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5 Apps I Use to Teach Piano and Guitar Lessons

Russell Martin — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 03:43:31 +0000

For the past 5 or so years I have taught a handful of students guitar and piano lessons. Here are some of the iphone and ipad apps that I use on a regular basis when I teach.

1. Guitar Tool Kit- This one app contains a metronome, tuner, chord bank, chord finder, scales reference and more. I use the tuner for myself and also for my guitar students. The needle makes it easy to see whether the are flat or sharp. I use the metronome for both guitar and piano.

2. Flash Class-When I was taking piano lessons I took index cards and made flash cards to learn the notes. Flash Class allows me to drill students on learning their notes. It has various modes of testing. You can set the time limit per game, and per note. A learning mode repeats notes a student misses, to help them learn.

It comes with many standard practice decks like “Middle C Position” , “Treble Spaces” etc.. but also gives you the ability to make as many custom decks as you like. I have made one for guitar 1 string, guitar 2 strings and so on. This way I can drill students on learning their notes as the progress to the next string

3. Adobe Ideas- This drawing app is great for demonstrating anything I would use a chalkboard for. The best thing is that it allows me to use layers. I can draw a treble staff on the bottom layer, then have the students draw in notes, rests etc… using different colors on different layers.

4.Pocket Drums- This is a drumset on the ipad. It has many features like 8 kits, metronome, recorder and the ability to play with tracks in your music library. I use it mostly to help students learn things like down beats and up beats, and counting. We’ll play down beats on the bass drum, and up beats on the snare. Then maybe play 8th notes on high hat, creating more complicated patterns.

5. Evernote- No, not really a music app, but it is great for keeping track of students contact information, progress, assignments, payments etc… I create a page for each student. Since it updates iphone, ipad, and computer, I always have the information with me. I can also easily email assignments to parents.

Using the IPhone to Teach Guitar and Piano Lessons

Russell Martin — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 03:52:37 +0000

I teach guitar and piano lessons. I love music, and it’s great to help others to enjoy it too.

I see most of my students once per week, and some once every other week. In those thirty minutes I try my best to explain, demonstrate, and encourage them to learn whatever concept or lesson we are learning that week. Then they walk out the door and I do not see them again for another 6 days.

I know they practice most days, but it is still easy to forget how a song goes, or that exact fingering. And once they forget, they either will get frustrated and stop practicing, or practice the wrong way and reinforce band habits.

Enter the iphone (or your favorite smartphone with video capability)

I recently have started taking short videos of myself playing, or demonstrating the song, or concept and put them up on my youtube channel. Then I send the link to the student or parents so they can be reminded of how to play the song.

Here’s an example:

Breathe Your Love In Me

Russell Martin — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 02:07:55 +0000

The Importance of Teaching

Russell Martin — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:23:22 +0000

When working with my youth worship team I often find myself emphasizing rehearsing the songs. After all, we generally have one event or another to prepare for so that means creating a songlist, and working up that music to perform or lead with.
I have realized, however, that there is a huge benefit to teaching, and not just rehearsing. When I first started to teach guitar lessons I told myself that I wanted my students to learn why a chord was what it was, what the names of the notes they were paying etc… Instead of just “play this chord”
I believed by teaching them how to learn to play guitar, then they could continue to learn whether I was teaching them or not.
The same thing should be true for worship teams. We should work with them to teach the basics of chord structures, rhythms, balance, tone, song structure, etc… So that they begin to recognize these things.
What’s cool is that when your group starts to learn these things, they begin to play musically together. You don’t have to explain every part of every song, but they begin to feel it.
For us this has resulted in more productive rehearsals, and more enjoyable ones too.
So what basic lessons would you teach a beginning praise band?

Instrumental Reflection Break

Russell Martin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 03:47:19 +0000

For one more week I will take a break from posting an instrumental reflection. I unintentionally went on break from them during My weeks of summer camp. I I tended to record some of me playing piano at camp but seems like all I aged was guitar. That being said look for new reflections and othe regular blog posts to resume shortly.

Working With Youth Bands: Point and Play

Russell Martin — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:08:34 +0000

Here is a little exercise we use with our youth band to work on playing together, keeping rhythm, following a leader and learning to listen to other parts. We took a repetitive section of a song, in our case we used the first part of “Undiginified” and we made sure everyone knew it. Then I told them that I had an on off switch. When I pointed to them they should play if they weren’t playing or stop playing if they were. I started off pointing to the drums and bass, then added guitar, keyboard etc. Then I switched off the drums to see how the rest of the group would keep beat. We played for about 10 minutes with this and I let my vocalists take a turn at telling members when to play or not.

It was something simple to do, but they really had fun.

What fun exercises do you use with your youth praise team?

