Sounds Like Me in Houston, T - Sounds Like Me by Elisabeth Swim

Sing Like No One is Listening

7/9/2019

... or 'my summer cleaning animal scat'

Right after high school, I was privileged to spend time in a small farming community. My job there was to take care of the children's petting zoo. Seems like fun, yes?

Most of the job was cleaning up after hundreds of animals, work that felt repetitive and never ending. So I sang. All kinds of songs every day until my work was through when I would walk cheerfully up a hill to my dorm to shower and study. Neuroscience confirms that the singing and not the scent of scat that made me feel so at ease. 😉

The extended out breaths you need for singing cue the heart to slow down, supporting a calm physiological state. The accessible and fluid sounds of singing send signals to the body-mind that support calm readiness to engage with self and life. (Stephen Porges)

Sometimes I do the same thing now while I'm stuck in traffic or doing anything that requires seemingly endless repetitive effort. I just sing.

You may know that I host a non-performance singing group for people who, like me, simply want to sing. I’m so grateful to have the support of the Houston Arts Alliance to continue our meetings throughout the 2018-19 season.
Our next meeting is coming up soon. Sign up here for more info!

Kids on the Block

6/10/2019

When I started piano in first grade, my mother and I lived in an apartment complex in the flats of San Francisco's East Bay Area. My two-block radius was home to kids whose families had moved to the neighborhood from a range of cities and countries. Neighbor kids and I played together outside or in each others’ homes, using our imaginations in combo with toys, big and small. I still have scars and bone warps from learning to ride a bike, roller skate, tumble and excavate. To be honest, I did not have a lot else going on. My mom raised me on her own and every structured activity was a luxury. She funded piano and choir inspired me to make the most of these. This included asking me every weekday whether I had practiced piano, doing her best to make sure I did that a few times every lesson week, and driving me to and from lessons and choir rehearsals in far-away parts of town. I'm so glad she did. There were times I would not play. Times when I practiced and ignored my teachers' instructions. Somehow I lived to tell you about what I call 'home play,' a brain-friendly term for 'practicing.' Looking ahead to summer, I hope you can build time into your family's schedule to rehearse whatever it is you love, whether it's piano, softball, painting or robotics. I’m not here to add another task to your already-full plate. However, I would like to make it easier for you get more joy through your family’s learning. As you may know from my last note to you, I made How to Home Play to help you do just this. Download it and apply these three simple things to ANYthing your family learns.

How to Home Play

5/21/2019

As a kid, I was NOT a diligent prodigy, practicing piano on my own with no help from Mom. Any home play I did, all the way through high school, was motivated by attention from my mother. If she didn’t sit with me while I played piano, she reminded me to play it and said encouraging words when I did.

Once I had built up certain skills, playing piano became its own reward. Its 88 keys became a place where I grew into myself, physically, emotionally and cognitively. The piano was a place for me to be myself, independent of my family. But my family's encouragement still fueled my efforts.

As we get ready to head into summer, I thought I would send you a few words about home play. These brain-friendly words mean 'practice' in my Playful Mindful Music studio. Home play does not have to happen every day in order to work--a lot of benefit can come from three mini sessions per week.

I made How to Home Play, an easy download that you can print and share with your loved ones as you plan for summer. No matter how busy your schedule is, these three simple things can make home play for your family fun and doable.

When Up is Right and Down is Left

4/26/2019

in Houston, TX, where I live, we don’t have a lot of hills. But, still, when I give people driving directions, I usually mention things being up or down the street from each other. Using 'up' and 'down' to describe something sideways is second nature to me as a piano guide.

Pitch is the quality of sound resulting from sound waves of particular speeds. All sounds have pitches, whether or not the human ear can hear them. Drum sounds, for example, have pitches that can be difficult to identify. High Pitches have fast-frequencies and Low pitches have slow frequencies.

The piano keyboard is made of 88 different sounds arranged from left to right from lowest to highest. Left is low, right is high. That’s what I said. I know—it can be confusing. Fortunately, the alphabet of music names has only seven letters. They repeat over and over again, with black keys in between, on the piano keyboard.

