I'm here! I'm here!

the carnage post-Christmas morning

Are you recovering from the whirlwind that was the end of the year?  Do you have a few New Year's resolutions (like me) about being more consistent with music lessons and practicing?  Well, I fit both of those - plus I resolve to blog more consistently too!

My wedding anniversary is coming up this weekend (number 7!) and it also marks the first anniversary of a conversation I had with my husband on the way home from a wee anniversary jaunt to Iowa (there's a sushi place with a roll that is worth the 3 hour drive, along with some wonderful family to boot.)  As we drove through the frozen Midwest I was talking about blogging and motherhood - and trying to figure out how (and if) I'd teach my own kids after a career of only teaching other people's kids.

Then, as usual, my husband had the perfect solution.  Combine them all together!  He even had the title of the blog figured out too.  He's truly the brains of this operation!  We got home (after a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, of course!) and this blog was born.  I started teaching WonderGirl and shared what I knew plus what I was learning.

Now, every year for our anniversary I make a video for my husband.  I take pictures and videos as much as possible during the year and put them all together to help us remember our blessings from the past year.  As I was making this year's video, I was kind of surprised by how much I had of music in our home.  I've been a professional musician since before the beginning of our marriage and my husband already played a few instruments, but by teaching the violin and piano to WG, the whole family became more musical.  We started playing more together, singing more, and we even made a Christmas album!  The anniversary video is full of us making music, without intending to.

Also, I look at how we started the year - I was too scared to teach WG violin, but emboldened  by teaching her piano, I gave it a shot, and we're ending the year with her already on O Come Little Children!  (for non-Suzuki folk, that's the 5th song in book one!)  I'm feeling incredibly blessed, and I'm lucky enough to have others on the same journey sharing their stories too.  Thank you for listening and giving me the opportunity to grow!

I'll leave you with the video if you want to watch.  And also with a disclaimer - DON'T PLAY WITH FIREWORKS IN YOUR BASEMENT.  I do not advocate it.  I can say from personal knowledge that I now know where our smoke alarm is.

Year 7 from Reva Paget on Vimeo.

Have a musical day!

Worth it

WG and I, circa 2009

I'm settling into the fall routine.  I'm relishing all the one-on-one time with the now 2 year old Dude, but I miss WonderGirl all morning and I get a bit giddy when I get to pick her up from school.  Thankfully, the Dude still naps like a champ for 3 hours, so we get plenty of music/us time too in the afternoon.

Except - does the afternoon slump do something to you too?  As I put the Dude down to sleep and think about all I need to get done, I have this insane urge to join him.  Some days I do.  Especially recently, since everything has been all up in the air.  We had Nana visit, the husband and I had a fabulous weekend away in New York City, and all of us have gotten varying degrees of colds.  Some days you just have to give yourself a pass and know that it's okay to drop a few balls every now and then.

But I notice on the days that I end up lazying out and we don't do violin and piano lessons/practice, things tend to go south later.  Sure, I had a little more initial energy since I didn't expend any turning on my inner music teacher, but both our fuses seem to get shorter as the day goes on.  The light in our home dims just a bit.

Today when the afternoon slump hit, I sat on the couch, breathing through only half of my nose, and tried to psyche myself into gathering up WG for violin and piano.  "I don't have the energy today," I thought, and tried to come up with all the excuses I could reasonably cite without sounding too lazy.  But another thought came in loud and clear - "you know that no matter what the cost, it's worth it."

I got up.  As we bowed for violin and said our usual greeting of "konnichiwa," I added a goal of "I will be patient," and she said "I will try."  It wasn't a perfect lesson, but she tried the whole time, I resisted impatience, music was made and we invented a new game  to play.  When piano time was done, we went upstairs and painted our nails with glow-in-the-dark nail polish.

Now she's drawing pictures and doodling about on the piano for fun.  And I'm taking a blogging break, mostly to remind myself that it's worth it.  When it looks daunting from the front end, when the work is done - it feels wonderful.

Summertime practicing

I'm back!! Did you miss me?  I missed you!  We haven't been slacking in the music department, though - WonderGirl regaled the grandparents with her piano skills, and I had 7 shows - yes, seven!! with my bands over two weekends!  It was fantastic and I am super warmed up right now :)

But now we're back and trying to get into the swing of practicing again.  It's not easy after a vacation - especially when it's summer!  There are so many more interesting things to be doing!  I stumbled on this post by a fabulous blogger, Music for Tots that gave me some hope.  Her plan for summer practicing is to give her students easy folk tunes to learn to keep up their note and sight reading, and to learn lots and lots of them.  It keeps them active and having fun!

