 This week, we are recognizing these students for 7 & 8 years of music study! Congratulations! Special awards will be given in May! McKenna
Anna
Juliette
Mischa
Sohumnot pictured
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-Stathia Orwig So, you've got your child in music lessons and now, you've got to figure out practice. Why? Well, they can't learn to play an instrument only by attending lessons. Practice is a must. I know, it's hard to fit in. I get it. I struggle with my kids every day, every week, and they are older! So, here are some pointers on how to get in practice.
 Once practice becomes part of the schedule, then it just gets easier and even more fun! Of course, we as teachers are always rewarding our students for practice with music bucks, contests, music ball, and honor roll. But the real fun, honestly, comes when they are confident & learning more repertoire! For more fun practice pointers, check out an past blog from the Old Pro. Happy practicing!! Let us know what works for you!   We are wanting to encourage our students to listen to different and important musical works. Your Assignment: Listen to the link below, share with your family, and add comments to let us know what you think! This one is Puccini's "O Mio Babbino Caro". Time Period: Romantic Era, 1918 This stage performance opens with Gianni Schicchi shouting, in resistance to the idea of his daughter marrying her love. Then his daughter pleads with him. -Stathia Orwig So, if you follow us on social media, you've probably already seen this. For those of you who have not- you're in for a real surprise! Music SO Simple was in the Richardson Community Impact!!! Basically, out of the blue, a reporter emailed the studio asking to set up an interview with me. After the interview was a hit, he came in to take pictures of the studio and me teaching, Little Miss Sophia, my student who I was teaching the evening he came in felt like a star!! The article was about MSS, how we started, and how we were adapting to the coronavirus pandemic: Music SO Simple was named after a philosophy that owner Stathia Orwig uses when teaching music gets overwhelming.
Sophia signed a copy of the article that is now hanging in our studio. Please feel free to share the article with family and friends!! Thank you all for sharing your love of learning music and MSS!! We couldn't do this without you!!
 We are wanting to encourage our students to listen to different and important musical works. Your Assignment: Listen to the link below, share with your family, and add comments to let us know what you think! This one is Offenbach's Can-Can Time Period: Romantic Era Here is a great performance from a youth orchestra in Slovenia!  Well, it's the spring and it's time to get ready for Honor Roll 2021! I'm so excited!
As many of our students know, Honor Roll is a BIG deal around here. Mostly because it's HARD and the end result is amazing. We've changed up a few things this year. First, I want to say that making it on the Honor Roll is not easy. It's for the student who is ready to practice harder than ever before. If everyone was able to do it, it wouldn't be so amazing would it? Just like Honor Roll at school, those who rise to the occasion, practice hard, and complete all of their work each week will be on the Honor Roll and receive one of two prizes. Here at this year's requirements:
This year, we are giving our students an opportunity to get extra points. Students are limited to 12 total points for the entire duration of Honor Roll.
The 2 prizes are the composer bust for 65 points and higher. Those that get 50-64 points will receive the metal bookmark. Awards will be announced at the Spring Recital. Good luck!! Work hard! Let your teacher know if you have any questions!  We are wanting to encourage our students to listen to different and important musical works. Your Assignment: Listen to the link below, share with your family, and add comments to let us know what you think! This one is Holst's The Planets: Jupiter Time Period: 1916 Picture a loud, jolly, kind, & generous king, feasting & dancing with his subjects at his castle.  We are wanting to encourage our students to listen to different and important musical works. Your Assignment: Listen to the link below, share with your family, and add comments to let us know what you think! This one is Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue Time Period: 1924 Gershwin's original version for two pianos. This was immediately orchestrated -- for the premiere of the piece! -- by Ferde Grofé.  We are wanting to encourage our students to listen to different and important musical works. Your Assignment: Listen to the link below, share with your family, and add comments to let us know what you think! This one is Chopin's Minute Waltz (Op. 64 no. 1) Time Period: Romantic This famous waltz is NOT playable in one minute, though it is fairly brief! The legend is that a visitor challenged Chopin to write a song about Chopin's little dog, which was at that moment chasing its tail! Perhaps Chopin started improvising then & there, & then developed the full piece, later on. -Stathia Orwig Well, I know I'm not alone when I say I'm a little hesitant in making big plans for 2021! Ha! But after the year, 2020, how can anyone blame us? Normally, I make my yearly goals and do what I can to make them happen. However, this year, I'm just going to be content with seeing how things go and using what I learned in 2020 to help me stay focused on the positives. In 2020, I had big plans! MSS was going very strong and I wanted to keep that going! However, our plans for the spring went splat. We had a full studio with full teacher schedules. Then, everything shut down. We had to go completely virtual. It was only going to be for a week or two, then a month, then 6 more weeks...looking around, small business were suffering and closing! I went in to overdrive last spring. There was not a chance that this virus was going to take out what I had spent years building. I know every small business was thinking the very same thing. We had some student who just completely stopped lessons because they wouldn't even try virtual. I'm not gonna lie, this made me very sad, and even angry. But, there was not a whole lot I could do about that, so I just kept moving forward. We did our first ever virtual recital and I think it was good and bad. It pushed our students on a very different level and some students recorded hundreds of times! The video thing was stressful! The good thing is that it taught them "how" to practice and all of those times of recording were "thoughtful" practicing. And I think it's great that these students wanted a great finished product! Also on the plus side is that we have a souvenir from COVID lessons.  The same thing happened through the summer, and yet it was different. Music lessons actually became more of a priority. We were not competing with camps, sports, or vacations. Because so many people were not traveling, they chose to do something they could do at home. Some signed up for the minimum number of summer lessons, but when this virus just kept spreading it's love, those people decided to stay home and take more lessons! How great is that? We may not have added as many students as we normally do during the summer, but we taught 200 more lessons than we did the summer before! I'm serious! Some started to come back in person, though many stayed virtual cause it was convenient AND it does work! Fall 2020 had me a little worried as well. Many families decided that with their kids being virtual for school that music was just too much to add. That's a lot of screen time. I get it. However, others felt it was a good break from school. So, we added more students in October and November. Our holiday recital was a little different than the spring recital. We made it less stressful by adding holiday cheer and a "fun" contest. We wanted PJs and holiday decorations, and you could feel the positively-fun energy from so many of the videos. What a wonderful way of spreading musical cheer!  So, what have we learned? No matter how overwhelmed I get with work and the business, I always come back to Music SO Simple. Simple. We've gotta keep things simple. We learned that music making IS a priority! And where in years past, private lessons are not as fun because it's not a "social" thing. Well, now, we have learned that this is a good thing (I mean, duh!)! It's something we can do on our own! As teachers, we have learned soooo much about how we communicate. No longer can we just pick up our students hands and put them in the correct place. Nope. We've got to talk through it. We are making our students work just a little harder. They have had to listen as well! But all in all, we have learned that music is just so important.
So, for 2021, as we cannot "plan" like we have in the past, I want to keep it simple. I want to be grateful for these simple things we have learned in this past year. I want to spread as much musical joy as possible. I want to be inspired every day to keep going, and music helps me do that. My relationships with my students inspire me. If you ask any teacher what they missed while things were shut down, you will hear that they missed their students. We love what we give to them and what they give to us. If we have learned anything this past year, it's that we can't control. We have learned about the simple things in life and we have adjusted. Cheers to our 2021. May it be everything you need it to be! |
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