Piano Camp Frequently Asked Questions

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q. What is Piano Camp?

A. It's a two day experience of classes, workshops, guided practice, and personal coaching in the art pop piano playing.

Q. Is it for beginners?

A. There will be two tracks, one for beginners and one for those beyond the beginning stage. Absolute beginners are encouraged. The second track (Beyond) is designed for those students who have taken the Instant Piano Workshop designed by Robert Laughlin or those who already have a little background in pop/chord piano playing.

Q. Who is behind it?

A. The workshop is presented by the New School of American Music. They were founded in 1982 and have directly or indirectly been responsible for teaching hundreds of thousands of students nationwide in their One Day Workshops. These workshops are given primarily in college non-credit programs, in almost all 50 states and in Canada.

Q. Who is teaching it?

A. Over 300 piano teachers have been trained to give these workshops. However the bulk of the sessions at Piano Camp will be taught personally either by the designer of the course, Robert Laughlin or by his wife Pam.

Q. What do I need to know already?

A. Nothing really. However, if you wish a head start you can download a pamphlet to study at www.pianofun.com/newsletters.html

Q. Will there be pianos for everyone?

A. We will have four or five keyboards available for campers. And there will be ample time for practice. But I can't guarantee that there will be a keyboard available for everyone all the time. Therefore, I encourage you to bring a portable keyboard with you, if you have one. If enough people do that, there won't be a shortage. But it's the only way I can guarantee you will have an instrument to play 100% of the time. If you cannot bring your own instrument, I will guarantee you'll have access to one of our instruments at least SOME of the time.

Q. How effective is the curriculum and staff?

A. Robert Laughlin, the designer of this program and lead teacher at Piano Camp, has personally given the basic Instant Piano workshop to almost 25,000 students over a span of almost 30 years. The course has been consistently rated as one of the best courses offered by the dozens of college non-credit programs in which it has been taught. This is not just an idle boast. We have thousands of evaluations in our files, and we get unsolicited praises about the course on a regular basis.

Q. Will classical music be covered too?

A. No. Just pop.

Q. What's the difference in teaching or learning classical vs. pop?

A. Classical music revolves around reading music notation, which is a long process with a steep learning curve. Pop music revolves around chords, a much easier system.

Q. Will there be private instruction?

A. The instructors plan on helping everyone out with their individual needs during the guided practice sessions. There you will have one-on-one contact with the instructors.

Q. What is the deadline for the tuition discount?

A. June 22 at midnight.

Q. What about sleeping arrangements for Saturday night?

A. Sleeping is bunkhouse style. The bunk houses have about a dozen single cots with mattresses. You bring your own sleeping bag or bedding. The bunkhouses are segregated by sex. If you wish, you can opt for a private room upgrade for yourself or your family. Those come with a semi-private bathroom. Again, bring your own bedding. More info on facilities and what to bring are at the Walker Creek Ranch web site. Be sure to read the list of essentials before leaving for camp.

Q. Where is Walker Creek Ranch located?

A. Less than an hour north of San Francisco and less than an hour from the famous Napa Valley wine country, the ranch is located on several acres of pristine natural foothill topography. It's currently used as a nature camp for the Marin County school system. Aside from the wildlife, you won't see any neighbors. It's really beautiful and ideal for short hikes and explorations during your free time.

Q. What about meals?

A. You will get lunch and dinner on Saturday and breakfast and lunch on Sunday. It's all served cafeteria style and is actually pretty good. Vegetarian meals are available and they can accommodate special needs. Be sure to inquire ahead of time.

Q. Where can I get more information?

A. These links.

Walker Creek Ranch: http://www.walkercreekranch.org/newpdfs/confguestinfo.pdf

Registration: http://www.pianofun.com/camp/orderform_pc.html

What's Easy. What's Hard.

I talked last time about learning to control difficulty in the playing of music. As musicians we have choices as to how we want to approach playing a song, and how difficult we want it to be.

