Now that the semester is over, I’m fully in summer mode: I’ve been practicing my solo recital program for the upcoming season, preparing to present at the Oregon State Music Teachers Association Conference this July, and learning music for an upcoming world premiere of a piece for oboe, bassoon and piano in Flagstaff, Arizona, also in July.
At the end of this past academic year, I attended the retirement reception of a friend and colleague who taught English literature at Butler University for 32 years. She surprised me by telling me how she knew it was the right time to stop.
She said to me: “I can’t teach any more. Reading is a dying art. These kids don’t read. How do you teach English literature to students who don’t read??”
I confessed to her that I find it harder to read than I used to. I will often sit down to read but end up getting distracted and having difficulty concentrating.
She nodded and said, “I know - it’s the same for me. I’m re-training myself to read. I find that I can make it work if I leave my phone in the kitchen and then go into my bedroom and make myself read 50 pages in one sitting.”
I was surprised to speak with an English professor who herself has difficulty concentrating enough to read, in this age of smartphones and ever-diminishing attention spans.
It made me think about the practice of listening, which, for musicians, is the analogous activity to reading. The modern piano recital format, where a soloist plays the piano on stage and an audience listens quietly while focusing solely on the music, was popularized in the 19th century by Franz Liszt and Clara Schumann - long before the invention of TikTok!
I wonder if smartphone culture is not only killing our ability to read books and literature, but also our ability to concentrate and listen to music.
And so my question for you this week is: when was the last time you put on music and listened to it with your full attention, focusing on nothing else? No scrolling on your phone, no chatting, no multitasking. Just listening to the music. Is listening in this way an enjoyable activity for you? Why or why not?
👋 See you next week! Happy Practicing! 🎹
-Kate
📈 Today's Practice Tip: Track Your Progress!
While it might seem obvious, tracking your progress is essential for maintaining accountability and providing a clear record of improvement.
I still have a box of my old practice journals, and sometimes I flip back through them to see what I was doing at a certain time in my life. For example, I’ll see documentation from the months when I was preparing to play my solo recital at Carnegie Hall, or when I learned Pierrot Lunaire, or when I prepared for a particular CD recording.
Documenting your practice sessions helps you not only reminisce about the past, but in the short-term it helps you see your progress, set appropriate goals, and adjust your practice strategies accordingly.
Reviewing your progress keeps you motivated, as you can see how far you’ve come over time.
A student recently told me she felt discouraged about how long it was taking her to learn a piece, but then after I encouraged her to look back a few weeks in her practice journal, she realized how far she’d come in a relatively short time.
This week’s exercise:
If you haven’t already, start a practice journal: This is a place where you log what you practiced, how long you spent, your daily and weekly goals, and any observations or challenges. Click here to learn how to keep a practice journal.
Schedule a session to record yourself playing this week, so you can go back over time and hear your progress.
Quote of the Week
“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.”
- Joyce Carol Oates
🎥 YouTube Update:
After a short and refreshing hiatus, I'm back to a regular schedule of publishing a new YouTube video every Tuesday. In my upcoming video, I take you through the pre-practice stretching routine I use and share with my students.
🎶 Butler University Piano Camp: June 10-14, 2024 (Indianapolis, IN)
It's not too late to register for our annual Piano Camp on the campus of Butler University! Even though the deadline is passed, we still have a couple of spaces available.
This is a camp for pianists ages 12-18 of all experience levels. No audition is necessary. There is either a residential or day camp option (campers arrive on June 9 to move into the dorm).
We have a lot of fun at camp - with daily masterclasses, multiple lessons, classes about all kinds of music topics, and more! The camp culminates with a performance in beautiful Eidson-Duckwall Recital Hall on Butler's campus.
Performance: I recently attended an organ recital by one of my former students, Kat Jolliff, who is now an organ major at the Eastman School of Music. One of the pieces on the program stuck with me: Fireflies, by Aaron David Miller. Here is a recording of that remarkable piece.
Book: This week I have been enjoying re-reading Vanessa Cornett's book The Mindful Musician. It is packed with actionable strategies for achieving peak performance and dealing with performance anxiety. Click here to find it on my list of recommended books.
Sight reading tool: Sight reading is one of the most important skills a pianist can learn, because being able to sight read well opens up a world of possibilities for learning repertoire more quickly, playing collaboratively, and experiencing more ease at the piano. The sight reading tool I recommend most often is Piano Marvel - you can connect your keyboard to it and take their sight reading test, which will accurately score your results and tell you the correct level for you to practice at in order to improve your sight reading. Besides sight reading, you can also learn piano technique, find piano repertoire, and progress through the Piano Marvel methods lessons. Click this affiliate link for a free trial (or use the promo code "Prof"). It will save you $2 per month if you try it and decide to subscribe.
Dear Friends, Classes have ended, final grades are due on Thursday, and I’m sitting here with a cup of tea, looking out at the lilacs and wrapping up the last of the semester's grading. But here's the truth: grading piano lessons has never felt particularly natural. When I was a student, lessons weren’t graded week by week. You practiced as much as you could, went to the lesson, and used that time with your teacher to get past the blocks you couldn’t solve on your own. The teacher listened,...
Dear Friends, As I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, I’m developing a listening series called Piano Lit — a self-guided mini-course delivered as a weekly email over six weeks. I’ve been working hard on it this week, and I hope to have it available by mid- to late May. I was happy to see so much early interest already (more than 100 of you clicked the link!), and it’s been fun to imagine people listening and discovering new music as I build the series. It will cost $27 for the full six...
Dear Friends, Before we get started: here at Butler University, we are nearing the end of the academic year. Since I don't see my students over the summer, I like to give them a listening list to work through on their own. The other day I realized this would be great to share with my wider community. So, I’m working on expanding it into a listening series called Piano Lit – a curated list delivered as a weekly email over six weeks. Each week will contain links to performances of 6-7 pieces,...
