March 29, 2025: Saturday Remix
Teachers and Staff: Happy Saturday!
Teaching Strategies: Relevance
Another important thing we can do as teachers in music lessons to help students learn and develop musical skills is to provide relevance to the learning.
When students struggle to learn, or to develop a skill, there are almost always several factors at play. As part of our studio philosophy, we assert that if a student is not learning or developing skills, here are the places we should look for answers:
Are we going too fast?
Have we adequately assessed prior knowledge?
Have we properly sequenced instruction?
Have we appropriately chunked the learning and practice?
Is there a meaningful context to the learning?
Is the content or skill relevant to this student?
Is it all just tedious work, or does the learning and practice bring satisfaction, joy, and short-term rewards to this student?
Today, I’ll discuss providing relevance to the learning.
Relevance means “having a relationship to the matter at hand; having practical and especially social applicability”. One way to think of relevance is that it is the opposite of irrelevance. Who wants to learn things that are irrelevant?
The truth is, in music education, and indeed in all education, we have a habit of teaching things that either are irrelevant, or, to the student, feel irrelevant.
To a student who is fascinated by and enjoys building model airplanes, learning the details of early 20th century society might feel very tedious, boring, and far away from their interests and goals. But, a creative teacher with knowledge about this student’s interests, and a strong relationship with this student, who hones in on the invention of the airplane by the Wright brothers and others in 1903 – its design, early flights, and its impact on society, might now find a very interested student… because they made the topic and other surrounding details more relevant for that student.
When we teach things that we believe are truly relevant, it is important that we help the student understand and feel their relevance.
Music the Student Loves
One way to help students feel more relevance in their music learning is by helping them learn about the music they love. Teachers are strongly encouraged to supplement method books and curriculum with music the student loves. This might be pop music, video game music, Disney music, movie / TV / musical theater music, and more. It also might be famous classical music or themes, such as Beethoven’s Fur Elise or 5th symphony.
Cartoons and Music Videos
We can make music more relevant to students by showing how the music is relevant to others. This is one reason why I encourage the use of cartoons and music videos. By watching and listening, students experience that other people love this music they are learning, so much so that they create other art forms and fun multimedia experiences using the music. “Because the music is relevant to millions of people in the world, it feels more relevant and important to me.”
I have a piano student who loves the military and loves choral singing. When he was learning America (My country ‘tis of thee), we found a video of the US Army Choir singing a version of the patriotic hymn on YouTube. He was enamored. He loves that video and asks me to play it for him almost every lesson. He often sings along with part of it. He plays our piano arrangement on the piano from memory every lesson, sometimes more than once. This student progresses well and does many other things in their lesson. But this music and this ritual make music lessons more relevant and more rewarding for this student. And watching this video deeply, again and again, likely is making him more musical and inspiring future musical learning and deeper music appreciation and involvement.
Teaching Scales
We often teach scales to beginners without providing any context or relevance. We immediately start teaching the notes of the scale, the fingering, perhaps some of the intervals, perhaps diving right into major and minor scales, and the variations of minor scales. For the time in their lesson, and then the coming weeks, and months, and possibly even years, the student plays and practices scales without any relevance (to them). And of course scales are dreaded, tedious, arduous, and boring.
If you asked a student why they practiced scales, what would their answer be? If you asked a student how scales related to music, what would their answer be? If you asked a student, “What can you do now that you learned some scales that you couldn’t do before, besides playing the scales?”... what would their answer be?
Students should be able to relate scales to myriad things in their music learning and playing. If they cannot, we should show them and teach them. We should provide lots of relevance – because there is so much relevance to be understood!
Recitals and Performing
One of the strongest ways to help students feel their music learning is relevant to them is by performing the music for others. This is one reason why we strongly encourage students to participate in as many recitals and other performances as possible. Students who are regularly performing make music a part of their lives, and their lessons are super relevant because they are helping them prepare for their music performances!
Take the time and effort to encourage your students to perform in our recitals, and help them prepare for recitals. All students should be always preparing for recitals and other performances - even those who do not actually perform in recitals. We should prepare “as if” they were going to perform, and be ready “in case” they decide to perform. Students should always be preparing and maintaining their repertoire of music that they can play anytime, anywhere, for anyone.
Studio Recital Update (Monday and Tuesday, April 14 & 15, 2025)
Please encourage your students to perform in our upcoming studio recital. Families have six options - three times each over two days.
Please look out for emails (soon) showing students who are performing, and let me know their repertoire. Please work with them to prepare for the recital, including playing from memory to the extent possible, and performance practice (such as bowing).
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Q. How do I know if my student is in the recital?
A. First, ask them! “Did you sign up for the recital?” They should know, and/or be encouraged to know. Hand them a flyer if they don’t seem to know anything about the recitals coming up. Second, look out for emails I send outlining the rosters. I start sending these emails about two weeks to a month before an upcoming recital.
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Thank you, everyone, for all that you do!
Have a magical Saturday, a musical weekend, and a safe and healthy coming week.
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Thank you,
Dennis Frayne
"Dr. Dennis"
Laguna Niguel School of Music
Dennis Frayne Music Studios
30110 Crown Valley Pkwy, Suites 105/107/108
Laguna Niguel, CA 92677
(949) 844-9051 (office cell)
(949) 468-8040 (personal cell)
www.lagunaniguelschoolofmusic.com
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