As a teacher of pop piano, I find it interesting to realize I teach very conflicting concepts. First I show people how easy it is to play a song. Then I challenge them by making it more difficult. (If only I could make up my mind.)

But we should also acknowledge that individual songs themselves have an intrinsic level of difficulty to play. Many provide barriers to learning.

Generally speaking, the more chords a song has, and the faster the chords change, the more difficult the song is to learn to play.

Some argue that some songs have "difficult" chords, but that's not exactly true. I always maintain that all chords are easy to play on the piano. But if a chord is unfamiliar to you, then it's intrinsically going to be difficult, because you don't know it yet. And your hand doesn't know it yet.

Here's some examples of what I mean. Silent Night. Very easy. Just three chords and most pop piano players, even the beginners, know what those chords are.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is more difficult. It has maybe up to 18 different chords. Some of them (like the major sevenths) are challenging, because you may not know them yet.

Now consider The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire). Very difficult. Lots of different chords coming at you a mile a minute. And the song changes keys several times, adding more challenges. It's a real killer of a song to try to learn.

But one really cool thing is that as a piano player, you have some great opportunities to exert your control and influence. It's always possible to take an easy song and make it harder. And it's always possible to take a hard song and make it simpler. The former strategy is for beginners. The latter for experts.

When you make the transition from one strategy to the other, you have matriculated from beginner to expert.

Sometimes you find a song that you just cannot seem to be able to master no matter what. When you do, don't despair. Just give up (for the time being) and move along. There's no rule that says you have to be able to play everything. You can always come back to it later.

Tip Five: Reverse Goal Settling

This is the fifth installment in our series of articles on hidden or obscure strategies for improving musicianship.

You may have heard this one before. It's almost a cliche. All the personal improvement gurus talk about this one. Earl Nightengale espouses it. So does Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins. All of them. It's a powerful tool, if you use it right. Does it work for learning music? Yes. But I've got a little twist for it.

I'm talking about goal setting. All those human achievement gurus are always harping on goal setting. You've probably heard it all before. Set a specific goal: "I will double my income in 12 months." That's a perfect example. You have a specific goal with a number attached to it and an allotted time period in which to get it done.

Then you must write the goal down. That's what they tell you. And read it on a regular basis. Every day. Then you do the visualization. That's all a part of it. You actually imagine the aroma of the leather seats in your brand new luxury autombile that you will own once you have doubled your income in 12 months thanks to your careful goal setting.

Aaaahhhh. Smells beautiful doesn't it?

So does all this goal setting, visualization, affirmation stuff really work? I think it does. Or at least I think it can.

Does it work for learning an instrument? That's another story.

First, it's a little more difficult to quantify a goal as far as musicianship goes. "I wanna be a lot better," is kind of vague. So is "I wanna be able to improvise." Or, "I wanna play like Oscar Peterson."

Those are tough goals to attain, even if you write them down.

What makes it harder is that your progress comes so gradually, and it's very hard to measure progress in music. I suppose you could use a metronome and measure success in terms of how fast you can play "Donna Lee" or "Tico Tico."

But there's a lot more to music than playing things fast. We all know that.

So how does one set goals, get them on paper, and measure progress?

By doing everything backwards.

To evaluate your progress, instead of writing down how you want things to be in a year, instead, chronicle how things are now. And then store it in the archives.

For example, pick out three tunes you're working on right now, any scales or exercises you're working on, and perhaps a representatve selection of the chords you now use. Assemble all these things at your piano. Now comes the scary part. It's scary, but it really works, so listen up.

Get a recording device of some sort, click the "record" button, and spend the next several minutes playing those songs, scales, exercises, and chords into the microphone. Try to relax and goof around a little too while the tape is rolling. (I know they don't use "tape" anymore, but try to humor me here.)

Just get a good representation of how you play now, warts and all. Then file the recording away for at least six months. Make it six months to a year. Then after that time period has elapsed, pull out the old recording device again and repeat the process. Three new songs, whatever scales and exercise you're working on, chords, goofing off. Record it and lock it up.

