Tips from Teachers

After my recent post on practicing tips, some Musical Beginnings teachers had their own things to add.  Read on for some great ideas…

Polly Schaffner, Musical Beginnings piano teacher:

5 Tips for Successful Practicing

1. Short bits – You really can do something useful in two  or three minutes, so don’t give up because you don’t have a big block of time.
2. Count everything -  Theory homework, studying the music away from the instrument, listening to a great artist play your instrument (with full attention on the listening!), etc. all contribute to progress
3. Feed your mind and soul – Pop culture idolizes celebrities; some are great musicians, a lot are not.  Teachers can make excellent suggestions for listening, or YouTube videos, etc.  Go to a concert, watch an inspiring biography of a musician (or read one), or – one of my favorites – watch a sports movie or movie about another art.  The disciplines are pretty much the same.
4. Vary the diet -  Review old favorites, work a little on one aspect of technique, memorize something (try copying out the music by hand; it’s truly humbling!), sightread, work on something a little too easy and on something a little too hard
5. Trouble-shoot the work you need to do - This one may be the biggest timesaver of all.  Work like a great car mechanic or a great doctor: starting at the beginning and making the same mistakes is a disaster.  Admit your trouble spots (the hard part), then be extremely gentle with yourself and patient as you figure out how to fix them. Start with one or two of those every day. Usually this will go a lot faster if YOU go a lot slower.  Promise!

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Nir Eitan, Musical Beginnings piano teacher:

Questions and Answers about Practicing

"Is it necessary for me, the parent, to practice with my child?"

Yes, it is.

At the beginning the parent should always practice with the young student. This is because the student can not remember all of the instructions the teacher gave. It is the parent's job to remind the student all that they need to achieve until the following lesson. It is as well the parent that can best communicate with their child so they would know how to “translate” the teacher's instructions to the student so they can understand it fully. The parent's involvement in the practice is also beneficial when problems arise. The parent can quickly tell the teacher in the lesson the challenges of the previous practice week and the teacher can direct the lesson quickly toward tackling  those challenges. Furthermore, when the parent is involved in the daily practice the student does not feel alone during the practice time and can better focus on the task at hand. This increases the motivation of the student and prepares them better for the upcoming lesson. This, in turn, will make it more likely that they continue their musical education.

"I would love to help my child practice piano but I myself was never taught."

To help your child with their practice you need to be present at the lesson time as much of the time as possible. By doing this you will learn with your child and be able to help them in their practice. Who knows, maybe you will want to take lessons of your own eventually.

"My child does not have a musical ear. Should he take

lessons?"

There is no such thing as not having a musical ear.  Everybody has a musical ear. It just needs to be developed.

"How long should my child practice for?"

At the beginning there is no need to practice too much. But what is important is the regularity of the practice. You want music to become an integral part of the child's life and that can only happen if the practice is pretty much regular. You can always make exceptions for vacations and special events; just make sure they stay exceptions rather than the rule. As time goes by the student will need to practice more. This is because the songs will become harder as well as more rewarding. At this stage the student should

already be used to practicing regularly and have some motivation to do so. The amount of time that I recommend is as much as needed to get the job done. If the student can succeed learning the material in twenty minutes—good! If they need forty-five minutes--good as well. As long as they get the job done that is what we are looking to achieve. Following a good practice week like that the lesson becomes a sort of reward where the student can demonstrate their hard work.

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Willis Clow, Musical Beginnings guitar and bass teacher:

On Practicing Guitar

·      Don’t approach practicing without any direction.  Develop a Practice Plan!

·      The basic Structure of my Practice Plan:  Warm up, Reading, Repertoire, Technique

·      Warm-up:  Do it!  It will prevent injury and you will play better.

·      Reading:  Read a whole piece without stopping.  It’s called music reading, not music practicing!

·      Repertoire:  Learn new songs first, then review and improve the ones you already know.

·      Technique:  This is the broadest category.  It could mean practicing scales, learning a new musical genre (like funk music!), or working through challenging pieces such as Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas for Solo violin. 

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Rebecca Rice, Musical Beginnings voice and piano teacher:

(The following is excerpted by permission from rebeccaricesoprano.wordpress.com)

10 Tips for Practicing Voice

Many new voice students do not have a full understanding of what it means to practice between lessons. Singing through your pieces several times may help you memorize them, but you won’t learn how to correct musical and technical mistakes. Students should approach each practice session as they should each lesson; with an open mind, and willing to experiment. This list is by no means complete, but here are 10 tips to incorporate into your practice time.

