BlitzBooks

Technique is an incredibly subjective issue. Get 10 piano teachers in a room and you will have 10 different techniques. Dare to criticise someone else’s and you’re in for a long night. I’d like to start this article by describing three personal experiences, all to do with comments on technique.

 

Many years ago when I was a third-year Bachelor of Music student at the Sydney Conservatorium, I received an assessment report which...

There are some brand new worksheets for AMEB Theory Grades 1 and 3 that have just been posted on the BlitzBooks website.

‘Writing Triads with Accidentals’ - (Theory Grade 3) In the more recent Grade 3 AMEB examinations, the skill of writing triads has been tested with accidentals rather than with key signatures. This is quite a bit trickier so this worksheet provides good drills, asking students to write down the names of the sharps or flats in a key signature and then ‘apply’ those to the chords they have written. There are already drills on naming triads with accidentals in the current Grade 3 Theory workbook.

‘Let’s write Triads (with accidentals)’ – (Theory Grade 3) This is a follow up worksheet to 'Writing Triads with Accidentals', providing more practice, with a particular focus on dominant triads in minor keys.

‘Theory Grade 1 Test Paper NEW’ (Theory Grade 1) A new updated test paper which is ‘ready for marking’ and then available to complete. If you are not familiar with the concept...

With the May written exam series fast approaching, here is a series of tips that will help students and parents prepare for the big day…

1. Revise regularly We all know that knowledge quickly gained is knowledge quickly lost. Use these last four weeks to do steady revision each day – don’t try to cram it all in the night before!

2. Arrive at least half an hour early The supervisors start calling the students in well before the allotted starting time. There’s a lot of sitting around to do so it’s best to expect this and have strategies for coping, like doing some mental revision, and slow breathing if you’re feeling at all anxious.

3. Have adequate materials At least 3 pencils and a good eraser are the absolutely essential materials, in a small clear zip lock bag. It’s also very important to bring the exam notice with your candidate number on it! Some students try to memorise this number – there’s no need to, just bring the exam notification with you.

4. Use the reading time This...

My daughter’s class at Australian Music Schools is studying towards a Grade 3 Theory exam in May this year. The class have always sat their Theory exams together, enjoying the experience they had in Grades 1 and 2 of sitting nervously outside the exam centre and finally being called in, and ‘debriefing’ together afterwards before returning (or in some cases not, if they could convince Mum and Dad ) to school. It has always been a bonding experience for them, including the long wait for the results.

Last month when the entries were due and the examination date was discussed, some students found that they had clashes with school camps and other important things.

Their teacher, Michelle Madder (my co-author of the Sight Reading Books) then decided to give them the option of enrolling for the online exam instead. Michelle explained to them that although both the cost and the content of the exam are exactly the same, a fair amount time would have to be spent...

At the recent Piano Festival at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music I gave a presentation called ‘Teaching Digital Natives’, in which I discussed the ways in which technology has changed the learning styles of the current generation.

There were 120 piano teachers in the room, of various ages and stages of teaching. We started the session with a game in which everyone had to stand up, and then sit down if the statements I made applied...

Wilhelm...

For those of you who have been receiving the Blitz email newsletters, you’ll know that the much anticipated iphone app ‘ScaleBlitzer’ has finally been released.

After more than a year of blood, sweat and [many] tears, Abe Cytrynowski and I have produced what we think is the ultimate tool for teachers and students in the quest for brilliant sounding scales and arpeggios!

ScaleBlitzer is not one of those novelty apps that get used for one day only. It’s a valuable...

Being the co-author of the said Blitz Sight Reading books, this might be interpreted as rather a strange title for an article by me. You may ask, shouldn’t I already have KNOWN that the Sight Reading books work? Shouldn’t I have held off publishing them if I thought for a second they wouldn’t work?

Well of course it’s a resounding ‘yes’ to both! But the thing is, when you pilot something in its initial stages and see that it works, you sometimes don’t actually get to pilot that same product all the way to the end of the course. This is what happened with the Blitz Sight Reading series.

Book 1 (Levels 1-10, up to Grade 3 standard) was piloted to within an inch of its life. For 5 years Michelle Madder and I were testing all sorts of sight reading activities on all sorts of little pianists – those who could read well and those who couldn’t! The course was tailored until we knew it benefitted absolutely everybody.



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Vicious Cycle The vicious cycle of theory study goes like this:

Student dislikes theory because all their friends do or because they ‘just want to play’ => student avoids theory => student does not do well at theory => student dislikes theory

How did this happen? I believe the main reason this cycle comes about is because we rush through theory. Very often, as soon as the practical exam is over, the piano books are put away and it’s THEORY TIME! The whole lesson is devoted to that sorely neglected theory workbook, which hasn’t seen the light of day for 4 or 5 months, in a frenzied effort to acquire the bare essentials needed to pass the all-important prerequisite exam. Let’s face it, students usually only do theory because they have to. Apart from the odd mature-age student who takes up theory just for the fun of it, completely divorced from any practical instrument study, it’s usually a race against the clock to get everything done and it’s hardly ever much fun.

How can we break the cycle?...

When you practice a musical instrument by yourself, it’s a pretty solitary experience. There’s no team spirit, no friends at the training session, no coach to tell you what to do. It can be REALLY hard to be disciplined in practice – that is, to tackle the stuff that really needs work first and leave the easy pieces until the end. But even if you manage to do this, sometimes it’s not enough just to have the intrinsic satisfaction that something has been achieved. You need to play the pieces for someone else regularly (not just the teacher), and get feedback from that someone, be it in the format of applause, a report, an award, or maybe just lots of gushy comments about how well you’re doing. It is these things that keep most students practising in the long term.

So what it really comes down to is praise and recognition. Everybody loves positive feedback – whether from a teacher, a parent, a boss or an employee. Receiving praise is a huge motivator for most people.

Take my two children for example,...