Membership Expired Kat Hunter
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Wow, great idea Lily!
It reminds me of a student that came in recently and she won’t be able to make the next recital, so we were trying to think of a good performance goal for her (she gets very nervous), and she came up with the idea of using Snapchat! I’ve never used snapchat but apparently you can take a photo or video of just about anything, and it goes up on your snap chat and stays there for 24 hours. So she felt it could be a good way to let her friends know that she’s a singer and to do a few seconds of singing for them (a mini performance), with the knowledge that if she got embarrassed about it, it would be taken down in 24 hours anyway, never to be seen again. A nifty idea!
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Haha yes, this practicing thing is a whole new topic!
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@Wes is she able to sing the scales when you sing them along with her?
Also, I don’t know if this is helpful, but I had a similar experience with a girl once and very gradually we got her to come out of her shell, but something that was integral to the process was making sure she had recordings of the scales to practice at home and that she had a practice space that she felt comfortable with. Even though she’d be really nervous in the lesson, she was still committed to improving so she’d practice her warm ups at home by herself (with no-one listening), and then eventually that’s what gave her the confidence to try doing them “infront of someone” in her lesson. Maybe this might help?
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Wow! The plot thickens! Keep persevering!
Yep, getting her helper on board with trying to learn the lyrics is a great idea.
It’s kind of difficult to explain why someone shouldn’t add a beat if there’s a real lack of musical understanding in the student. This is of course not the real reason, but the most simplistic I could make it would be that if you add in an extra beat then you’ll end a beat late and it’s important that you “finish with the backing track”. This avoids having to explain chords progressions and bar lengths for the millionth time, even if it is a little misleading haha:)I was trying to think of songs with easier lyrics and the first thing that came to mind was Let it Be by the beatles. Don’t know if that helps!
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A few ideas….
For the rhythm side of things, I used to be a dancer and do dance competitions, and I remember at competitions, there was this deaf girl who was the most amazing tap dancer! And I asked her how she could hear the music and she said through vibrations in the floor! So maybe you could try something like this…. Get your student to touch the speaker so she can hear vibrations and chose a song with a really defined kick and snare sound – as the kick will often play on the one, and the snare on the other emphasised beat in the bar. Maybe if she can combine touch recognition with some knowledge about how drum beats work it could help? Sometimes people don’t even realise that you can usually count 4 beats per bar, and that usually something will indicate when the new bar has started. I once had a student who was really struggling with rhythm, so I found a song with a really awesome distinctive, repetitive drum beat (I chose Eple by Royksopp – this has a slightly more complicated kick pattern though, so you could choose something even more simple). This has no vocal melody, so we only had to focus on the grove. I just got the student to do a hand movement to every “1” beat. And then I added another hand movement for the snare, and before long she could find the beat in the whole song. Then we talked about noticing how the chords and melody also changed on every “1” beat. Maybe something like this could be cool?As for lyrics, I remember learning in highschool psychology that we learn things better by associating the learned thing with other information; that’s why mnemonics work! So you could try to talk about some things to associate the lyrics with so that they stick in her memory better. You could start by talking about what the lyrics are discussing, what they mean, what story they’re telling (semantic memory). How the story changes in verse one to verse two etc. You could use other information too, like noticing if there’s a certain rhyme scheme or alliteration. Talk about how these sounds make the same mouth shape (physical memory). Maybe taking the time to talk about the lyrics could give her more to hold on to?
I’ve got no idea if either of these things will work but could be worth a try!!