1.              Record your lesson. This is useful for remembering what to work on between the lessons since there often isn’t time for your teacher to make written notes for you. You will also be able to hear the difference your practicing makes over time.

2.              Practice often. It is much better to work on your singing a little bit each day rather than one longer session the day before your lesson. Singers are like athletes; we are training our muscles to perform special skills. Like athletes, waiting until the last minute and doing one long prep session will get you nowhere.

3.              If you are ill, feel pain in your throat, or if you begin to loose your voice, stop singing. Singing should always feel free, not forced. If there is pain or you become horse, you are doing it wrong or there could be a medical issue that may need to be addressed by a doctor.

4.              Warm-up using exercises your teacher introduced in the lesson. Take this time to focus on different technical aspects of singing such as breath, posture, resonance and diction. Often, each exercise is meant to work on a particular skill. If you are unsure what skills go with each exercise, ask your teacher. If you work better with imagery, use the image you’ve worked out with your teacher for each exercise.

5.              Work on pieces in sections of 4-8 measures. You can do various exercises in each section to work on different technical aspects. For example: to work on breath, sing a section on a tongue trill (rrrr); to work on phrasing sing legato on a vowel instead of the words; or to work on rhythm, count a section while singing. Once each section is perfected you can put the piece back together by grouping sections together.

6.              Take note of trouble spots. If you make a mistake more than once, go back and correct it. Sing the notes on different vowels and then with the words. Then put the trouble spot back into the rest of the phrase to give it context.

7.              Remember that the way you say the words matters as much as the meaning. Work on correct diction as part of your practice time. One way to do this is to speak the words with a resonant voice, both with the rhythm and as you would if you were in a play.

8.              Learn to read music using solfeggio (do, re, mi, etc.) or another system. Learning notation and music theory will help you learn pieces more quickly and you will understand them better. Learning another instrument is a good way to achieve this.

9.              Approach each piece as an actor. Your job is to interpret the intent of the composer and poet/lyricist for the audience. This means you must understand the meaning behind the words and the notes. Practice time needs to include some time for research.

10.           Take time to listen to many other singers in many different styles. You have a unique voice, so listening to others, both those who have voices similar to yours and those who are very different, will give you a better frame of reference for your own voice.

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Mark Balling, Musical Beginnings piano teacher:

On Practicing

I have one simple philosophy when it comes to practicing: play every day.  Of course, we are burdened down with busy life schedules; deadlines with school or work or daily errands.  "How can I find time to practice?,” I hear on a daily basis.  And believe me, I'm in the same boat!  You might even find yourself on a family vacation, or world tour -- seemingly not having the time in a day to grace the keyboard.  Of course, I would like to have my students (and myself) practice for thirty minutes every day.  Forty-five minutes would be healthy, one hour would be extraordinary!  However, seeing that I am also in that same group of folks who don't live in a perfect world, I can appreciate the fact this may not always be possible.  Yet, I stick to my mantra: play every day.  And I expect this of my students, and musical colleagues.  How?  I'll occasionally ask someone: have you brushed your teeth today; have you eaten; did you check the computer; did you wash your hands?  I hope the answer is "yes" to all of these!  Now bear with me: let's throw piano (or any instrument) into that daily routine.  This is novel: as soon as you get home from your lesson: open those up books and put them on the music stand (some may want to get a music page holder: $5 online).  Boom, your done.  If you practice right then and there, excellent!  But if not, leave them there.   Now, hopefully your piano, keyboard, guitar, or trombone is in a central area and not cordoned off in the corner.  Make it accessible, leave it set up, have the keyboard lid open.  On your busiest days, walk by and play that piece three times a day.  I promise, one run through or tough passage will not take more than five minutes.   Before you know it, you will have played every day of the week!  "But I was at a friend’s house, I was on vacation, I was sick!"   My reply: there's you tube (watch your tunes), iPad keyboards, mini USB portables keyboards (as low as $50 at Guitar Center, etc), friends'/school/hotel/church pianos. Play every day.   Now go out there and get some gigs!  Because playing music is practice as well!   

