| Home | Books | Shop | Contact | Workshops | For Teachers | About Us | For Teachers We will regularly be adding more information about ways to teach the Pattern Play books. Please check back here soon. Thank you! Pattern Play is for Piano Teachers and Piano Students The Pattern Play books were written by piano teachers for piano teachers and their students. Akiko and I (Forrest) wanted to share what we have discovered about teaching creativity with our interested colleagues. I have been teaching music for over 30 years, and Akiko has been teaching for over 20. Together, we have developed an approach that can inspire students to create music that is spontaneous and personal. We have found that teaching improvisation has challenges that are unique to it. Above all, the teaching cannot be methodical but must have a responsive, improvisatory quality! This is best learned in company of others, and so we encourage you to join us in one of our workshops or one of our Summer Intensive classes. Please see the information in the Workshop area of this website. Private Playing vs. Public Performing Most training in music prepares us to be public performers. Yet, there is a private side to music that has been neglected for too long. To improvise is like writing in a diary--it is a way of expressing the feelings of the moment. To learn to improvise is to embrace a whole new dimension of musical experience, a very personal realm. Being Guided by Feeling and Inspiration When playing music from a score or by memory, we are often thinking about how and what we are doing. However, by PLAYING with short, easily learned Patterns, we allow ourselves to finally quit thinking and begin FEELING. From listening and feeling, we find that we begin to be guided not by thoughts but by something deeply personal. We invite inspiration. Everyone has feelings, so everyone can make music this way--even beginners. It doesn't require talent or skill, only the willingness to begin connecting one's feeling to the tones being playing. We all have the latent ability to make music from our feelings. We simply need to have this ability drawn out of us with the right approach. Incubating the Desire to Create in Our Students With the Pattern Play approach, we have an intuitive (rather than intellectual or formulaic) way to learn to improvise, and at the same time, a way to make music with your students in each lesson, even when the student is a beginner or has not been able to practice. The key ingredient is our approach is patience over time--just keep improvising duets with your students and eventually they will not only learn to improvise with you, but by themselves. As teachers, we simply have to keep doing it, over and over, each week, incubating the desire to create. Creativity for All Piano teachers will find that some of their students really come alive when improvising music, and for some students, this is the true way of making music. This approach offers a way to teach and reach a range of students that aren't served by the traditional approaches. Everything is Music The Pattern Play approach offers a lively way to teach music theory, particularly scales and chords. It provides the seeds for musical composition. It also can be used as a way to teach technique. Why can't music be taught through music rather than intellectual or mechanical activities? Always a Surprise We only need to trust that we have a latent ability to express our feelings, and then give it a chance to come out of hiding, Imagine music that doesn't have to be rehearsed over and over, but instead comes to you as a surprise each time you play! That's what can keep the joy of making music alive, day after day, decade after decade. Other Benefits of Teaching "Pattern Play" Among your current students, some (perhaps many) feel a compelling need to create their own music. These students are often extremely musical--yet restless--and regularly on the verge of quitting lessons. The word educate means “to lead out,” to bring forth what is hidden within a student. With the Pattern Play books, you will be able to guide and encourage your creative students and help them discover their hidden gifts. You will be able to put your students on the path of discovering the music that they alone can create. It is often rather amazing to witness the personal and expressive music that flows out of these once-difficult students! These become the students that are most grateful to you. I have taught for thirty years and I have yet to find any aspect of teaching that is more satisfying than this kind of gratitude. You may be thinking, “With so many subjects to teach in each short lesson (literature, technique, theory, and so on), how can I fit in one more thing?” Especially something as challenging and time-consuming as creativity? This approach takes time but it also saves a lot of time. It offers a way to teach many vital and neglected aspects of music all at once. Your students will learn musicianship in nearly all its aspects. Whether it is interpreting literature, playing improvisations, or making arrangements, their playing will improve in a variety of unexpected ways. This is largely because, with this approach, your student’s attention is not being captured by a score. They can close their eyes and tune in to a variety of overlooked (should I say underlistened?) aspects of their playing. They begin to listen to the tones they are playing and feel the movements they are making much more acutely. This brings a lot of positive changes. To list some: Technique Those who only make music via reading and reciting are often tight in their shoulders, neck, arms, wrists, and hands. Especially adults. Their movements are often stiff and angular. After just a few weeks of creating music with Patterns, these people begin to relax at the piano. This can be seen and heard clearly. The whole emphasis has shifted from note reading to tuning in. They can close their eyes and being to listen and feel in a new way. They begin to become aware of the high-voltage tensions in their bodies and start to relax. Their movements become Students who cannot release tension while practicing technical drills will often be able to relax if they are allowed to create with the Patterns they are playing. I often teach technical patterns such as arpeggios and octaves with a Pattern Play approach. Creative students must be creatively engaged and then they will work wonders. Phrasing As your students relax and play with Patterns, their motions become more circular and flowing. Partly because of these longer, wider motions, they begin to hear music as being made of phrases rather