmonic intervals (I’ll play two notes simultaneously then they sing back each note and name the interval). This will advance to the first five notes of a major scale then onto complete scales, modes, chords, etc. Roll-Call is not just for my fretless players. I conduct Roll-call for all my students, guitar, mandolin, electric bass, etc. Music teachers, feel free to steal this teaching technique, I did. I’d like to take credit for it but I can’t, it came from my professor of music theory back in my college days.

Peace and good tunes to you, D. Patrick

Another great teaching/learning tool to help students match pitch is the “One Finger Slide”. This is a little tricky at first and I save this exercise for when my students that are more comfortable with long bow strokes. The concept is simple. I’ll sound a note higher then their starting point and have them bow and slide their finger up the string till they match the pitch. For example I’ll have the student place their one finger low on the D string (somewhere around Eb) and then I’ll sound an A above that note. I’ will then have the student slowly draw their bow and slowly slide up the neck (using their one finger) until they can find and match the pitch I am sounding. It’s tricky at first but it is great for me to watch the student start to get it. When they are really comfortable with this exercise on all the strings I’ll start sounding notes an octave above or below their pitch. For the more advanced students we’ll slide into harmony notes i.e. thirds, fifths, etc.

Peace and good tunes to you, D. Patrick

So how does one go about training the ear for true pitch on a fretless instrument? The answer is on one hand simple, Practice, and on the other hand complex, “How do I practice to play in true pitch?“

In my teaching studio I have all my students warm up with scale exercises. These scale exercises are structured to each students abilities, and, accomplish many goals. A few of which are, it warms the muscles in our hands (note; we start out with some simple finger, hand, and arm stretches first), it trains our fingers to execute the movements necessary to play our instrument, and, I feel it is essential that a musician have an understanding of scales and music theory. Case in point; I have an adult violin student that previously had taken piano lessons for many years but was never taught scales or theory. She is very excited to be receiving that training now but is also very disappointed that her former teacher never taught her scales and theory. Any music teacher reading this post please, please, please, if you do not currently teach your students scales and theory, incorporate it into their lesson plan, no matter what level the student. It doesn’t have to be in large chunks, nor mind bogglingly difficult, just a little here and a little there during each lesson will go a long way in training our future musicians. But I digress (I guess that’s why they call this blog space “Tangents”). For the fretted instrument students, playing the scales in true pitch is easier. As long as the instrument is of decent construction and the strings are tuned correctly, the finger just needs to be placed behind the appropriate fret. For my fretless students I will use my electric piano or my guitar to play the scale with the student. Our concentration now is to not only learn and play the scale, but to also match the pitch produced by a true pitched instrument.

I am currently nearing completion of a simple yet very effective learning/teaching tool that I will make available for students and teachers. The goal of this learning method is to help students of fretless instrument learn to play in pitch. I have been using this simple method for many years with my students and have enjoyed great success. It was actually one of my younger students that got me thinking about producing and offering this method to the general public when she asked me to make a copy of this method for her cousin in Texas. If any music students or teachers reading this post have any questions about this learning method please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Peace and good tunes (played in true pitch) to you, D. Patrick

Playing an instrument is fun. Learning to play an instrument is fun AND, challenging, frustrating, fun, gratifying, tedious, fun, exciting, exasperating, rewarding, and oh yeah, did I mention FUN.

Each instrument has its own unique set of obstacles to over come. I’m going to concern this post with non-fretted instruments verses fretted instruments. One of the goals of a fretted instrument such as a guitar or mandolin, is to learn where the notes are on the fret board. The wonderful thing about fretted instruments is when you know where the notes are and you place your finger behind that fret, and if the instrument is tuned properly and is of good construction, you’ll produce the pitched assigned to that string and fret. Depending on the instrument and the desired pitch the spacing behind the fret can be more or less an inch and a half to one quarter inch or less. The beauty of this fret and space is that as long as your finger is placed behind the fret in the allotted space you will produce a true pitch (again as long as the instrument is tuned properly and of proper construction). With non-fretted (fretless) instruments we do not have that luxury. To produce true pitch the finger must be placed in exactly the right spot to produce the desired pitch. This creates for the musician of fretless instruments the need to be able to recognize true pitch. Ear training is an essential element to playing a fretless instrument (really any instrument).

Peace and good tunes to you, D. Patrick