I love the Faber 5-Finger Melodies books, and I picked up their PlayTime Piano - Level 1: Rock 'n' Roll (Faber Piano Adventures) a few weeks ago to give the summer some excitement.  We've been having fun with Rock Around the Clock and other tunes that are enticing enough that WonderGirl has motivation to learn them without too much pushing from me.  I'm taking Music for Tots advice and going back and getting more easy music for WonderGirl to play around with!  She also posts some great free sheet music to snag online!!

Oh, and the Faber Chordtime books are no slouch either.  I'm a poor pianist at best, but I was able to play some really well-written and great sounding tunes this past Christmas with the ChordTime Piano Christmas (Faber Piano Adventures).

Tis the season to have fun with practicing!






PS - Are you on Pinterest??  Holy cannoli, what an awesome site!!  I'm here, follow me so I can follow you!

Guest Post: BEADS!

I'm thrilled to pieces to share this with you today!  My dear friend Becca from my ASU days was generous to write up a post on The Coolest Thing I Have Ever Seen A Violin Teacher Do For Motivation.  Really, I LOVE how tangible and cool it is!   Becca is a violinist extrordinare who has been sharing her awesome skills as a private and public teacher and has now expanded the student pool by 2 adorable boys. She told me about this technique a good 8 years ago at least, and it has stuck in my brain like peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth.  I can't wait to try it with WonderGirl!  Thanks Becca!!!

When I first started violin, I was blessed with the best teacher EVER. Her name was Robin. If I had a good lesson, she would let me go outside and jump on the big trampoline while she would chat with my mom.  When they called me back inside I knew it was time for the best part… BEADS!!!  If I had mastered a song that week, or achieved a particular goal we had set, I got to pick—get this—one pony bead to put on the shoelace I kept in my violin case. Are you thoroughly impressed?  I don’t know what it was about getting to string a shiny plastic bead onto that rainbow-striped shoelace (yes, I picked it out myself), but it was BIG.

When I started teaching violin lessons I thought I’d try this out on my students.  Each week we decide together what they need to do to earn a bead the next week.  The goal could be mastering a new song, memorizing a page of music, demonstrating correct posture for the entire lesson, or even remembering to bring all of your music (you'd be surprised :).  The adaptability is the beauty of it.  I also offer an extra bead if they have an overall great lesson or impress me in some other way.  Extra beads have been earned for a story written about the song they’re playing, a drawing of their violin, making up a song and playing it, making up words to a song they’ve played and singing it...  It’s fun to see what they come up with.

Students turn their strand of beads into keychains, bracelets, etc.  A new favorite is tying a big loop on one end of the cord so you can hang it on the scroll and show off your beads while you play. Some kids can even look at their strand and tell what they did to earn each one.  Somehow, they love this simple reward.  Probably for the same reason I did as a child.  Each bead serves as a physical representation of what they have accomplished in an area of study where successes are often intangible. 

Have fun trying it out!

Daddy!

Daddy can do ANYTHING.

My husband and I are polar opposites in many, many ways.  I was raised a proper violinist, he was .... well, here's a pre-me picture of him in action:

So in our family, the instrumental education has been delegated to me, and the exposure to all things ska, punk, reggae and the drum set in the basement are his department.  The other night I was bragging to him about WonderGirl's awesome piano skills (in her hearing of course) and then brought him up to speed on the things that are trickier for her right now.  She's gone from using just three fingers to all five and it has thrown her 4 year-old self for a loop.

"Hmm..." says the fix-it man that daddy is, and he sat down to the keyboard to try and play WonderGirl's newest song.  She lit up and raced across the room.

"Daddy!!  You're doing it - you're playing my song!!" she squealed.  His piano skills are limited (he played keyboards in a ska band back in high school) but her current music isn't written on a staff and is pretty easy for an adult to pick up instantly.  Spurred on by her excitement, he played a few other songs in her book.  When he was successful, she was bursting with praise, and when he stumbled she loved helping him.  Then she started begging to sit at the piano and play him what she could - it was an impromptu concert that I couldn't have planned better.

The novelty of her non-piano playing father trying to do what she did was incredibly thrilling for her - because as cool as I am, dad playing piano does have that "new" factor I lack.  Plus she adores him.  (Me too - it's nice have that in common:).  If you have a spouse who isn't pulling double duty as their music teacher - have them try playing your child's music.  It'll be a treat for the kid - and gives the other parent a chance to understand and have a respect for their child's latest technical triumphs.

Sweet skills

Remember my idea for lesson motivation/using up holiday candy?  Today we were using some gummies she'd gotten from school, and they ended up having a dual purpose.  All piano teachers have spare change lying around to put on student's hands when their wrists start sagging.  The game is trying to see if the student can keep it there without slipping off - and a nice teacher will even let the student keep the coin.  Since our one year-old is into swallowing every chokeable he can find, spare change is not readily found lately - so I improvised with her gummies.  Delicious!  Motivational!  Squishy!