than disconnected, individual notes. Their phrasing improves. When we are talking, we do not think of letters or even words; we simply have a feeling or idea, and the words spill out in groups, in phrases. This is how it should be in music. We have a feeling, and the whole melody spills out without us having to think of the individual notes or individual finger motions. While note reading encourages us to think of music as made of individual notes, someone who creates music naturally feels that music is made of feelings and phrases. When a student feels a melody in this way, their ability to interpret a melody by Chopin or Mozart is greatly improved. Touch and Tone With relaxed muscles, students are now able to make more precise and refined motions. The result is that they are able to hear and create subtle shadings of tone that were once impossible for them. They can play with a much wider range of dynamics. Particularly, you will notice that they can play more softly than ever before. There is nothing like closing one’s eyes and playing music from the heart to develop a new sense of touch. Sense of Rhythm When the student’s muscles are relaxed, when their mind is taken from the page and given over to the act of music making, there is also a significant improvement in their sense of time and their ability to coordinate simultaneous rhythms. I have seen these abilities improve dramatically in just a few weeks when a student plays a Pattern Play piece in a rhythmic styles such as boogie woogie. The student is involved in what they are doing, having fun, dancing with their arms, and so his or her sense of rhythm is awakened. Theory The Patterns in the Pattern Play books are made of the materials of music—scales, intervals, and chords. As teachers, you can use Pattern Play to teach and apply music theory in ways that creatively engage your students. You can teach theory as it was meant to be taught, as a way to explore latent creative possibilities. By the end of the Pattern Play series, students have learned the practical music theory they would need for a lifetime of musical creativity. Memorizing Once a student begins to see that music is composed of patterns, memorizing becomes much easier. They spot familiar patterns and see recurring patterns as they are first learning a piece. As a result, they learn pieces and memorize much more quickly and easily, and their memories are far more efficient and durable. They understand a piece to be a pattern of patterns. Styles and Arranging By creating with short Patterns from many different styles, your students can become acquainted with a wide variety of styles in a short time, and have the experience of creating and arranging in these styles. They will come to realize that a C Major chord is played very differently in bossa nova, boogie woogie, Bach, bebop, or Bartok. (That’s just the B’s!) This will help them be able to make pianistic arrangement of popular melodies in various styles, and increase their powers of interpretation of classical scores. Respect for the Masters As your students begin creating their own music, they begin to experience music from the inside, and become much more interested in the process of creating music. This will often awaken a new interest in the master composers, their compositions, and their lives. It also awakens a new level of respect for the masters. The more a person creates their own music, the more they can appreciate the astounding originality and expressiveness of composers such as Chopin, Beethoven, Debussy, and Scarlatti. Performing Even advanced students will often play a masterwork over and over until it is memorized only by touch and sound. But this is not at all reliable. The musical score remains just a bunch of unrelated notes which could slip from memory at any moment. That is the cause of the most anxiety, and the anxiety is justified! With Pattern Play, students learn to think about music as a composer thinks. They understand the Patterns of which the music is made, so they know how to improvise and keep the music going if they do make a mistake. This makes all the difference. It takes that debilitating anxiety out of performing. Your students begin to enjoy sharing music, rather than fearing the dark prospects of public humiliation. Composing With the exception of Wagner, all the master composers from Bach to Debussy were master improvisers at the keyboard. This is no mere coincidence. They all had the ability to sit down at their instrument and have a conversation with the piano, and discover new ideas each time. This was the secret to both their originality and their proliferation of music. (That, and the long, hard work of notating their ideas!) This will often happen: A student who has no desire to compose will, after creating spontaneously with Patterns for a few months, suddenly show up one day with their own piece. All of a sudden, they have a strong interest in composing. Their daily creating with Patterns gives them good-sounding proof that they actually can create their own music after all. The Pattern Play approach provides an excellent foundation for future composers, providing them with the materials of music, the ways of exploring musical possibilities within those materials, and the beginnings of a lifelong dialogue with their instrument. If the student proves to be a serious composer, they could go on and study orchestration, notation conventions, and advanced concepts in composition with a practicing composer. Ensemble Playing The Patterns in these books are made to be shared. Any of them can be turned into an instant duet, either with two people at one piano or two people at two pianos. Also, a pianists can easily play many of the Patterns with another instrumentalist, Few things are as enjoyable as spontaneously creating music with other people. There is a sense of intimacy and mutual delight that is rare. Creating music with others brings with it all the benefits of ensemble playing: Improved sense of rhythm, continuity in playing, improved listening, and so on. Perhaps best of all, it develops friendships and community. Self-Awareness and Confidence By creating their own music, your students develop self-awareness, and this gives them confidence in themselves and their creative powers. When they are aware and confident in themselves, they feel they can respond to situations appropriately. This is certainly the most important benefit of all, for this awareness and confidence transfers to all other aspects of their lives. What an incredible gift to give our students—confidence in themselves and their latent powers to create the life they desire.