Once the students have mastered the blues and minor pentatonic scales as discussed in the previous post Teaching Jazz Improvisation: What Notes Do I Play? Teach the students to perform as a group ten 2-measure blues riffs, which the entire ensemble learns to perform together as a part of a warm-up.

The middle school/junior high school years provide an excellent opportunity to begin to introduce kids to jazz performance and improvisation. Most middle school and junior high level jazz ensemble music arrangements involve only a few chord changes making it an excellent time forstudents to practice the art of improvisation. Here are a few jazz improvisational exercises that are not usually taught and sometimes forgotten.

The beginning stages of learning a musical instrument is the most challenging time for most students. Given the current health crisis resulting in school districts keeping learning remote, music students are confronted with new challenges when learning a new musical instrument. During these tough times, beginning music students can easily become frustrated and want to quit. We all need encouragement when we are down. We can help our young musicians to be strong by sharing with them obstacles that we have overcome in our own life journey. Life’s challenges are opportunities for us to grow to our fullest potential.

In this video, I will share some straightforward strategies parents can do to help their beginning instrumental music students succeed when taking virtual music lessons.

In order to avoid exposure to the coronavirus, we’ve all have had to limit our activities by staying home more often than usual. For music teachers and their students, in-person instrumental music instruction by nature can be a bit risky. I think we all would agree, music lessons are an important part of any musician’s success, no matter their age and ability. However, the current health crisis does not mean that students must stop getting the instruction they need to improve their craft. For those of us passionate about music instruction, virtual music lessons offer a safer alternative for students to sustain their progress in instrumental music while maintaining safe social distancing practices.

In this short video, I will share a few simple steps that can help make online music lessons as meaningful as in-person lessons.

As music educators, we often struggle with two questions. How to get our students to practice? And, what to do when the results of student practice efforts are less than satisfactory? The elementary/middle school years are critical for building essential student practice routines. At an early age, we need to help our students to identify their specific strengths and areas of improvement. We also need to model practice strategies for our students as part of our rehearsals and/or lessons. Below are a few ideas that are not usually taught and sometimes forgotten.

Learning melodies and songs by ear helps improve in all fundamental areas of music. Including this skill as part of a practice routine makes practicing enjoyable, concrete and practical. The process associated with learning melodies by ear allows the musician to practice all the music skills that matter most, which are technique, sound, phrasing, timing, rhythmic accuracy and musicality.

As many of us music teachers, students and professional musicians return back to school and the performing arts. There is concern around keeping the performance arts safe amid the pandemic. The preliminary results of the a study focusing on the distribution of respiratory aerosols released while playing wind and brass instruments, singing, acting, speaking and dancing conducted by an International Coalition of Performing Arts has released recommendations for creating the safest possible environment for bringing performing arts back into classrooms, band rooms, rehearsal spaces, and performance halls.

Music and English language arts have three fundamental learning processes in common. First, music and language learning are auditory and involve the ability to hear and manipulate sounds (Butzlaff, 2000; Hansen, Bernstorf, & Stuber, 2014). Second, music and literacy uses a system of written symbols as a means to communicate information to others (Hall & Robinson, 2012). Finally, music and literacy involve encoding and decoding systems used to process and construct meaning (Hall & Robinson, 2012; Hansen et al., 2014; Jancke, 2012; Rautenberg, 2013; Tierney & Kraus, 2013). In today's post, I’m sharing four benefits of music instruction for English Language Learning (ELL). 

Today, I'm writing about two of my favorite music documentaries my middle school music students enjoyed watching during African American History Month. The two movies are Keep on Keeping’ On and Thunder Soul. These films provide a great platform for meaningful discussions in the instrumental music class.