My students to hear and point out sounds 'up and down' the keyboard through fun and collaborative sound games. While my students are working on this, they are also learning to see and use different rhythmic symbols, and the notes’ letter names.

This learning happens without my students really knowing it because they are in a zone of creative flow otherwise known as fun.

Find Center with Low Sounds

4/26/2019

Could you use an extra tool for calm? I've got a mindfulness tip for you that's all about low sounds, which are different from quiet sounds as my students learn.

Let's start with high and low sounds. High-pitched sounds include birds chirping, swooping car alarms and kitten meows. Instruments that play high sounds include flutes, piccolos, violins and chimes. They are called high because their sound waves happen at a high frequency or quickly, and look a little like this:

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

Low-pitched sounds such as a mature cow's moo, the chuff of a train engine or a tiger, or a ship's fog horn have lower frequency sounds waves, which means they happen more slowly than those of high-pitched sounds. Their sound waves look roughly like this:

/''''''''\____/"""""\____/"""""\____

Bass guitar, tuba, bass drum, bassoon and didggery-doo all make low sounds.

For kids, it's easier to hear high sounds with clarity than low sounds (because of the way both brain and ear develop). But adults can hear low sounds more acutely. And low sounds have deep emotional significance: they are the first steady rhythmic sounds humans hear in the womb as mama's heartbeat.

This brings me to your mindfulness tool. Because low sounds have such a harmonious relationship with the oldest parts of the brain, listening to low sounds can calm your system. In a celebrated relaxing song by Marconi Union, low-frequency sounds are used continuously. It's probably not a good idea to listen to this while driving, because it is so relaxing.

Even without cuing up a snooze-inducing sound bath, you can still experience the benefits of active listening to low sounds. Most mainstream music features some kind of bass or percussion sound that is steady throughout each tune. There are also a range of higher and lower sounds in the ambient noises of daily life, from the working din of a cafe to the sounds on a television to the noises of a busy street.

Your mindful mission, if you choose to accept it, is to listen for low sounds throughout your day. Want to train your ear to hear low? Listen to Bach's cello suites (mostly bass sounds) Chaka Khan's Tell Me Something Good or Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah (slower bass) or Charles Wright's Express Yourself (quicker bassline). Listen for the steady sounds that outline the beat of each song.

This will train you to hear and name low sounds. Over time, you will be able to use your ears, even in what seems like chaos, to find a focal point for your mind. This can reduce irrititation in the moment, and stave off overwhelm to keep you more contented all day long.

Say WALK, Say STANDING

4/25/2018

Rhythm is the first thing I work with in my students’ early lessons. We improvise (play spontaneously) based on fast and slow rhythms. I teach them the basic musical note shapes for 1 (one) beat and 2 (two) beats.

One Beat
To clap and count,
say WALK.

For young children, movement words are excellent to cue rhythm through speech. I teach my students to move in a walk and say “walk” with each step, while pointing to a quarter note (see above). Or I teach them to clap and with each clap, say “walk.”

Two Beats.
To clap and count,
say STAND-ING

For two-beat notes, I teach a child to step and stay to the chanted word “stand-ing”. To clap a half note, we clap on the first beat and squeeze hands together on the second beat.

Music is rhythm. Language is rhythm. Play is rhythm. When we improve rhythm, we make other areas of life easier and more enjoyable.

How to Slow Down

3/18/2018

The next time you find yourself in a state of stress or anxiety while talking with a loved one, try extending your “out” breaths, your exhalations.

With every sentence you speak, see how many words you can speak before you take your next breath. You may even play with slowing down your speech.

Read out loud, breathing at the commas:

The rain,
in Spain,
stays mainly,
in the plain.*

Now read this version of the sentence out loud, breathing at the commas

The rain in Spain,
stays mainly in the plain.

And, finally, breathe out, breathe in, and read:

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.

How did each version feel? What did you sense as you slowed down with longer breaths out, or exhalations?

