— Transcript —

Well, it’s been a minute, hasn’t it? Last time we were together, school was wrapping up. Some of us were still putting the finishing touches on our year-end recitals.

We had the whole summer to look forward to. Alright, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. We still have a few more weeks of summer, right?

And I for one know that after a couple of months away, I’m feeling refreshed and very ready to put back on my podcasting hat as we start to make that slow transition back into teacher mode and start thinking about new repertoire ideas for the coming

school year. Today, as has been our custom on the first week of each month, we’ll continue in our journey through Chris Caine’s A Year in 12 Keys. Today, we’ve got an energetic and syncopated romp at the beach.

We’ll also have something gentler for the late beginning level student from Martha Hill Duncan. Two pieces to help us savor the many moods of summer. Coming up next on the Piano Pedagogy Playlist.

Piano Pedagogy Playlist Greetings and welcome. I hope you’ve been having a lovely summer. My name is Luke Bartolomeo.

I’m a pianist, a teacher, and also a developer of music education apps, including Flashnote Derby, which believe it or not is celebrating its 15th birthday this month. Unbelievable.

Thank you so much to all of you who have used it in your studios and continue to recommend it to your students. Stay tuned for some more announcements about what’s going on in my app development life later on this month.

Whether you’ve been listening since the beginning or you’re joining me for the first time, thank you for choosing to spend a little bit of your day listening to some quality music written for piano students by living composers.

We’re going to turn first to another selection from Chris Caine’s A Year in 12 Keys. I’ve been playing one of these the first week of the month ever since January, and it’s been quite a ride so far.

We’ve had a lyrical show tune, some colorful French Impressionism, even a compact Fugetta. Today we’ve got a more contemporary pop style selection with Syncopation in Spades.

It’s a piece for a fairly advanced student, especially because of all that syncopation, and the fact that the syncopation doesn’t fall into any predictable repeated pattern. You have to be on your toes.

Right away, you’ll hear the youthful energy and the optimism, with a few moments in the middle that just stretch out and breathe in the salt air.

The name of the piece is Hanging Out at the Beach, and it’s from Chris Caine’s collection A Year in Twelve Keys. Hey, that’s fun!

The syncopation in that piece, and especially how it is notated, got me thinking about our students who take the more advanced theory exams.

You always have those questions of what’s the proper way of beaming these notes together, or what’s the proper use of ties.

But if you closely examine any score with complex rhythms and syncopation especially, you realize these aren’t just academic exercises.

When we beam notes correctly, we can more easily see the larger beats, and thus also more easily recognize what’s happening in between those beats.

Those notation rules can seem a little arbitrary, but there are practical reasons behind those conventions. Good notation gives us a clearer visual map of musical time.

All right, after all that excitement and counting, we’ll move on to something at the other end of the spectrum, both in terms of difficulty and mood.

When I launched this podcast exactly one year ago, the first episode was dedicated to pieces from a book called Cottage Days by Martha Hill Duncan. And we’re returning to that collection for our final piece today. It’s called Misty Morning.

It’s one of those beginner pieces with a sophisticated sound that belies its difficulty level. And for me, it’s another example of the quality repertoire we should be feeding to our young pupils.

Life’s too short to spend it playing insipid or uninspiring music at any age. Prepare yourselves to bask in the loveliness and grade two simplicity. That is Misty Morning.

That piece, it reminds me of waking up in the morning, barely conscious, and having that moment of realization when you remember you don’t have anywhere to be today. No rush to get to school or to work.

The day is waiting, but you can take your time and let it unfold at its own pace.

If you’d like to hear more from Cottage Days or to catch up on the January through July pieces from A Year and Twelve Keys, you’ll find them all on our website, it’s pianopedagogyplaylist.com.

And as always, links to purchase both collections are in the episode description, or you can find them on the website as well. And just like that, we have to close the lid on this episode of the Piano Pedagogy Playlist.

Thank you so much for choosing to join me for another Go Round. I’ll be back next Monday with some more of what’s good in the contemporary piano teacher’s repertoire. Until then, keep nurturing the music.