Ramey Piano Studio

Sunday, October 13, 2019 by Marin Ramey | Games

Last week, many students played a game called Bat Rhythms. They had to look at measures in 4/4 time, figure out how many beats were missing and roll the dice to put that number on the box. It is a great assessment and takes a lot of knowledge. They have to know the note values and rest values that are there and then problem solve how many are missing. 

The other activity some students played was an improvisation with Halloween related words. "Tip toe up the driveway" would be ♩♩♫♫.  They played along with an accompaniment to improvise a Halloween song. 

Some students are starting Christmas music! I know it seems early but its only 7 weeks until the Holiday open house and we need a lot of time to prepare. Especially when you factor in illness, sports, and power outages that may make us miss a week between now and then.

Saturday, September 28, 2019 by Marin Ramey | Games

This week, students continued to share the music they've been working on and learned new music in their lessons. There is one element of the lesson that I reserve for "off the bench" games. It's a great time to connect, have some fun, and I can really assess whether students understand a concept. They also get practice at a variety of concepts and skills in a fun way.

Lost Claws is a game many students have been playing which reinforces finger numbers. Although students master the finger numbers pretty quickly and move on to reading notes on the staff, it's great to go back and review it occasionally. Beginning students have a fun way to master this knowledge quickly. I sent home my first "take home" game with a family this week and will be adding some to a lending library soon.

Another game we played quite a bit was Spinning Webster, a game about identifying intervals (the distance between two notes) on the staff. Visually identifying these patterns quickly is so important for reading music quickly. Really good sight readers can look at notes and tell the interval in an instant.

In the students binders, check out the theory section. There is a page that I'll write the name of the game we played, the concept it covered and whether the student "beat the teacher!"