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Eleonora Boreyko, Musical Beginnings piano teacher:

How to practice piano productively:

Students are overwhelmed with school homework and are busy with various activities. It is almost impossible to remember your piano teacher's suggestions after the lesson. Having a piano notebook will act as a reference. I usually write a short comment on warm-ups and every song we are working on. It only takes seconds to read, but it will help the student to have a more productive practice. Warm-ups set the tone for proper hand position; it is also a reminder to review the key signatures.

Comments on how to practice a fast passage will improve the evenness of the tone. In the notebook, the student will also see the importance of a metronome to keep accurate tempo. If during the lesson we studied new material, it is even more important to refer to the notebook to refresh your memory of the new music terms, etc. For those students who make use of such a notebook, I definitely have seen the results of practicing productively. Ultimately, it becomes a habit. Good habits lead to better performances!

Buying a Piano

Parents of prospective piano students often ask me what kind of instrument they should buy, followed by “We don’t want to spend much before we know if they will like it.”   I completely understand that sentiment, as I myself  have a cabinet full of  ice skates, soccer kneepads, art supplies, and fish tanks from when my girls were younger, many virtually untouched.  Sometimes what seems like a heartfelt interest is really not.  But as parents, we’re always on the lookout for that one thing that will ignite our child’s love of learning, motivate them to achieve,  or bring out a latent talent.  We think perhaps music may be that thing.  We don’t want to rule it out, anyway.

And music lessons may very well spark something in a student that nothing else does.  They may take to it easily, love to practice, look forward to performing;  it may become a passion.  Or they be a steady student who becomes proficient over a number of years, working it in between soccer and cheerleading.  There are of course students who don’t take to it at all, but in my experience those students are a small subset, and usually fail because conditions at home are not right to facilitate at least some degree of success.  Most students who are interested enough to start lessons and have a good teacher (that’s crucical) will continue long enough to get the basics, even if they don’t continue throughout their growing-up years. 

So…how much should you spend on an instrument?    My advice is in two parts.  They may seem at first glance to contradict each other, but they really don’t.

1)  Get whatever you can afford, just to get going.  It’s better to have something to play on than nothing.  However…

2)  Spend as much as you can afford.   The bigger the investment in the instrument, the more likely the student will learn to play.  Whether that’s because a nicer instrument is more satisfying to play or whether parents are more likely to enforce practice routines if they have a bigger financial stake in lessons is hard to say.  My guess is that it’s a combination of the two.

That said, following are some options in all price ranges.  This list is by no means comprehensive, nor exhaustively researched.  It just aims to give you a few ideas.

·CasioCTK 61-key keyboard, $140.  This has touch-sensitive keys, which is important, and comes with a stand, headphones, and built-in metronome, which could be helpful.   I found this at Best Buy.

· Yamaha 88-key Full-Size Keyboard, $500 (model YPG535MM).   Get 88 keys if you possibly can.  This one also comes with a stand and a pedal, which is a big plus.   Best Buy carries this model, and they often carry similar models at Costco in the same price range.

· If you can manage another step up in a keyboard, I recommend going to Pierre’s Fine Pianos in West L.A.  (pierresfinepianos.com).   Pierre has a variety of keyboards and digital pianos ranging from $600-$4000.  The more you spend, the better sound quality you’ll get and the better it will feel to play.  There are also lots of fun digital add-ons, but Pierre can explain those better than I can.  One of his most popular digital pianos is the Kawai MP10 for $2495.

·Moving over to acoustic pianos, Pierre carries new and used in some of my favorite brands (I’m partial to Yamaha and Kawai) and usually has something in the store in the $1500 range.  It goes up from there (a new Kawai is about $3000), and is worth checking out, as there is something magnificent about a good piano.  Even if you’re not yet ready to spend thousands, it’s nice to know what might be in your or your child’s future. 

·Yamaha makes something called a Silent Piano, which is an acoustic piano that has been digitized so that it can be played like a regular piano but also heard only through headphones.  It’s an acoustic/digital hybrid, sort of like the Prius of pianos.  They’re $5,000-$6,000 used.  (A quick note on headphones, though…use them if you have to, but it’s preferable that your student practice out loud.  That way you can monitor their progress and, more importantly, it sends the message that you want to hear them play.)

·Renting a piano can be a good option, as it puts your child on a full-size acoustic right away.  Rentals start at about $55/mo., which you can apply it to purchase.   

