Teaching and learning music in slices

I’ve been talking with many of my students about the importance of not trying to learning in giant gobbles but rather in small bite size pieces or slices of pie.  Learning a new piece is like eating pie; you don’t eat it all in one bite.  You take slices, and then forkfuls and then chew on each bite a while before moving on to the next.

Dr. Shinichi Suzuki  called  it “steps.”  To match the right step to the child, you need to adjust according to the individual.

So how do we do this?  By breaking up the piece into digestible chunks.  Often I will use my handy colored translucent tape to mark off a measure or a phrase that we want to concentrate on first.  So going from the “red phrase” to the “blue phrase” or whatever.  This has been tremendously successful.

If your child has come home with some of my music with a multicolored tape collage on it, have no fear, we’re just learning a new piece – in slices!