The World According to Ms. Alison

Sometimes people seem to think that being a music teacher is all uplifting and awesome and everything.  And sometimes they are right.

I had two new students for trial lessons today.  One was a teenager with Aspergers, who has never had a lesson in his life and is one of the most gifted musicians I have ever met.  I swear it was like being in a trailer for a Lifetime Channel “For the Love of Piano Lessons” montage.  Except it wasn’t tacky and it really did tear my heart out.

 Then there is the gentleman who wants to learn piano and singing because he would like to share his daughter’s love of music.  His daughter has passed away.  This is the single most beautiful reason to want to learn music that I have ever heard in my entire life.

All in all, just another day at the office :)

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I was just googling 'creativity kids" with what I thought was the simple aim of finding an image of a kid covered in paint standing on their head on a piano pretending to be a hedgehog.  Or something.  But no, all I saw was page after increasingly depressing page of "creativity products".  Pre-fab fairy gardens and the like.  Stuff you would assemble, not instigate.  If you could manage not to die from boredom and the overdose of pink graphics. 

Here in the magical pink fairy garden of piano teaching, it seems that almost everyone who is not a musician assumes that being a musician is a creative activity.  Artistic, yes.  Creative, hardly ever.  The sad truth is that the vast majority of musicians basically re-assemble the works and interpretations of those who actually did manage to "invent something new..that has value".  And this sorry state of affairs does, of course, begin at the very beginning.  Which is where I come in.  Because I like teaching beginners.

Parents and colleagues tell me all the time that I am a "very creative teacher", which is nice I guess, but shouldn't that be a redundancy?   Isn't that kind of like an unmathematical astrophysicist, or a surgeon with no opposable thumbs?  How can you be an uncreative teacher? An instructor, maybe.  A teacher, no.

I deal with kids, for the most part, and all kids have imagination, flair, and creative abilities far beyond the inane assignment of assembling a pink plastic fairy garden...or the musical equivalent.  By creating something new, students teach themselves.  I just provide suggestions and the necessary information.  New skills must be mastered in order to make sense of and develop their ideas:  composition is the absolute best way to learn theory and to some extent technique as well. 

The little piece above was written by one of my first students, and it was the first time someone brought me something they'd created, just because they wanted to, in their own words, with this language I taught them.  It is one of my favorite things.  Ever.

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Today's pearls of wisdom are primarily inspired by the predictable response of my cat whenever one of the younger students elaborates upon "Old MacDonald" with a few particularly convincing "everywhere a meow meow"s.

Anyway, the ensuing conversation of course turned to the YouTube cat virtuosi.  After my cat's performance I was in no mood to encourage any further antics, so after the lesson we spent a few moments googling "piano" and some of the more exotic animals we could potentially add to Old MacDonald's menagerie.  The kid was betting on iguanas.  Dad upped the ante with rhinos.  And I hit the jackpot with Mr. Armadillo here.

Which raised an issue:  what kind of noise DO armadillos make?  A little further research led us to discover some remarkable species, including the self-explanatory "Screaming Hairy Armadillo".  Even more intriguing:  the "Pink Fairy Armadillo".

And what does all of this have to do with learning or teaching the piano?  As a shining example of how things work in the Land of Ms. Alison, these exciting discoveries became leverage for the following student assignments:
 (a) Transposing Old MacDonald into a different key for each species (there are 20, so that's almost enough to cover all the major and minor positions)
(b)  Playing them all with eyes closed (seeing as Armadillos are practically blind)
(c)  Playing them all with many subtle shades of Armadillo mood, tempi and dynamics (because Armadillos have very sensitive dispositions)
(d)  Producing a composition about the "Pink Fairy Armadillo" which is to be performed in an appropriate costume c. Halloween.  And I expect the notation to be written in Armadillo pawprints.  And the lyrics to be hilarious.  And furthermore it must scan well and rhyme while avoiding any mention of Armadillo transmission of leprosy to humans.

Natch.

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