·I’ve acquired pianos and keyboards from many different sources over the years.  Most of my acoustic pianos I’ve bought from Pierre, as his prices are fair and I trust his guidance.   I did buy a piano from Craigslist once, and it was a fairly decent one for only $500.  The process was a little scary, though, as I had to go from one stranger’s house to another to look at them and then there was the problem of having to hire a mover to retrieve the piano but not having any assurances that the owner or the piano would still be there when we arrived. (They were.)

·If you’re interested in a high-end piano (perhaps you’ve won the lottery or have an inheritance coming), check out the Fazzioli line at Pierre’s, custom-made in Italy.  Or the PDL Pleyel piano for $300,000 that takes a year to handcraft in France.  Or better yet, take home the $1.2 million gold-plated Bosendorfer Imperial that’s on the showroom floor now.  I guess we’ll keep dreaming…

So buy what you can afford, but stretch a little if possible to remind yourself and your child that studying music is a serious and worthwhile endeavor.  If you’re lucky, your piano will become a member of the family. 

My Daughters

My daughters, Elena and Maddie, are now 19 and 16.   Way back when they were little people of 4 and 1,  I started Musical Beginnings so I’d have a job I could bring them to, and they’ve always been the heart of the school.   When they weren’t dancing and singing in one of my classes, they were engrossed in a Barney tape in my office just a few feet away.  As they got older, I created classes I thought they’d like—Foundations, Entertainers, Little Fingers Club—and the studio grew out of what they needed.  When they got old enough for piano lessons, I hired teachers.  When they were ready to perform, I put on recitals.   When a parent had a question, I drew on my own experience.   And on weekends, my daughters helped me empty the trash.

Elena and Maddie and Musical Beginnings all grew up together.   As the girls got older and they tired of Barney tapes, they helped out in the classes by putting away instruments, readying CD’s,  or giving special attention to a restless child.  They performed in every recital and helped with set up and clean up.   Everyone knew them; they were always there.

Eventually they outgrew the Young Child classes and spent their days in their own school.   They still took lessons and performed in recitals, but not every recital.   I still created new classes, but not always for their age group.  But yet their influence remained.  When I wanted them to memorize more pieces, I came up with Trophy Club for the whole studio.  When Elena struggled with 16^th-notes, everyone was invited to do a Rhythm Challenge.  When Maddie couldn’t recall the sharps in a B scale, it was time for Scale Olympics.  As they got more advanced, I implemented the Academy and Honors Recitals.

In high school, the girls got involved with their own things and Musical Beginnings became more mine than ours.  I got used to doing things without two little girls next to me.  I could bring a new focus to my work.  Elena went to college and Maddie turned from violin to journalism and tennis.   Because  things were so busy I had little time for nostalgia.  Still there were moments, quick ripples of longing.

And then this summer my daughters emerged once more as guiding forces at Musical Beginnings.  Deciding between them that I needed digital updating, they got to work.  Elena set up the new Musical Beginnings Facebook page and Maddie created this blog.  Elena transcribed and formatted songs I’d been singing forever but were not written down into music notation for everyone to read.  Maddie organized the CD’s I use in my classes into ipod playlists and hid my CD player until I learned how to use them. I now have a DropBox account, SoundCloud, and two flash drives.  I might have only the vaguest notion of what to do with the DropBox and SoundCloud, but I like knowing they’re there. 

Now when I go onto my computer, when I update Facebook, when I touch the Bubbles playlist on my ipod, I’m given a quick reminder of Elena and Maddie and it makes me smile.  Just like when they were little, my girls are always around.

Why Practice?

Should a child be made to practice?  As with everything, views differ.

Some parents see music education as an opportunity for kids to learn discipline and time management in addition to the music itself.  Others hold that learning music shouldn’t involve any pressure, either because it contradicts the spirit of the activity or because they just don’t have the time or energy to enforce one more thing.   Some parents’ goal is to have their children stay in lessons until they become a proficient musician.  Others are content to expose their offspring to music and see what comes of it.

Which approach is best?

In my experience, both approaches can be effective, depending upon the child.   Both can also fail miserably, depending upon the child. However, I believe a child has a better chance of learning to play and eventually enjoying the instrument if some sort of practice routine is introduced.

Because…

•   Although a child may stop lessons after a couple of years, it’s a shame if  they never progress during that time.   Even a brief stint in lessons should show them they are capable of learning music.  If they want to come back to it later on,  they should remember it as something at which they were successful.  Also, they’ll have two years—or six months, or whatever length of time they studied—of skills on which to build.