But. Don't forget to play the recording you made the year before. Peer into the past to listen to how you sounded back then. You won't remember otherwise. If you play a little every day, you'll be so much better in a year. But you'll never know it until you actually play your archived recording of yourself.

Now you'll see, hear, and experience the goal. "I wanna be a better piano player in a year." You'll actually see those results, once you review your original recordings. Repeat the process once or twice a year to get the best results.

Like I said, it's a little scary to record yourself at first, but you can get used to it. All serious professionals do it.

Of course, have goals. We can't peer into the future to see what we are to become. But we can peer into the past to see from whence we did come. And that often can provide you with the impetus, if not the downright inspiration, to keep on task.

Try to learn a new song every week. New scales. New exercises. Explore books. Take a private lesson every once in awhile. Enroll in a music camp. Play in a band. Do any or all these things, and put in 20 to 60 minutes at your piano every day.

And have fun listening to those old recordings to see how bad you really were compared to how good you are now.

P.S. To get a glimpse of my 18 month master plan for learning pop piano, click on the link and download the Study Guide (Success Manual) that comes with the Integrated Home Study course. It may inspire you to set up a few goals of your own.

Coming Soon: (At Least) 22 Tips for Successful Learning of Piano

I tell my workshop students that I started to learn piano when I was 23 years old. It's true. That's how old I was when I decided I WANTED to learn about the piano and found someone who could teach it to me.

In actuality it started much earlier than that. My music lessons probably started the day I was born. That was the day I first heard music I'm pretty sure. Don't ask me exactly what was the first music I heard. I don't remember.

But there must have been some radio on somewhere in the nursery at St. Mary's Hospital. Or if not, I'm sure my mom must have started singing to me within hours if not minutes of my birth. The fact she was a professional stage singer had nothing to do with it. We naturally sing to our children. We can't help it.

So that was my first music lesson. Day One. And I've had a music lesson everyday since. I believe we get a music lesson every time we hear music played. Maybe it's just the subconscious mind that gets the lesson, but that counts.

By the age of four I learned to play records (78's I'm afraid they were) on the folks' Packard Bell phonograph. I still remember my favorite records. Tex Williams (Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette), Jimmy Durante, Spike Jones, Chico Marx, Oscar Levant (Malaguena).

Formal piano lessons started at six. They started again at seven. Then I started over again at seven-and-a-half. Then eight-and-a-half. By age 10, my piano career was over when I finally persuaded the parents that piano was not for me.

After all that time and with all those teachers I managed to conquer John Thompson's Teaching Little Fingers to Play, and got as far as page 19 of the John Thompson First Grade Book. Not exactly protege material.

Toward the end I was barely practicing 10 minutes a WEEK. Or maybe it was 10 minutes a MONTH. Piano was not what I wanted to do. So I was allowed to quit.

A funny thing happened after I stopped taking formal lessons. From then on you could not pry me away from the piano. I was playing around with it all the time. No direction, no lessons, no formalities, no practicing. Just play play play.

Later my attention turned to guitar and shortly after that to girls, but those basic years until about age 10 or so were very influential. And were very important to me.

What's the point of this?

By the time I was 33 I figured out how to present the one day piano workshop to adults, and since then I've taught the class to over 36,000 people (I think). It stands to reason that over that time, some people would come to regard me as an expert in the field of piano teaching.

Whether that's true or not is up for discussion.

But over that time, I've come to recognize certain key factors that contribute to ones development and success at the piano.

Earlier today I was staring out the window daydreaming when I decided to see how many of those key factors I could write down. Within three minutes I got to 22 of them.

So if you're interested, I'd like to share these factors with you over then next few issues. I'm sure that by the time I'm done I'll think of several more. These factors are often so subtle that we don't think about them. Yet they are very powerful. And often very simple.

Some of these key factors will surprise you. Maybe all of them will surprise you. And not a single one has to do with "practicing" as we know it. Stand by.