It’s been a real joy sharing my chat with Jeni Warder of the Keys Piano School and I hope you’ve found it as inspiring as I did! Above is the full interview and there’s an automatically generated transcript below.
Jeni raised so many interesting points over the course of the interview, including:
how creativity is an attitude that we can apply to our teaching
how community supports development
how allowing people to be themselves strengthens a community
how the school was set up and has evolved
how she teaches creativity in the school’s Creative stream
Introduction and Welcome
Garreth
Hello and welcome to PianoCreativity.com. I'm really delighted to welcome Jeni Warder of the Keys Piano School to us. She's going to answer some questions about her school, the complex setup they've got there and what her favorite things are to teach and how she does it. So thanks for being here, Jeni.
Jeni
You're very welcome. I'm absolutely delighted to be here. It's lovely to see what you're doing and I've been really interested to follow the progression of your projects and it's an absolutely brilliant project. I love it.
Garreth
Thank you. I think my first question is really, why do you think teaching creativity is important in the first place?
Jeni
I'm originally, I'm a trained teacher first. So although I was a pianist with a music degree and very much obsessed with music down the line, I then became a primary school teacher and for about 12, 11, 12 years, I followed a very intense path of learning to be a very good teacher, and I think as part of that, you need to really work at looking at every single child's needs and what's going to make them really respond to your teaching in the best way. So it's about the learning, it's not about the teaching. And I think that's a huge flip that I did during that time. It's not about me, it's about them.
And what do they need? And I think when I then returned to piano teaching I just really wanted to bring all that with me because it was so ingrained to my core, to be really thinking outside the box with my teaching. I was always then trained to do better. Keep doing better. And this is what you'll be taught in teaching all the time. This is the headache of being a teacher is if somebody's always on you, do better. So it becomes ingrained in you.
And I think that is where it came from originally. so the creativity is just a byproduct of that. It's what can we do to engage children more? What can we do to explore concepts in a way that potentially is a little bit different because we're not understanding it this way, so how can we understand it? And what makes children tick, and that was different when I was a child, and then when I was teaching the classroom and what it is now. You've got to go with whatever's going on in the generation right now. And there are so many different complicated elements of this that you've got to be on your toes all the time.
And I think creativity, like you say, it is. Just pulls all that together, and that's all there is to it for me.
Garreth
It's interesting, I was, Joanna Garcia, who's a, piano teacher, yeah, you know that, she posted something recently, and it it was a pyramid of learning, I can't remember the, all the levels of learning, but right at the top was creativity, and her point was that, When you do, when you create something, you need everything, you need to have good theory knowledge, you have to have good technique, you gotta have a good concept, and when you do all of those things at once, and you can do it live, it's just the ultimate test of someone's ability, but it's also really fun, and I think that's the thing that I like about doing it is that you just have a good time with these kids and with the adults as well,
Yeah, and I think there's something that you touched on there. I think that there's two different things here, isn't there? There's teaching creatively and then there's teaching to be creative.
And I think that is definitely the top of the pyramid. Whereas teaching creatively is considering that whole pyramid every day. I think if you are teaching creatively, then you're more likely to get children to be inspired by that, and they will maximize their potential to be creative. And if they're seeing you very much single channel teaching, then they will become very single channel learners. I feel that's a, that's an interesting, definition there between the two.
Garreth
I have to think we're modelling the behaviours that we want to see in our students, aren't we? And so if we can react creatively to what they're doing, they're going to learn that's a good thing. whereas if we, the analogy I always think of is when you, when I have a kid who's clearly not listening to what I'm saying and they're messing around with the keys and there's a part of me that's really annoyed about it because I'm like, "Listen to me, I'm important and I have knowledge to impart!" And I'm trying to, I've been working on it quite a lot this year just to chill out a bit, take a step back and just have some fun with them while they're having fun. And I find it actually works quite well, and not to, yeah, to react creatively to them rather than in a sort of disciplinarian way. And obviously there is a place for discipline as well, like I have to get them to listen to me, but often I find that if I do something fun with them for a while I'll get their attention anyway, it's just a question of being flexible with them.
