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This Editor's column will be my last for Clavier Companion. After eleven years at the helm of this magazine and its predecessor, Keyboard Companion, I have decided to step aside. Eleven years is a long time, and I have enjoyed every moment of this wonderful ride.When I accepted the position of Editor-in-Chief in 2005, it was an exciting time filled...
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It's the last lesson before the recital. Garrett, age five, is playing "Graduation March," the final piece in Time to Begin from The Music Tree. The B section is made up entirely of half notes and whole notes. The good news? Garrett's rhythm is perfect; a huge improvement over last week, when all of the long notes were being cut short and the accom...
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I recently had the pleasure of hosting ten high-school girls from Kenya. This was their first trip to the United States, and the girls have been part of an online music teaching program at The University of Georgia, where I teach. These girls were very excited to see the U.S. and to try many new experiences.The visit was a grand success, and I'm su...
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You may think that I'm losing my mind—that my elevator no longer stops at all of the floors (and you may be right), but I just saw Mozart in Motown. I wasn't in Detroit, and there wasn't any time travel involved. Indulge me for a moment, and I'll try to explain. It was late afternoon, another beautiful day in northeast Georgia. The sun was starting...
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For most of our daily activities, there is an order to things. This order is usually logical and almost always functional. Taking an "out of order" approach to a routine task may render it impossible, meaningless, or absurd. Putting our shoes on before our socks, backing the car out before opening the garage door, brushing our teeth right before ea...
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Piano teachers have great jobs, and I think most of us are thankful that we get to spend our days sharing something we love with our students. It is immensely gratifying to see our students grow as musicians and watch music become an important part of their lives. At times, however, it seems like the rest of the world doesn't see music study in the...
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"I'm too old to play pieces I don't like," said Heather at one of our first lessons. Heather is a retired Professor in Romance Languages and Literatures, as well as an expert on the composer Schubert. It's no surprise that her repertoire is steeped in Schubert's music. She loves it that way, and so do I.It's not always this easy picking repert...
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To say that Amy Chua has touched a nerve with parents is an understatement akin to saying that Franz Liszt had an influence on piano performance and teaching. Since the publication of her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother in January, and the subsequent Wall Street Journal article "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior," a firestorm of discussion and ...
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When I first started teaching, I was determined not to make my students fill out the dreaded practice log. As a young teacher, I still had fresh memories of my own student days, and times spent scrambling right before a lesson to reconstruct (or perhaps invent?) my practice times for the week. Even as a kid, it seemed like a pointless exercise to m...
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In my college years I encountered a recurring four-against-five pattern in a 20th-century piece, and my initial attempts to do it were not successful. My teacher recommended that I approximate the pattern ("fake it") while I learned the rest of the music. He also suggested that I first try tapping the polyrhythm away from the piano, which I did aft...
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That's a phrase we hear and say all the time, but until recently I hadn't put too much thought into what it really means. We say it when we want to imply that a task is natural, instinctive, and easily recalled by our memory - typically our kinesthetic memory. We use it when we want to describe something that ...
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from the series: Let's Get Physical: Technique Pete Jutras, EditorMy wife and I have spent a lot of time lately teaching our young children how to read. I've never taught anyone to read language before, and it has been a fascinating and enlightening experience. One mild surprise was that after all the work on letters, sounds, sound combin...
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