Hello all!
After my last weekend adventure, things have been mostly work, with exciting interludes of sleeping, imploding banana bread and new housemates.
Work itself (teaching music and Japanese) is highly stressful and fascinating. In between lessons with my students, I am frantically trying to rectify years of... not being musical. I WAS at an advanced level of piano, but now am struggling on basic exercises. Lots of fun.
Since I also teach Japanese, it would make sense for me to teach Japanese kids piano, right?
Wrong!
Japanese piano method and theory is VERY different than what we use in the US. First of all, instead of letters (A-G) for notes, they use solfege (do-re-mi). Not too hard; vocal lessons use solfege as well. However, key changes use a different and unrelated Japanese system. Instead of the Italian do-re-mi, there Japanese syllables for each note and therefore each key.In addition, much like Suzuki method for violin (I learned), some Japanese students are initially taught to play music without learning the theory behind it. For instance, several of my students are working to distinguish quarter notes and half notes (1 beat and 2 beats, respectively) and counting rhythm. Sometimes this results in playing the same phrase 10 times, because reading music is hard and they don't want to do it.
The Japanese kids were playing more advanced music, with eighth notes, sharps and differing key signatures, but didn't know these concepts when I asked about them. Instead of hitting them with a new and unfamiliar method, I passed them off to my Japanese boss.
In another interesting adventure, I had a student dropped on me who only wanted to learn jazz piano. What is jazz piano? It's the art of making stuff up in an organized fashion. That is basically it. And, in a very classically trained studio, I am the only one with any jazz experience at all - which was in jazz band, where I played mallets and keyboard but improvised almost everything. Still, I gave it a shot and had a lot of fun doing improv exercises with the student. Student's mom wasn't impressed with my lack of formal training and methodology. Oh well. It's jazz.
It's my day off today (woo!) and I have ventured to the State Library, which is a large and many-winged structure that I get lost in every time. I love the local library, but the collection here is enormous, and has a lot of books about musical theory and teaching. And hula. Since I have yet to find my own halau, this is the closest I can get.
I know I included "and Spam" in my title, but I'm proud to say that I haven't had to use my emergency spam reserves all week. Normally I eat a lot of spam, as it's one of my very few options when eating out, but I've been able to actually cook lately, which is really nice! More on that next time :)
Until next time!
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