Music … playing and teaching

What a fun but crazy week. After the jazz concert Lisa’s band had me playing at the Bristol Concert series in Bristol NH on Thursday, then Friday it was the Town Docks Meredith (great crowd for that one), and yesterday it was Fun Town Splash Town Saco Maine for a great concert with a large crowd of receptive folks having fun.

Today (Sunday) I’m off for a full day with the Moose Mountain Jazz band in Harpswell Maine for the Harpswell Maine Festival.

Peace and good traveling tunes to you, D. Patrick

As a teacher for New Hampshire Independent School of Music (NHISOM) I have the privilege of forming and conducting several group ensembles. One of these ensembles is my adult jazz group. The core of the group has been together for going on three years. Currently the group consists of tenor sax, flute, string bass, guitar, and a vocalist. Last night this amateur group (lovingly referred to as Trish J and the Doctors of Jazz) gave an hour long concert at the Surrounds art studio in Sandwich NH. The group performed well and the audience of close to 50 people were very receptive. It is just too cool to watch this group of players mature and grow to the point where they can pull off an excellent concert. Once again I have had the honor of witnessing the power of music.

Peace and good (jazz) tunes to you, D. Patrick

Next week the New Hampshire Independent School of Music (NHISOM) will be holding their music day camp. As a co-founder of NHISOM I am very excited for the camp. I have the privilege of teaching the guitar and strings portion of the day camp. The music camp will run from Monday, July 28th till Friday, August 1st. On August 1st we will hold a public concert and give the camp students a chance to show off the music they have been working on all week.

Peace and good tunes to you, D. Patrick

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

I know I have been negligent in staying up with this blog site. My intention was to post every day but life gets in the way. It’s being a busy yet fun life. In the past 14 days I have had 8 gigs, finished construction on the new studio, moved into the new studio, and managed to sneak off to Wells Maine for two night s with my wife Lisa and her two girls, and today we celebrate her oldest girls sweet 16 with friends and family.

The last night we were in Maine we met 4 kids (I say kids cause they were all 22 and I have two sons in their 30’s) from Canada. The power of music became yet again a very strong and irresistible force. I heard string music coming from the room next to ours. I nonchalantly walked past the room to see one guy playing the guitar and one other fellow playing the ukulele. I listened for a minute and they were very good. Lisa came to see what I was doing and … to make a long story short … we hooked up with these French speaking musicians and shared music, sang, and laughed into the wee hours of the night. Our girls hung around with the adults that evening instead of heading off to the arcade and they sang and had a blast as well. So not only did we have a great family get away but we made some new musical friends to boot. Music, once again, has proven to be a great way to meet new friends and enjoy life in spite of any spoken language barrier.

Peace and good tunes to you. D. Patrick

Busy, Busy, Busy. Busy is good. Doing the 2nd of 5 gigs in 4 days today. Remember to play some music today.

Peace and good tunes to you, D. Patrick

Another good guitar exercise is the stair climber, a simple yet effective exercise to promote dexterity. I prefer to teach this exercise starting on the 1st string (high E) and later progressing to the other strings. We start with the 1st finger behind the first fret and pluck, next the 2nd finger behind the second fret and pluck, then 3rd behind third fret, then 4th behind fourth fret, when we reach the 4th finger fourth fret we slide up the neck 1/2 step and reverse our finger order, then when we get back to our 1st finger we again slide up the neck 1/2 step repeat the exercise.

When the student is comfortable with the guitar crab crawl and stair climber I will have them work on an alternating picking pattern (down stroke – up stroke) when changing notes.

Peace and good tunes to you, D. Patrick

One of the favorite warm up exercises for me and my students is the “Crab Crawl”. It works well for both beginner and advanced guitar students.

The exercise is simple, starting on the 6 string (low E) we place our 1st finger behind the first fret and pluck, next the 2nd finger behind the second fret and pluck, then 3rd behind third fret, then 4th behind fourth fret. Next we repeat this sequence of 1st finger first fret 2nd finger second fret etc. on the 5 string (A), then on the 4 string (D), etc. When we have completed this forward pattern we will end up with our 4th finger on the fourth fret of the 1 string (high E). Next we shift our hand up the neck of the guitar 1/2 step. This now places our 4th finger on the 5th fret of the 1 string (high E). Staying in this position we reverse the exercise, 4th finger fifth fret, 3rd finger fourth fret, 2nd finger third fret etc. When we reach 1st finger second fret we now continue the same reverse pattern by moving our 4th finger to the fifth fret of the 2 string (B) and repeat the reverse motion of 4th finger, 3rd finger etc. When we have completed this reverse pattern across all six strings we will end up with the 1st finger on the second fret of the 6 string (low E) where we now shift up the neck of the guitar 1/2 step and start the forward pattern starting with the 1st finger on the third fret of the 6 string (low E).

I will vary the length of the crab crawl to accommodate the ability of the student. For my beginners we will do the crawl to when the last motion is the shift up the guitar neck of the 1st finger fifth fret of the 6 string (low E). My advanced students will perform this exercise up to the 12th fret and then reverse the pattern back down the neck.

When a student has become proficient at the crab crawl and can make the string changes and shifts smoothly I’ll add in the metronome. My students really enjoy measuring themselves to the metronome. We log their fastest beats per minute (bpm). The crab crawl must be performed smoothly and seamlessly between all strings and shifts for a bpm to be logged.  Regardless of my advanced students ability I always start this exercise out slow (100-120 bpm) to avoid injury. Once the hands and fingers are sufficiently warmed up we turn up the speed. The students get a real charge when they hit the “200 club”. My ongoing challenge is for the student to beat my best time. On a good day my crab crawl is clean at 400-420 bpm. I currently have two students that smoke me with a consistent 440 and up, and one knocking on my door at 380 bpm.

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