*from My Fair Lady by Lerner and Loewe

Balance in Three

3/18/2018

Some of my favorite centering songs have 3 beats. What I mean is that their underlying pulse--akin to a heartbeat--is counted 1 - 2 - 3. This odd but centering rhythm has a swinging feeling and is used in ballads, meditations and waltzes alike. What happens when you listen for the 1 - 2 - 3 beat in these tunes:

*This gospel classic and this grown-up ballad sung by the late and beloved Aretha Franklin *Kermit's colorful question from the Muppet Movie
*My favorite waltz and love song from Viennese operetta
While you listen, if you like, find the pulse of each song. Once you can hear and tap along with the regular strong beats, try counting 1-2-3 over and over, along with the music.
How does this feel?

Bring Your Own Rhythm

3/18/2018

Make time regularly for a family jam session where you either play along with your favorite songs or make up your own. Any musical instrument can build skills that translate to success at the piano. Rhythm instruments are wonderful and you can even make your own … my favorite trick is to fill old supplement bottles with beans or rice to use as shakers. You can paint them or cover them with collage for extra fun!

Photo by Matthieu A on Unsplash

In your at-home jam band, everyone gets an instrument. Rotate instruments as needed for a sense of fairness. Start by taking turns leading the circle, by playing their name. (for example, I would play E-LIS-a-beth with four beats).

Do your best to avoid correcting the kids: simply follow their lead, especially while they are leading. Make sure they can hear your voice over your jam band sound for the next part: As a group, play fast, slow, medium, loud and soft. The main goal is to have fun … and if when you talk about the sounds you hear, try to use active listening (see the Listen Up! chapter in Piano Without Tears).

It’s fine to ask everyone afterward what their favorite part was, just try to use neutral language when talking about the music you make, in general. “We made loud sounds, quiet sounds, fast sounds, slow sounds … all kinds of sounds!”

How Long Can I Learn?

3/18/2018

One of the most important ways to respect your brain is to work within its optimal learning time frame. In my brain-friendly music lessons, I encourage my students to work within a time frame that’s appropriate for their body-mind system.

There is a simple formula to estimate this at any given moment.

The brain has optimal lengths of time for learning that increase with age. A good target to aim is your child’s age plus two. A child who is developmentally seven years old can practice, do a worksheet or any other task … for up to nine minutes optimally without a break. After that they may continue to work but mistakes will increase, a sign that the system needs a break or change of pace. This is, of course, provided the child’s basic needs are met and they are not hungry, over tired, etc …

The optimum attention span for adults maxes out at 20 minutes so if you notice yourself getting antsy in traffic or long meetings, you may now understand why.

Get Your Kids to Play Music

3/18/2018

No matter how responsible your young ones are, they are still children, and they need support of the adults in their lives to help them build the new habit of home play. Your active interest and celebration of their efforts are invaluable to support them in this new and grown-up habit.

There are two things that you, as a parent, can do to increase the likelihood that your child will play on their own in between lessons. It’s simple, can be very brief, and requires no musical training on your part.

I. Show Active Interest, Without Judgement: Ask them about their lessons and what they are learning. Do your best to check in at least once during the week outside of lessons. About the sounds (or pieces, for older kids) they make and whether they are:

Slow, fast, medium speed? A combination?
High-pitched, low, medium? A combination?
Finally, ask:
What is most fun?

Photo by Clark Young on Unsplash

II. Celebrate Effort: Praise your child's focus, effort and patience with themselves after you hear them complete a lesson or home play. Tell them, if you like, what you noticed about the sounds they played (from the ideas above). Time permitting, ask them to show you what they are working on, and show interest as they do so. Even if when they explain or show something to you, it’s obviously still new for them, avoid correcting them. You can share any bits of information like this with your teacher so she can use them in lessons to support your child’s understanding.

No one in the world can give your child attention the way you and your co-parent can. Because of your unique relationship, even a small gesture of positive interest from you will amplify their will to work at something!

Mistakes Help

3/18/2018

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
James Joyce

My students reveal their brilliance to me through what they call mistakes. They tell me which part of a student’s mind-body system has mastered a skill and which part is still learning it. As a teacher, I need my students’ mistakes in order to do my job well.

Learning naturally, in a way that is brain-friendly, should be like any other spontaneous human activity we do: There is a time to begin, a time to end, and a time to change pace or switch gears.

