By Alyssa Cowell We offer formal vocal training at The Catoctin School of Music. Many times students sign up for voice lessons expecting to learn a new song every week, or practice singing songs that they hear on YouTube or Spotify. This is not the purpose of voice lessons. Formal vocal training is all about evaluating a student’s current vocal technique and teaching them to change...
Read MoreA few weeks ago, I came across this article titled, “8 Things Top Practicers Do Differently.” http://www.bulletproofmusician.com/8-things-top-practicers-do-differently/ To summarize – experimenters observed a handful of piano majors as they learned a moderately challenging 3 bar excerpt during a single practice session. The experiment was designed to identify the practice habits that lead to a higher or lower success ranking among the participants. Participants were ranked on their...
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As a piano teacher, the bulk of my job is offering weekly lessons to my students. But if I stopped at that, I wouldn’t be setting my studio apart in my community or creating a wholistic learning experience for students of my studio.
Yes, learning technique, repertoire and theory on a weekly basis is of the utmost important. But I also need to provide my students with opportunities to perform, compete, create and engage with other music students and music professionals and in doing so, expose them to a variety of things within my scope. This creates well-rounded, motivated students and lets my students, their families and the community know that I am an active and thriving studio.
Here are some suggestions for things we can offer to our students that go above and beyond weekly lessons:
by Drew Holcomb The classical guitar is a world-renowned instrument and has undergone many transformations to get where it is today. From the medieval, renaissance, and to the baroque era, the classical guitar has been revolutionized. The baroque classical guitar, in particular, was one of the more dominant instruments in music history, but it had to undergo many steps to get there. Through its improvements in...
Read MoreBy Julia Kossuth At the Studios of Sarah Strout, we offer a variety of group classes for our youngest students. This creates a fun environment for our kids to receive an introduction to music while learning basic skills of making and understanding music. The dynamic of a group class is, needless to say, quite a bit different than the dynamic of a private lesson. With this dynamic...
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