All Keyed Up
Creative Conversations for Today’s Piano Teachers
An interview podcast in which Ben Kapilow speaks with a wide range of professionals about topics that are pertinent to the field of piano teaching.
Artina McCain: Yamaha Artist and Teacher
Artina McCain discusses the overlap of being a concert pianist and a piano teacher. Topics discussed include demonstrating for students, selecting repertoire as a means of self-expression, Artina's African American Folk Songs Collection, physical wellness and muscle activation techniques, working with college students, and how to build a performance career while working as a teacher.
Erin Parkes: Teaching Students with ADHD
Erin Parkes, Founder and Executive Director of the Lotus Centre for Special Music Education and the Lotus Centre Institute, speaks about teaching piano to students with ADHD.
Takenya Battle: The Key of Easy
Takenya Battle discusses studio management. In the first 10 minutes of the interview, we spoke about Takenya's amazing life story! The remainder of the interview is focused on Takenya's recommendations for using digital smart tools to make their studio management and teaching more efficient.
Daniel McFarlane: Supersonics
Daniel McFarlane discusses some of the core features of his method book series, Supersonics: melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic elements that help make songs catchy, pop music influences, composition activities, and the upcoming Primer series. Daniel also offers advice for anyone interested in creating their own method book.
Tony Parlapiano: Teaching Pop Music
Tony Parlapiano, creator of popMATICS, offers his thoughts on a successful approach to teaching pop music in piano lessons. Topics discussed include sequences leading up to teaching chords, identifying chords by numbers as opposed to letters, chord diagrams, how to adapt to student requests, methods of teaching pop songs by ear, and pencil and paper writing vs. digital notation programs.
The Piano Pod: The Future of Piano Teaching
Yukimi Song, Eric Hunter, and Clara Zhang, members of The Piano Pod Podcast, discuss the future of piano teaching, a topic heavily addressed on their podcast. Topics discussed include Twitch, Youtube, social media networking, multi-style and interdisciplinary teaching approaches, learning by rote, and neurodiversity.
Niloufar Nourbakhsh: Pianist, Composer, Curator, Laptopist
Niloufar Nourbakhsh discusses her multifaceted career, which spans the gamut from being an internationally renowned composer, pianist, and teacher to wide-ranging advocacy for social change. Topics discussed include the connections between politics and music, the Zohra Orchestra (Afghanistan's first all-female orchestra), teaching composition vs. teaching piano, the New York Philharmonic Very Young Composers Program, music education in Iran, and the Iranian Female Composers Association.
Christopher Norton Discusses His Compositional Style
Christopher Norton, internationally renowned composer, reflects on his compositional style. He discusses composing melodies, rhythmic groove, writing across styles while still maintaining a compositional identify, and approaches to articulation. He also offers advice for teachers who use his pieces in their studios and gives us some sneak peaks of currently unpublished works.
Katie Wardrobe: Up Your Music Tech Game
Katie Wardrobe, Melbourne-based music technology trainer and founder of Midnight Music, discusses some of her recommendations of great tech programs for piano piano teachers.
Brenden Lowe: Jazz Piano School
Brenden Lowe, Founder of Jazz Piano School and host of the Jazz Piano School podcast, discusses jazz piano pedagogy and theory. Topics discussed include teaching chord voicings, approaches to soloing, chord extensions, chord-scale theory, rhythmic feel and groove, and Brenden's current business consultation offerings.
Melissa Martiros: Community Outreach and OpporTUNEity
Melissa Martiros, Dean of Music at Anna Maria College and Founding Director of OpporTUNEity, discusses her community outreach work. She speaks about her organization, which strengthens the ties between post-secondary music programs and their local communities while promoting the use of music as a means to engage undergraduate students in educational programs that emphasize social change. She also speaks more broadly about the topic of community outreach.
Dennis Alexander: Composing Piano Music for Students
Dennis Alexander, one of North America's most prolific and popular composers of educational piano music for students at all levels, discusses composing pedagogical piano music. He discusses his own compositions and offers some thoughts on the field of pedagogical piano music in general, as well as advice for aspiring composers.
Nicola Cantan: Teaching Composition
Nicola Cantan, creator of Vibrant Music Teaching, speaks about teaching composition to piano students. She addresses the topic generally as well as some specific resources offered by Vibrant Music Teaching. Topics discussed include the pedagogical benefits of composition, creative vs. non-creative approaches, integrating composition and improvisation with other elements of piano teaching, micro-compositions, long-term sequencing of composition curriculums, and teaching lyric-writing to students of all skill levels.
Leila Viss: Towards a Dynamic Studio
Leila Viss, author of The iPad Piano Studio, editor for the American Music Teacher Magazine, and host of the Key Ideas podcast, discusses some of the characteristic features of dynamic piano studios. Topics discussed include apps, backing tracks, varied repertoire, playing piano in bands, improvisation, the Effective Practice Tracker, and intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation.
Christina Whitlock: Pep Talk
Christina Whitlock, independent studio owner, professor, pianist, adjudicator, and host of the Beyond Measure Podcast, comes on to join in a pep talk for piano teachers. The goal of this episode is to help make piano teachers feel great about the work that they do! Christina discusses some optimistic ways of reframing our thinking around some elements of piano teaching that may pose challenges, and she also discusses some positive elements of piano teaching that may go unnoticed that could perhaps become more of a focus.
Mario Ajero: Using Technology to Go Beyond Note-Reading
Dr. Mario Ajero, internationally recognized authority in incorporating technology in piano pedagogy, speaks about some ways that piano teachers can broaden the focus of their lessons to teach without an over-reliance on note-reading. He also addresses some ways that technology can help to that effect. Topics discussed include learning by video, rote teaching, playing by ear, Piano Maestro, pop music pedagogy, and Home Concert Xtreme.
Scott Price: Piano Teaching and Autism
Dr. Scott Price, internationally renowned expert on music and autism, offers some advice for piano teachers on how to most productively and successfully work with students with autism. Topics discussed include person vs. identity first language, defining autism, avoiding abstractions, lesson planning strategies, technique, and visual learning.
Leah Claiborne: Diversify Your Repertoire and Studio
Dr. Leah Claiborne discusses her scholarship on pedagogical piano music by black composers and more broadly speaks about the process of how piano teachers can diversify their repertoire and students.
Julie Knerr Hague and Katherine Fisher: Piano Safari
Julie Knerr Hague and Katherine Fisher, the authors of Piano Safari, discuss the pedagogical thinking behind this very popular method book series. Topics discussed include sequencing, mapping real world experiences onto musical concepts, the value of learning pieces that de-emphasize note reading in favor of other concepts, landmark note reading, building strong fingertips, and general advice for teachers to maximize the use of Piano Safari in their studios.
Geraldine Anello: Playing Piano on Broadway
Geraldine Anello, Broadway music director and pianist, speaks about her transition from a formal classical training to playing shows in a variety of styles. She compares her current teaching philosophy with the one in which she was brought up, and she talks about some stylistic differences between classical and Broadway piano playing that she picked up over the years. Topics discussed include groove and rhythmic emphasis across different styles, effectively playing bass lines, the importance of practicing with recordings, phrasing, and technology. She is also a published poet, having recently released a poetry collection called Naked (Truth).