No matter what my capacity for empathy may be, I am still a separate person from my students … I don’t get to feel what it is like to think their thoughts or be them.

This is why I need mistakes, cues that a student has gotten their maximum benefit for the time being, and that is time to switch gears.

Mistakes point out to me the gaps in learning that it is my job as a teacher to fill.

The mind-body system needs to repeat a skill thousands of times in order to master it. A common misconception is that if someone has learned how to do something in one situation, they should be able to apply this skill in all other settings or contexts.

Because people have different learning styles, they may take to something presented in one way, but it might take time for them to master it in other situations.

A mistake could tell me to present a concept in a different way, to work with a different part of my student’s personality, or to guide the lesson to a different task–to take a brain break.

When a student makes a mistake in a session, I celebrate their courage to take a risk doing something that is not yet easy for them and knowing they might make a mistake. I do my best to model positivity and strong esteem for my students. We look at their mistakes as valuable information, rather than as matters of guilt or shame.

Play Now, Practice Later

3/17/2018

I tell my students to never practice the piano, but to always play the piano. When you think it’s fun, you do it more often.

Joe Raciti, pianist and music teacher

Children want to do what trusted adults ask of them. But asking for something before they are ready to trust me dooms the whole idea of home play (practicing) from the start.

Instead, I build trust during the first few lessons with healthy amounts of play, in the form of copying games, rhythm clapping and shared creativity. After a good amount of time building trust in this way, a child is much better prepared internally to follow directions from me when I am not there. Still, I avoid using the word practice in my requests as much as possible, at the beginning.

Enough of my students’ parents have their own childhood memories of word practice being used in unkind ways that I stay away from it altogether in the early years of lessons.
This helps my students and their parents develop an understanding of home play as the discovery of music and learning that happens in between lessons. Calling it home play frames it as a choice my students make, rather than a chore.

If students don't do their home play, they still enjoy their lessons. But they do feel excited and motivated when they have done it, because they can see and sense their own progress.

After a few years of study, I do suggest calling home play practicing, but only after a student has gotten into the habit of consistently enjoying playing the piano on their own in between sessions.

For now, though, the focus is on home play. If you, dear reader, have any habits or skills in your life that you need to practice, give the term home play a spin and see if it gives the thought of it more energy. Let me know what you find out!

Music is Math You Can Feel

3/15/2018

Music is rhythm. Language is rhythm. Play is rhythm. When we improve rhythm, we make other areas of life easier and more enjoyable.

To teach the most fundamental part of music to yourself, or your kids, find the beat, what we in music call the down beat or the one.

This is the first beat in the rhythmic cycle of a piece or song. Most songs on the radio are in a 4-beat cycle, and so is The Alphabet Song. When you clap along and count, on the down beat, or first beat of each cycle, it will go something like this:

A B C D
One Two Three Four
(CLAP)

E F   G ----
One Two   Three Four
(CLAP)

H I   J K
One Two   Three Four
(CLAP)

L M N O P ----
One Two   Three Four
(CLAP)

This song has four beats in its rhythmic cycle. There are songs with two beats, three beats, six beats, eight beats and even five and seven beats.

Find the Beat is a fun game to play on your own or with your family. While listening to music, try to hear the strongest pulse in the beat. You will notice that it repeats itself regularly. Then count one out loud when you hear that beat. You may tap or clap with your one. Notice how fast the other beats go by in between pulses. Begin to count along with those. Eventually you will find yourself counting to the same number over and over again before you get back to one. That’s the beat … you have found it!

Excerpted from the Amazon exclusive:

I created the song Add it Up to help you find the beat! Click on the button below and then scroll down to the media box for the song Add it Up. The beat changes throughout the song: Can you still find it?

Listen to Add it Up

Sit Still ≠ Pay Attention

3/15/2018

Can you think of a time when you were in a long meeting, or sitting in traffic? How long did it take before you started fidgeting? Was it a relief at the end to be able to stand up and move around?

In a culture of productivity, speed is at a premium. Many well-meaning grownups believe the myth that if a child sits still they will learn faster.

This is simply not true!

Children learn fastest by moving because the brain develops through movement! For more on this, please see Smart Moves, Why Learning is Not All in Your Head (Carla Hanneford, 2005).

