5th
AnniversaryBookProject
Podcast In Piano Lessons
By:
Maja Dakic-Brkovic
Creative Commons License:
CC BY-SA
Author contact:
@maja_prolece
Author Biography:
A piano teacher from Europe, Serbia, Belgrade. Works in a state music school “Vojislav-Lale Stefanovic”, in Uzice. (Elementary music school together with high school of music.) Students are from 7-18 years old. She teaches individual piano lessons, organizes group lessons and student recital concerts at school and in the city hall. Maja’s primary intentions are to teach her students elementary music literacy, teach them how to listen to classical music and thus to love it. Her other, but very important aim in pedagogy is teaching technology literacy through music and music education applications.More info:
http://about.me/majadb
Activity Summary
Record student’s playing (in a few tries, if needed) during the regular class, or during the public
performance, analyze the recording by replaying it, to assure if everything is ne or need more
polishing, record student’s announcement, join announcement and playing tracks into one track, apply basic sound editing (noise removal, normalizing, mp3 conversion), publish recordings regularly on a podcasting blog, inform students and their parents about new recordings, by email (or Twitter,
Blog ...), listen with your students to new recordings during the nal part of the lessons, promote
students’ recordings / playing
Class or subject area: Music, Piano PlayingGrade level(s):
1st grade elementary music school till 4th grade high music school
Specifc learning objectives:
•
Objective listening skills
•
Concentration /attention
•
Aspiration for perfection
•
Ability to overcome errors during playing
•
Healthy inter-personal relationships in the class
•
Motivational force for better engagement in practicing at home
•
Technology literacy
•
Materials for e-portfolio
In my lessons, I focus at developing students’:
•
objective listening skills
•
concentration of attention
•
aspiration for perfection
•
ability to overcome errors during playing
•
healthy inter-personal relationships in the class
•
motivational force for better engagement in practicing at home
•
technology literacy
•
materials for e-portfolioI can reach all these goals fairly easily and simply by recording students’ playing.For the purpose of this text, I will focus on audio recording only. Although, the use of video recording
is even more rewarding, I prefer audio recording, because it is easier to create and le size is smaller
and thus quicker to upload.Recording students’ playing is a great way to develop students’ listening skills, concentration of attention, motivation, as well as, aspiration for perfection, which is nowadays a trend in classical music.In order to prepare their recordings for online publishing, students diligently practice a lot more than usual, because they want to show their best playing to the potential audience. Therefore, they reach better quality of playing.Using recordings in piano duet practicing at home, is a solution, when it’s hard to manage classes for both students at the same time. Student practices playing along with the recording of the other one.In case that someone missed the live concert, online recordings may be used. Also, we can include students’ recordings in their e-portfolios.
Recording Time & The Benefts
Teachers can record their students during the regular classes, as well as during public performances. Also, students can record themselves at home – while practicing or while practicing public performance, that is simulating playing in public.
All these ways are very benecial, as they immediately put students into a position to play the best
way they can, at a given time.
Students’ Challenges & Benefts During Recording Time
The main goal we hit by recording students’ playing is that they will be willing to repeat playing of the same composition many times while striving for perfection. Actually, usually so many times until they
feel satised. For me, it’s really amazing how far they may go with it. Outside of a recording situation, they often feel very satised with all kinds of their playing, but at the very moment the record button is
pressed, the situation magically changes!Playing for making great recordings is manifold rewarding.
This way they develop the ability to keep their attention for a long time, at their will, to play the piece in its entirety without errors and at the satisfactory quality level and to repeat this process many times.Depending on the instrument students possess, they may use microphones for recording playing on acoustic instruments or cables connected to computers for recording playing on digital pianos.
Although, digital recording will result in better sound quality, analog recording has some specic
advantages. For example, I often hear stories from my students, that while they are trying to record themselves, a family member suddenly enters the room and thus spoils the recording. Even though they might feel a bit angry, it is very useful, because they will have to play again, concentrate again, and so on – which is actually one of our main goals. So, I often encourage them to record their playing whatever the circumstances may be.
Other reasons for multiple attempts to record are often that they accidentally delete the le while
trying to replay it or while copying it to another media. Of course, in most cases, the main reason is
that they are not able to record it at rst, without anything undesirable to happen during the playing.
What Is Podcast?
Podcasting is publishing les on a blog. Individuals can subscribe to a ‘podcast’ and download it, to
their personal computers, iPods, MP3 players, cell phones, or PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). They
automatically receive new shows, as they are published. Audio podcasts are relatively small le size,
and easy to create.
How To Create Podcast With Students’ Playing
What I actually do is record my students the moment they feel ready for it. We try and see how it
goes. If it still needs some polishing, we analyze the recording, nd spots which need improvement,
listen the rhythm accuracy, dynamics, accentuation, left-right hand volume relation, measure the tempo and so on.It is all right to try and record the same piece a few times during the same lesson. It often takes a
few times to make it ne, as it’s hard for students to play correctly from the rst go. Anyway, I always
encourage them to continue with playing till the end of the piece, even though they made a mistake
and know that we are going to delete that le. It is very useful to practice overcoming errors and to use that le for analyzing purposes.Once it goes smoothly, we replay it just to be sure that everything is just ne. After that, I record the
short announcement of my student. He or she says his/her name, class, the name of the school and
teacher, and nally the name of the composer and the piece he/she has just recorded.The announcement goes into a separate audio le, and I add it later at the beginning of a playing
track. After recording process is done, I apply some basic editing, such as noise removal, normalizing, mp3
conversion to make the sound better and le smaller.
I have created a Podcasting blog, dedicated to my students’ playing during this school year on podbean.com site.
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