Bonnie's Blog

Music lessons are about learning to play an instrument or sing-but they should be so much more! Looking back over my last couple of weeks of teaching I brought so many new ideas about music (and about life) to my students. And most of them came from my book Making Music and Having A Blast! A Guide For All Music Students. It’s the book I’ve waited years to have because it makes my life so much easier and my students’ lives so much fuller.
All my students are working their way through the music theory workbook in the book. I was terrible in music theory. I only learned what a scale was when I was in college and I sat in the back of the room in my theory classes hoping I would never be called on unless the answer was “C Major” or ” A tonic chord.” Because I know how hard theory can be (and how easily students forget it) I wrote the workbook as “theory as a second language” in small clear steps with lots of encouragement. Now even the sixth graders can make their way through theory and use it in their playing.
I try to have students bring the name of a composer and piece they’ve heard each week into the lesson and I give them a few tidbits (sometimes using my book or another book but many times just random things off the top of my head) for them to learn. This week I asked them to read the chapter, “Why Listen to Classical Music?” and “Hey. Listen to This!” which gives listening ideas.This month’s listening assignment is to go through the list on page 200 of dramatic classical music (you can hear everything on you-tube) and get to know each piece well enough so if they heard it on the radio they could say, “Hey! That’s Jupiter by Holst or I love that piece; it’s Bolero by Ravel. After they make their way in the next couple of months through that list then we are going back to review the Renaissance and Baroque Periods in the previous chapters and do more listening. It’s hard to cram everything into a lesson but this book makes bringing in music theory, history, and listening easy. In the next couple of days I’ll tell you more about how to give your students a fuller experience with little work from you. I know this may sound like a shameless plug for my book Making Music and Having A Blast! and I guess it is. But I’m really letting you in on a big secret. In the following days I’ll mention some of the other ways I’ve used the book and some other ideas to give my students a REAL education.