A music education for the mind body and soul

how many of you are familiar with this

sound

most of you probably heard it it may

bring back memories of

music class or music lessons did you

enjoy playing scales

probably not or maybe you didn’t mind

them but you didn’t see them as fun

does this still sound like a scale to

you did you ever think of taking a scale

and rearranging it and turning it into

your own idea

probably not a scale is a system much

like the alphabet

let’s see what happens when i take this

scale improvise with it by rearranging

it and changing the order

over the slope i’ve created

now the scale takes on a life of its own

it’s no longer notes up and down

in succession but rather it’s a tool for

making music

my name is leslie d schazer and i am a

freelance musician and educator

i have the privilege of teaching young

minds all over the metro detroit area

or rather i have the privilege of being

taught by smart

energetic young beautiful minds all over

the metro detroit area

and what you’ve just heard is one of

many ways i use scales to help students

better access this thing

we call music music should be fun

creative and innovative but

unfortunately we’ve fallen into teaching

it

with the same abstractness and

inaccessibility with which we teach so

many other subjects

i’m working to change that i want to

emphasize and bring out

the symbiotic nature of the

student-teacher relationship

create an environment where learning to

think new things together is fun

where we can make music and nurture

relationships

and teach the whole person in my many

years of teaching i’ve learned more

lessons than a student could ever dream

of

and in that i’m seeing the need more and

more to throw away convention

think outside of the box and be flexible

because most of the students i teach

have no desire to become professional

musicians they just want to have fun and

see what it’s like to play

fully understanding this has given me

freedom freedom to

take the pressure from the student and

the pressure from myself

focus on a holistic experience one that

will give both student and teacher a

lifetime of experiences

that have yet to show their lasting

impact

i teach and perform a lot and with that

i’m constantly involving

however one thing that never changes is

the joy and the beauty that music brings

to the world

music is so powerful that often the

reason a person wants in

is because they’ve heard a beautiful

melody or a great musician

and they say to themselves i want to

play that or i want to sing that

and then they get the instrument in

their hand for the first time and it

sounds like this

there’s nothing more hilarious and

rewarding than the look on a student’s

face when they play an instrument for

the first time

sometimes they’re thrilled by the sound

under their nose and sometimes they look

like they smelled the most awful thing

known to man

nevertheless they have something they

want to learn and i’m here to teach them

meet felix felix is currently working on

the blues creating patterns on the blue

scale

the theme song from plants vs zombies

and the gevat from suzuki book 2.

he’s 8 years old when i asked him last

year what he’d like to learn next he

said a blues

and i said great but i was faced with a

challenge in that moment

there are not many blues that are

conducive to a young violin player

that will be technically appropriate and

also offer him some new challenges

so i wrote one for him and i called it

blues for felix

he loved it and from that he learned his

a minor pentatonic

his a blues scale 12 bar blues form and

he’s currently learning how to improvise

over the blues

[Music]

improvisation is something that we

typically think of in a jazz context

or more specifically for students of a

certain level proficiency and typically

not for violins

i however believe that it is extremely

vital to the development of all

musicians of all

genres to learn the skill and therefore

introduce it to beginners

like these

[Music]

when this video was taken these were

first-year students and what i love most

about this video is that

these students are doing something that

is generally unheard of and would clear

a room of professional classical

musicians but why is that

it’s because of an education with too

much emphasis on imitation and

perfection

and not enough emphasis on creativity

children are naturally creative

but over time in years being told wrong

wrong wrong

they start to doubt themselves

additionally in my opinion

we measure and pressure students too

much sometimes students are in a

difficult place in life and could use

a slower pace or a change in direction

there’s always room for growth and

always something to learn and this can

be achieved in a less rigorous time

pressured environment

i have a student who was accepted into a

very competitive school last year

she would frequently show up to her

lessons very frustrated before she even

played a note

the student was stressed and her lessons

just represented one more thing to be

stressed out about

i didn’t want her to quit so we

restructured her lessons i gave her one

solo piece to work on and the rest of

the time we spend doing things she wants

to learn

just the other day she was so swamped

with schoolwork she had not had time to

prepare for her lesson

no sweat so i made a loop like the one

you heard in the beginning

it went from a major to a minor we

discussed the parallels between major

and minor

reviewed her minor and major triads and

we improvised on those sounds

it was definitely time well spent

overall the student is enjoying the

ability to decompress in her lessons and

expand her overall knowledge of music

she’s thriving and getting some much

needed time for exploration

and expression in my opinion this

journey can be long and there’s no

reason to rush students into learning

things that they are legitimately not

ready for

knowledge is best acquired through true

desire

or knowledge can be acquired through

good old-fashioned fun in playing songs

that you’ve heard on the radio

[Music]

this was an interesting adventure many

people would look at this video and

think that there wasn’t much learning

involved

however to get these students to play

the syncopated rhythms of a pop tune

fit into a groove and play with the

lyricism of a singer

required a great deal of preparation i

had to write all of the words on the

board

and create a color coded system to help

them know which fingers went on every

string

these students frequently i asked them

if they’d like to learn something as a

class

and as long as they can as long as it’s

age-appropriate

and i can adapt it to beginning violin

we make it happen

i do this for two reasons one is because

it’s just fun but the other reason is

because i want them to see that the

violin is just not for classical music

i try as much as i can to create an

environment

where we learn in many different ways

students become better violinists when

they are developing skills that may seem

irrelevant to violin playing

like when we do eurythmic inspire

movement or multirhythmic patterns on

the body

they improve coordination and right and

left side independence

when we sing what we play or sing and

play they develop better pitch

recognition and ability to phrase

when we do call and response or rote

learning they develop their ears

and become better ensemble players being

a musician requires a high level of

intuition and sensitivity to one’s

surroundings which we can all agree is a

skill

we can take to other social situations

but please don’t misunderstand me

i do value tradition and i do value

convention in some regard

i also have a high level of expectation

for students and expect them to rise to

it whenever possible

however i’m not caught up in the must

do’s and the have-twos when it comes to

learning something as diverse

as music and also i want students to see

that it is okay to choose the unpopular

thing

i’d like to leave you with this most of

us will teach someone something in our

lifetime

and in that we will learn from those who

we teach be open be creative and stay

humble because we never know the true

impact of the knowledge that we impart

upon others

teaching is an opportunity to learn it

is a mutual understanding between

teacher

and student that there will be a

significant exchange of our shared human

experience

the possibilities are endless and all

that i do

i endeavor most to give students

something new to wonder provocative to

ponder

and a whole lot of laughter and fun