Contemporary vs Traditional? Enough Already!

Russell Martin — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:24:31 +0000

Part of me wonders why we are even still discussing this. The other part knows It will never go away. As long as we have churches we will be fighting the same battle and asking the same questions. So instead of giving my argument on the side of why we should worship one way or another I thought I would give a few suggestions on how to help bridge the gap.

1. Realize God doesn’t care. No there were no guitars or keyboards in the bible. But the fact is that there were no organs either. We need to realize that the instruments we use and types of songs are our preference, not God’s.

2. Understand we are all different. Different types of services meet different needs. Do you have one Sunday school class for everyone? Probably not. We need to understand that just as we learn in different ways, we worship differently.

3. Acknowledge others worship style is just as valid as yours. Just because someone else worships different than you, doesn’t make them wrong, and doesn’t make you right.

4. Worship together. We have two styles of worship but one of the best things we do is to worship together on occasion. We have done this two ways. First we have done some services that utilize elements from both the traditional and contemporary service. Second we have combined services but left the basic elements the same, dependent on the location. This has helped to introduce members to the other style of worship.

5. What’s contemporary now is traditional tomorrow. I have already seen that what we used to call contemporary has become the tradition in many churches. What used to be innovative is now predictable. In fact I could argue in some churches the “Contemporary Service” is more traditional than the “Traditional Service”. And now we even have “Emerging?”

So those are some of my suggestions. What ways does your church help bridge the divide between contemporary, traditional and other worship styles?

Sunday Setlist 3/8/09

Russell Martin — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:24:12 +0000

This was a good week at our Xperience Service. We had a full service, a new family joining, great message. Here are our songs.

Today is the Day - This was our first song from the CD of the same name to introduce. We used it as our opening song and since it was new they really didn’t sing along, but it got nice applause so I think they liked it. It was also my first time to play electric guitar in the service. I have always played acoustic but didn’t feel right doing acoustic guitar on this song.
Every Move I Make- Ok… this one might be out of our list for a while. Kind of fit the sermon for today so wee used it but I think a break from it will allow us to do it later. The version I originally learned is the one I linked to from one of my favorite groups, Smith Band who led music at Metro Bible Study in Houston for several years.

So Good- This has been a favorite in the service since before I was here.

Awaken Our Hearts- One of my favorites that has become favorites for others too. This is actually my first entry on the “Online Songwriters Showcase” I’d love feedback.

I Stand Amazed- We introduced this one late last year and it has become one that the congregation latches into and sings strongly. I don’t know why but it works. We used this for our invitation.

That’s what we sang. Check out what other churches did for their Sunday Setlists.

Teaching Class Guitar Lessons Week 3

Russell Martin — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:35:59 +0000

This week was our 3rd week of guitar lessons and I wanted to get to the point of what most people want to do with their guitar, which is playing chord. I included in their worksheets a basic chord chart. I figured since we learned how to read a chord chart last week that they should do fine and I was right. I started with a basic chord progression of 1 4 5 4 1 and we started in the key of C so they played C F G F C. Then I said I would just add one chord and we would play in a different key. I asked them to learn D. Then I asked what the chord progression would be in the key of G and we figured it out G C D C G. Then I added the A chord and we played the progression in the key of D which was D G A G D. It was a great way to build on a progression having to only learn one new chord at a time.

After that we worked on strumming patterns. Started of just playing down and upstrokes 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &. Then I taught them to keep the same pattern but only actually strum at different times. I had half the class play on down beats only, and the other half play on upbeats only. We will build from that and add different patterns over the next three weeks.

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Teaching Class Guitar Lessons Week 2

Russell Martin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:35:58 +0000

Last Thursday we had our second guitar lesson for the class. I actually gained one student, and everyone else was there as well. I asked the question at the beginning how many practiced and most of them said they spent atleast a little time working on stuff during the week.

I took some time to review and then we talked about tuning. The previous week we tuned using a tuner, but this week we talked about tuning using the 5th fret method. I think they actually took to it easier than the tuner. That may have been because they had been using the tuner for a week and the guitars were already close to being intune.

Afte that we reviewed how to make a scale and we played the G scale two octaves all the way up. Then we went over how to make a chord. I told them that making a chord was like carving a statue of an elephant. To carve a statue of an elephant you take a block of marble and chip away anything that doesn’t look like an elephant. I then said making a chord is the same thing. We wrote down the three notes that make a G chord and then circled all those notes on the guitar fretboard. Then I showed them the fingering for a G chord and it made sense. My goal is to show them why something is not just what it is.

Finally we ended with chord progressions, and talked about what I IV V etc meant.

It was a great class. I had some requests to tape the class and put it up online. There are lots of online guitar classes out there but what do you think?

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