Many, if not most, children absorb more information while they are moving than while they are forcing their bodies to be still. Stillness takes a lot of energy, especially after a child has already spent a full day in school, as most do before the most common piano lesson times.

Fortunately, I have a professional background in brain-friendly movement, which I use for mini breaks in my piano lessons. The piano keyboard and written music can both be visually overwhelming and can make students feel tired after long periods of focus. With gentle, brain-friendly movement breaks, my students are able to maximize our time together at the piano, and feel good about themselves while learning.

Another way I keep students engaged is to give them brief standing breaks during lessons, sometimes playing musical copycat or note search games all over the piano keyboard.

For more on brain-friendly movement and my gentle approach to accelerated learning, click below to read my first book. Or check out the Brain Highways video channel.

Generous Attention

Piano is Simpler than I Thought!

3/15/2018

Though I started playing piano at age six, it took me almost two decades to befriend it for good. The piano is big, and its music has its own language of symbols, I was somewhat afraid of it even after having played it for many years.

As I describe in my short book Piano without Tears, I discovered a simple formula in graduate school that helped me release my fear of the piano, for good.

As long as I could count to twelve, I could get the piano.

The piano has 88 keys (notes) in all. That's a lot of notes. But these can be seen in a simple pattern of 12 notes:

5 black keys + 7 white keys = only 12 different keys!

There are five black keys on any keyboard. Take a look at the picture above. Notice that the black keys come in groups of three black keys and groups of two black keys. They appear in an alternating pattern: a group of two / a group of three / a group of two / a group of three, etc ... (The lone black key on the far left side is a solo member of an unfinished group of three).

There are seven white keys. They are organized according to their position among the black keys. Notice that there are four white keys directly touching the three black keys. There are also three white keys directly touching the two black keys.

So you see, all piano notes are organized in a pattern which has, in all, twelve notes with distinct shapes and positions that help us tell them apart.

It took me more than twenty years to see the simple pattern that is the basis for the piano layout. But I help my students understand this simple formula right away. To find out more about my eight-week Befriend the Piano series, click below to give me a call.

Both Hands, Now!

2/27/2018

Which hand do you use to write? Is that the same hand you use to open jars and to point at your screen? How about your other hand? What is it doing right now?

People who play the piano have strong and independent connections from both hands to the brain. This means many pianists find it easy to do two totally different things with their hands at the same time!

If you want some extra mind-body power to draw on every day, start by simply noticing each hand throughout the day:

Slowly stretch each hand and then curl it into a fist. Do this one hand at a time. Name what happens: my right hand is opening, now closing, and so on.
Throughout your day, notice what each hand is doing. Sense texture, pressure and movement. Name it, if you like.
Whenever possible, invite your learning hand (non-dominant) to take over for your strong hand, just for fun. You may be surprised at what you discover!

Let me know what you discover! Send me a note or post a comment on my FB page here.

Photo by José González on Unsplash

Rhythm First

2/27/2018

Photo by Leo Rivas on Unsplash

Rhythm and rhythmic movement are critical to the basics of life: almost all of our regulatory functions keep some sort of a beat, from the heart to the breath.

Born for Love (Szalavitz & Perry 2011)

The first sounds that a fetus in mom’s belly hears are rhythmic in nature. Mother’s heartbeat pulses through amniotic fluid, which also carries the vibrations from her body movements. In time, the baby grows to hear cadences of her voice and those of other friends and family members.

If you think about sounds you hear in daily life, the most meaningful ones have some sort of rhythm, whether slow, fast or changing. Even the easiest sounds to get used to, white noise, are based on some sort of steady rhythm. To get attention, car alarms often have a varied pattern of sounds, each with a different rhythm.

Rhythm is important to our making sense of the sounds we hear around us. We often notice it more when it is missing than we do when it is there in a steady way.

However, adding rhythm to a challenging task can make that task easier and more enjoyable! Try listening to instrumental music the next time you are engaged with something repetitive. Does it help? Write me a note to let me know!

Music is rhythm. Language is rhythm. Play is rhythm. When we improve rhythm, we make other areas of life easier and more enjoyable.