Last time around we spoke with Joanne van de Heuvel-Berkers, founder of the Play On Education Music School in the UK, which is using aspects of play and singing to make early music education fun for children. This week we’re speaking with another expert in the field, Natalie Wickham, who runs the excellent piano pedagogy site “Music Matters Blog”.

Music Matters Blog has been running for over 6 years, sharing ideas, guidance, anecdotes and plenty of useful resources for the modern piano teacher. Natalie seems to have a real flair for keeping the fun in her lessons and innovating new ways to escape the traditional teaching methods and really engage her students with music making – so you can see why we were keen to include her voice in the Music & Life series!

Read on to find out her number one tip for encouraging music appreciation in children, learn some fun games to liven up music lessons and discover how modern technology has (and hasn’t!) changed her music education methods.

My parents started me in piano lessons when I was 7 years old. My first teacher was very strict, and my sister and I dreaded going to our lessons each week. She moved several years later and we transferred to another teacher who was almost the complete opposite. While our first teacher sat and watched our every move with an eagle-eye, our second teacher often did laundry in the basement or washed dishes in the kitchen while we played our assigned pieces for her. We dutifully worked through theory and repertoire books, but very little real learning took place.

When I was 17, I attended a 3-week intensive music course where my mind was opened up to the wide world of music and all of its exciting possibilities! Click to read the rest…

There are a number of ways for a guitarist to play a chord that can have a significant impact on how the listener is affected by the song. All of the notes in the chord do not have to be played simultaneously, which is the typical method of playing chords. The term “broken chords” covers various other methods that a guitarist can use to present a chord.

“Arpeggios” are a very similar idea, to the point the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Generally, a broken chord lets the notes of the chord ring together, while an arpeggio plays the notes of the chord separately.

Broken Chords

Broken chords are most often used for slower, mellower rhythm guitar work. This is not necessarily the only use of broken chords, but it is the most common usage. There can be a good amount of variance in how slowly the individual notes are introduced. The example below shows three different methods of playing a broken chord, each of which gives a distinctly different tone. Each method uses the exact same open Am chord, but sounds quite different.

Example 1: Standard 'A minor' chord, and three broken chord versions