•   Self-expression usually comes later.   We sometimes make the mistake of believing beginning music lessons are a vehicle of artistic expression. Occasionally they may be, but more often they are putting in place the building blocks for later artistry.   We don’t teach a first-grader how to add and expect him to immediately be able to find a polynomial.  We teach him to add with the understanding that it is the first of many steps that will lead to solving complex equations.  In other words, the good stuff takes a few years; learning music is a gift that sits under the tree for a while.

•   Lessons cost money and parents should get their money’s worth.  When a teacher has to go over the same material week after week, a parent gets less value for their music education dollar.

•   When a student practices, they progress.  When they progress, they learn new pieces, finish books, and  understand more of what they see on the page.  Accomplishment feels good.   This is sometimes what well-meaning parents miss when they don’t push practicing because they want to keep music “fun.”   It’s not fun to do something poorly. It is fun to be able to play a piece that impresses your friends.

All that said, I have heard accounts of  students who for years rarely touched their instrument outside of lessons and yet enjoyed the lessons so much their parents let them continue, until one day the student took it upon themselves to start practicing and then never stopped.   (In fact, we have a teacher with that story.) And sometimes a child gets enough out of the weekly lesson time itself to make continuing worthwhile.   The lessons may still be enriching even if they don’t result in a high degree of proficiency; in some cases, gaining expertise isn’t necessarily the goal.

But I believe most parents put their child in lessons with the hope and expectation that they’ll learn to play.  And rarely does a child stop music lessons because they just couldn’t abide their 20-minute-a-day practice regimen.   Mostly they stop because they so seldom sit down to practice that they’re not learning to play, and so it gradually becomes less important to both them and their parents.   And, the vast majority of our advanced students throughout the years have had a practice routine dictated to them, at least at the beginning.

Practicing for lessons can give children insight into how to tackle something big by breaking it into smaller steps.  It familiarizes them with the emotional trajectory of facing something new:  the initial uncertainty, perhaps some frustration, then focus, persistence, work, understanding, more work, and finally, mastery.   This may end up being  at least as great a gift as the music itself.

Practicing Tips

“How do I get my child to practice?”  The music parent’s eternal dilemma!  The answer varies from student to student and family to family, so I give you here several ideas in the hopes you’ll find the right one for you.

·      Designate specific Practice Times, and don’t let anything interfere with them.  If it’s 4:30 Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays, for example, then the young musician must stop whatever else they’re doing at those times and attend to their instrument.  If it was a scheduled soccer practice or karate class, they’d be there.  Treat Practice Time the same way.

·      Pick a daily Practice Time.  Right after dinner might work, or after snack but before homework.  If you’ve got some extra minutes in the morning, that can be an excellent time, as the student is fresh and morning routines generally don’t change.

·      Schedule in Practice Times.  If every week is different, sit down with a calendar on Sunday night and figure out when Practice Times will be for the upcoming week.  Write them on the calendar and stick with them.

·      Don’t skip out.  No fair missing a Practice Time by promising to do twice as much the next day.  It’s far more effective to practice regularly than it is to cram it all in on the day before a lesson.

·      Stack the deck with loaded choices such as “Can you help me with these dishes or were you about to go practice?” or  “I’d like you to fold the laundry, unless you were on your way to practice…?”

·      A sticker chart, that old stand-by, works well with younger children.  The concept of sitting down to practice 5 Steps Up today so they can know how to play a Mozart sonata in many tomorrows may be too abstract to motivate them. The knowledge that they’ll get to pick a sparkly sticker and that five stickers equals a trip to the park isn’t.

·      A no-screen-time rule until practicing has been done.

·      Practice right after a lesson while all the new concepts are still fresh. Waiting a couple of days and forgetting what the teacher said makes everything harder. 

·      Lower your expectations.  This wouldn’t be the first thing I’d advise, but if you’re really struggling to get in practice time, it may be that you’re trying for too big a chunk.  Ten minutes a day can yield remarkable results if it’s consistent.  And it’s hard to argue against just ten minutes.  Often the student ends up playing for longer without realizing it.

·      Call it “rehearsing” instead of “practicing.”

·      Request concerts.  No need to wait for the next recital.  On a Friday evening or Sunday morning or whenever the family has some time together, ask your student to play for you. They can perform the pieces they’ve been working on that week plus some old favorites.  This lets them know you value their effort and, most importantly, want to hear them play. Praise them and leave the correction of mistakes to their teacher.  Celebrate their accomplishment…have some cake.   

