discussion booklet for HaveFunwithYourMusic

A Summary Discussion Guide to
Have Fun With Your Music
A Book to Inspire Music Practice
Written by Becky Chaffee
Cover Art by Becky Chaffee
Copyright © October 2020 Becky Chaffee

1.0 Title Page and Introduction
(Suggested Discussion)
T
he Title Page and first pages of the book, Have Fun With Your Music by Becky Chaffee,
introduce the idea that music is fun. Kids, parents and anyone practicing an instrument
easily lose sight of the fact that playing a musical instrument is a great privilege and
should be approached as a fun thing to do.
Practicing can seem like a monotonous chore since one needs to practice regularly, preferably
every day. Find a way to have the attitude of fun by choice, empowering the child or yourself. Perhaps
record yourself, listen to other musicians on-line play the same music that you are learning, or play for
your pets or stuffed animals to get inspiration.
The Title Page and first page introduce several unusual instruments, the lowest, a bass, a tuba,
a contrabass flute and the highest, the flute, violin and piccolo; and one of the widest ranging
instruments, a keyboard.
Just for fun, you can talk about what is funny or unusual in each picture.
Do you know the difference between a fiddle and a violin? The main difference is the style of music
played. A violin can be used as a fiddle, but if one were specifically a fiddler, your bridge might be a
slightly different shape. In addition, a fiddler might have a different string choice and hold both the
violin and the bow in a different manner to play.

2.0 Motivation for Practice
W
hat do you think is the hardest part of practicing?
I have found that the hardest part is getting started. Like the famous marathon
runner, Katherine Switzer, is quoted saying that the hardest part of running is
getting your shoes on.
When my children were young, and I knew they didn’t feel like doing their daily practice sometimes I
would say, “Just play for 10 minutes, I’ll put the kitchen timer on”. (Note that I didn’t say that I would
put the timer on for 10 minutes.) I put the timer on for their normal practice time, whether 30 or 45
minutes. They never stopped short of their practice time or after just 10 minutes. The reason why is
because once you start, it is fun, engaging and challenging. I am an amateur musician that plays for fun,
but occasionally I play for my music club or an event. I even do this to myself! When I need to be
practicing, but think I don’t have time for a proper practice, I tell myself just do 10 minutes to get myself
to sit down. I always practice much longer once I start.
It is hard having to practice every day if you think of practicing as a chore like brushing your teeth. What
can you do for yourself for motivation? Attitude makes everything different and can be a huge
difference in the amount of fun, interest and energy you pour into an activity. For kids to come up with
their own ideas of what would make practicing something to look forward to is empowering. It can be
anything and it can change with age. Preparing to play with a group, preparing to play for a party, for
friends, playing for your pet or stuffed animals? Playing the music that you love most? Making it into a
game with goals or even points?

3.0 Warm Up for Practice
W
arming up can seem silly when you can just play. Why not warm up while playing
your piece? It may be easier to understand warming up for sports. Warming up
stretches your muscles so they won't be hurt. But playing scales and exercises for
the instrument to warm up is about so much more.
First of all, which muscles do you use when you play your instrument? When I started taking
lessons and worked on more advanced pieces that had my fingers moving a lot faster, I started
having problems with my wrists. A lot of people recommend finger stretching exercises or doing
yoga for instrumentalists. So at least warming up on your instrument with scales and related
exercises including long tones for winds and brass is important.
I spent a year playing exercises just to strengthen my ring and pinky fingers on both hands. They
seem to be naturally weaker, and at least on the flute are used less than other fingers. Exercises
like scales strengthen all of your fingers. In other words, they don’t miss strengthening your
weaker fingers, as playing certain styles of music might.
You also need to learn scale patterns to be a better sight reader in the future. You will recognize
scale patterns and be able to read music better if you already recognize the patterns, and also
can already play them! If you need to memorize music for performances, it will make these
recognizable note patterns or passages easier to memorize.

4.0 Practice Slowly
I
hear complaints all the time from my teacher friends that students that say, “students
want to play through the whole piece really quickly”. However, when you just learn a new
piece, you need to go through it slowly so that you get each note and the counting of each
note correct the first few times playing the piece. If you play the wrong note even once,
your brain registers the wrong note, and it becomes harder to correct. When you play a wrong
note, you are teaching your brain to play the note incorrectly. It’s all about teaching your brain.
I must say, when I start working on a new fast piece, I can’t wait to be able to play the notes
quickly. I myself, have trouble playing slowly until I learn the notes correctly. So, I know that
this can be hard to do. If you make this a habit, the habit will stay with you to practice correctly.
I think a valuable video that explains this is from Dr. Molly Gebrian, violist and educator with a
background in neuroscience. Use this link to see this eye-opening explanation:
https://bit.ly/33Phyas

5.0 Practice Backwards
P
racticing slowly is one technique to use where the goal is to learn a difficult passage.
But sometimes, it is still hard to play a difficult passage. Another way to get your
fingers or perhaps mouth or tongue to play a difficult passage is to isolate just two
notes in that passage – say the last two notes of the passage. Can you play just two
notes correctly? Now add a third note, the note before the last two notes. So now can you play
those three notes? Keep playing just the three notes until you can play them. Keep adding a
note until you have the passage learned.

6.0 Keep Your Instrument in Tune
S
ome instruments are harder to keep in tune than others. For a piano, you need to call a
professional tuner to tune it. Instruments can get out of tune while playing if you are
playing in very hot or cold rooms or if playing outdoors. Violin strings need to be
attended to for intonation corrections while playing. Wind and brass instruments often
have certain notes that are hard to play in tune. You need to learn which notes on your
instrument are harder to play in tune, and how to adjust your fingers or mouth/airstream to
make sure they are in tune. You can occasionally play scales and music while watching a tuner to learn
which notes you have trouble with on your instrument and figure out how to make adjustments. It is
also worthwhile to practice tuning your instrument to a (tuned) piano, then compare all your notes
by playing scales or other music along with a pianist.

7.0 Sleep On It
S
cientists who have studied the physiology of sleep have determined that, if you
practice a musical passage late at night, and then take your night’s sleep soon
afterwards, this interval of sleeping that occurs right after practicing will improve your
memory of the passage. The reason is because your brain goes over and over what you
practiced while you sleep making neural connections in the brain to store it in your memory. If
you experiment with this on your own, you will find it to be magic.
Getting a full 8 hour night of sleep is more important and effective than reviewing and
cramming information into your brain all night without getting enough sleep. This applies to
learning or memorizing any kind of information. I wish I had known this in college when I stayed
up all night before tests.
If you have more interest in this topic, explore Dr. Molly Gebrian's website again, and also read
"Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker.

8.0 Express Yourself
I
f you use your music to express your feelings, it will become a great emotional outlet for you. In
addition, your music will sound better. Also think of what the composer wanted to express when he
or she wrote the music. Can you express the feelings of your piece?
You can look up information about the composer and about the piece you are learning to find out what
it is meant to express. In addition, you can write your own story to go with the music you are learning,
then think of making that picture when you play. Adding your own interpretations, when playing a
musical composition, can increase the enjoyment of playing the piece.
Do you know what your favorite kind of music is? Perhaps you can add one of your own favorite songs
to your repertoire. (Generally teachers have you learn specific music pieces so that they can teach you
new techniques or concepts in an appropriate order).
Arrange to play for your family and friends regularly to show them the joy in your music. You can even
play for your pets or stuffed animals!! Just make sure you are having fun with it!

9.0 Stop If You Play A Wrong Note
S
top immediately if you play a note wrong!!! This goes with practice slowly, and don't
learn wrong notes. As I said before, it's all about teaching the brain. If you play a wrong
note, your brain will learn it wrong, and it will be harder and harder to correct.
If you have played a wrong note, stop playing the piece, and play the passage a few times using
the correct note, then proceed and resume playing the rest of the piece. Play the phrase at the
very least three times in a row correctly before you continue playing. That is the very least -
maybe 5 times or even 10 times in a row correctly. If you make a mistake playing while playing
it 3 to 10 times in a row correctly, you should start over from the count of one time correctly.

10.0 Practice With A Metronome
S
ome teachers are sticklers about always practicing a piece with a metronome, and some
teachers think that if you rely excessively on a metronome, you won't learn to be
musical. However, using the metronome as a tool to play with your scales and music
that you are learning will help you improve gradually. Don't turn the metronome up too high at
first because a metronome that is too fast will increase the risk of making mistakes when you
practice on your musical instrument. Also, don't turn the metronome speed up too fast so that
you want to give up. You can set goals for improving your speed by ten beats per minute over
the period of a week.

11.0 Play With Dynamics
M
usicians can express their creative instinct and musical individuality by playing
notes loudly and softly, using crescendos and decrescendos, and playing single
notes with accents. Music students often forget to use dynamics.
There are a lot of other things you can do combined with dynamics to express a mood with your
music. For example, you can make your music more expressive with your “breathing”. (You
don’t actually take breaths when playing stringed instruments, but you still need to include
breath-like pauses). If you sing a phrase, it will help you find the natural place where a breath
should be. With experience, you will learn how to do this. It can even be hard to decide where
to take a breath when you are playing a wind or brass instrument.
You can play notes with different styles, which help you give the piece a specific feeling. You
can play “lightly” or harshly. You can play staccato note or legato note styles. Can you think of
more techniques?

12.0 Practice Like It’s A Performance
T
here are so many things to concentrate on when playing. If you are in the habit of
practicing with good tone, intonation, dynamics, then there will be less to worry about
during a real performance. So what can you do with every practice to make sure you are
practicing with the best playing you can manage? Before I knew how to warm up properly, I
sometimes would practice with bad tone because my muscles wouldn't always work without a
warm-up.

13.0 Record Yourself
W
hen you record yourself you can be your own teacher. You can listen to yourself
better and hear little nuances in your playing such as uneven notes, that you might
not notice when you are concentrating on playing the notes. You can listen to what
needs correcting. If you use a computer video, you can see your posture or presentation.
One teacher told me that when she turns on a video recorder in the lesson, a student that
usually groans about having to play a piece over for her wants to play it over and over and over.
When I video myself, it works that way too. I keep wanting another chance to get it better. So I
play it again and again.
One more benefit of recording yourself is that it is like a dress rehearsal for preparing to play in front of
people. Sometimes, I actually feel nervous if I get dressed up, then play in front of a recorder.

14.0 Ear Training
L
isten to lots of music. Listen to recordings of the music you are learning. Perhaps you can listen to
it played by different musicians to see if you can hear the differences in how they play the same
music.
Another idea to train your ear is to listen to your favorite music. Any kind of music is fine. Try to play
along with a recording of your favorite music without sheet music. Pick out the notes by ear. It is hard at
first, but gets easier if you keep at it. You can also try to play harmony or make up an accompaniment to
the music. Being able to play without sheet music is a fun skill to have.

15.0 Have Fun With It!
T
he rest of the book is encouragement to practice and have fun playing. Attitude is everything.
Set your own short-term and long-term goals for practicing. It will be empowering if you take
charge of your own practicing. You will feel more accomplished.
It is very helpful for a self-published author if you leave a review on Amazon. If
you appreciate this companion book, the author would be grateful if you paid her
with a review for this Summary Discussion Guide to Have Fun with Your Music.
www.MusicTeacherGifts.com