On Reading Notes

I frequently get calls from parents eager to start their young children in music. I love these calls, because there’s nothing I like to talk about more.  Often the question of reading music comes up, and often the parent would like that to happen sooner rather than later.

The parent’s intention is right on target:  Give their child an opportunity to learn music.  Start young.  Take them to the best place in town.  (I improvised that part.)  But if we’re not careful, such enthusiasm can backfire if not channeled toward the child’s best interest.  Pushing a child under six years to grapple with written notation can frustrate or bore them to the point of  taking a dislike to music.  Or sometimes the parent sees that frustration and decides music is not for them. And if they never try again—as they often don’t—it’s a shame.

I’m not against reading music.  I read music, most of the people I know read music, and it’s certainly worth learning to do well.  Besides being a universal way for musicians to communicate with each other, it gives us immediate access to centuries of music.  Everyone who studies at Musical Beginnings for a reasonable amount of time learns how to read music.  All that said, knowing how to read notes  does not make you a musician.  Both music history and the music industry today are filled with examples of superlative musicians who can’t read a note.  Good music comes from inside.  Even classical players, for whom note reading is integral, have to feel and understand what they’re playing in order for it to be something the rest of us want to hear.   

The past two decades have given us several credible research studies about how the brain—particularly a young child’s brain--learns music.  Here is a quick overview:

Learning music is like learning a language.   Just as we don’t put pencils in  toddlers’ hands before they can speak a coherent sentence, neither do we want to drill  preschoolers on note names before they can feel a beat. By the time a child is introduced to the written note, here’s what we want them to be able to do:

•Keep a steady beat.

•Recognize and execute subdivisions of that beat, and rhythmic patterns.

•Sing in tune and recognize melodic patterns.

•Improvise within a simple harmonic framework.

Sound simple?  Perhaps not to an adult.  But for a young child, it really can be.  Presented in the right way, children under seven years will absorb and integrate these skills naturally and joyfully, with their whole beings.  Then when they start to read music, and they’ll know what they are reading. 

So will a four-year-old will still be learning music even if they’re not reading notes or bowing a violin? Most emphatically, yes.  And what they learn will be more vital to their long-term success than being able to discern the lines of the staff a year earlier than their peers.  When little ones in music and movement classes  begin instrumental instruction in a year or two or three, they move faster, grasp notation more easily, and play more musically than they would if they had started right off on an instrument.

Are there exceptions?  Of course.  There are children who don’t enjoy the class dynamic, although this is rare.  There are children who can intuitively make music from notes on a page despite no previous training.  But, according to research in the field and my own experience with hundreds of children over the years, the VAST MAJORITY of young children benefit greatly from music and movement classes, they enjoy them, and through them they develop a joyful relationship to music that later carries them through the ups and downs of learning to play an instrument.

Remember, these are very little people we’re talking about, whose brains are wired to learn through play.  I say let them have some fun with music first.

For Sally

I’d like to dedicate my first blog entry to Sally Copeland, one of the women who encouraged me to start Musical Beginnings 14 years ago.   Sally lost a battle with breast cancer on July 31.  

Sally and I were in a Mommy and Me class together when our daughters were toddlers.   We wrestled with things like potty training, finding the best playgrounds, and whether or not to dilute apple juice or serve it straight.  We helped our little girls with art projects we chuckled at but never threw out.   We commiserated over how shockingly stubborn a 2-year-old can be at one moment, but how sweet the next.   We went on fire station field trips and sang songs.

Occasionally the talk would turn to local children’s classes:  which ones we liked, which we didn’t, what was nearby, what should be.  I mentioned once my background in teaching music to children, and Sally jumped on it.   Start a class in Westchester, she suggested.   She would enroll her little Emma.  I nodded vaguely.

Then she suggested it the next week.  And the next.  Until my polite murmurs turned into a real consideration of the idea.  Until I finally started one class in a borrowed room of a nearby church.  And true to her word, she and Emma were in it. 

They stayed with me for years.  I have fond memories of Emma up on stage in one of our first “Entertainers” groups, and of Sally rocking and singing to Fiona in Mommy and Me classes. 

We lost track of each other after that, as our girls grew older and into other things.  But I’ve always been grateful for her early encouragement, and know that a little bit of Sally will always be at the heart of Musical Beginnings.