Jeni
Absolutely. And that's also everything you said there is a huge part of how we generate that sense of community, I think by leading by example, you want them to be what enjoying their plane. Yes. you've got to look like you're enjoying it. And if you want them to be not scared of putting themselves out there and being quite brave and owning themselves as a musician, then you've got to be that as well. and that's much easier when you've got a support network and you've got people around you doing the same thing. And that's, really a huge thing about the group teaching that we'll obviously come to in a bit.
Garreth
Yeah, so that's, a great segue there. Good work. I'm fascinated by Keys Pianos School because it's very different to how I work. I teach for my own most of the time, and you've got quite a substantial organization that you've set up with some partners, and you teach about 300 kids, or 300, sorry, 300 students, there's adults as well, aren't there? Yeah. and so I'm really curious about how that works, and I've got a whole load of questions. What's, the structure of the, school? How does it work?
Jeni
We are very, like you say, it's very much community. So we want to generate, a family where everybody knows a lot of other people and that we've now been open six years in September, it'll be six years.
And I think we are beginning to really see that now, obviously we had COVID for kind of the middle two years of when we've been open, we started at 18 months and then we had Almost two years of chaos as everybody did. And then we've had another kind of two years of being able to come back from that.
And I think now we're seeing what we originally wanted in the first place. so with Keys, there's a lot of emphasis on group teaching and as of the last couple of years, everybody, apart from the adults, will start in a group setting. we have a one to one stream, which I'll talk about later, but you can't directly access that from the outside.
Our foundation, our FunKeys children are our youngest children, so they can start from three they are...
Garreth
it's a great name, by the way… FunKeys. It's the kind of pun I really enjoy.
Jeni
Moment of genius that I'm, in a meeting with. yeah, it's, the cutest, little thing.
So we have a piano kingdom, and we have a cave, and a castle, and a dragon D and we have songs that we've written about the characters. And, and it actually does teach them things. We have it as a, I know that sounds strange to say, but we have it as almost like a come and take part. Be musical. listen to high and low and fast and slow and staccato and legato.
And we do talk about words, musical words, but a lot of it is done through storytelling and movement and listening and. Bubbles and things like that. But they do get to know where, notes on the piano are, and they start to really start to internalize rhythm and think about the beat. And by the end of that kind of nursery phase, you can really see little musical skills really starting to develop.
So that's our first, our youngest ones. We don't have, a vast amount of preschool groups that the majority of children start kind of year in reception year one, maybe year two, and they go straight into foundation. Foundation is, like a five phase program. And each phase will take between, I don't know, maybe term and a half to three terms, depending on how little they are.
They get quicker as they grow up. So they might do phase one over a year, but then by sending it to phase four, they've done it in a term, So it's it's a, very organic thing. the groups are up to, five children. we've got five pianos. in each of the studio, the larger studio rooms, so they could all have a piano each.
They don't necessarily spend a lot of time playing on their own on a piano at this age. It's very, group work and playing things, doing activities together. Lots of, Dalcroze, Eurythmics, Kadayi kind of influence. All those things come into every lesson. And we have resources coming out of Arias, big rollout pianos and boom whackers and bells and finger dragons and everything you can think of, we've got it.
So it's like an Aladdin's cave under the stairs, oh, what shall we get out today? We're doing something about a mouse, let's get the mice out. they spend a lot of time, first of all, thinking about rhythm, where the, keys are on the piano, all of the things that we skip over so fast in a race to get to knowing the notes.
Because there is this kind of ingrained belief, especially I think in the UK, that you can't play any music until you can read the music. And I saw an interview with another lady, is it Karen, who was saying that…
Garreth
Karen Schlimp
Jeni
…the opposite way round in music is that, we apparently need to be able to read before we can talk, which is a very strange way around.
So Foundation kind tries to focus, especially at the beginning, on that. Rhythms and making music, improvisation, knowing, knowing how to produce sounds without necessarily being able to quantify them as a written notation. Phase two, we very gradually start to go on, Steve. We start with landmark notes.
We have some very quirky little ways of teaching things. They have. Gina is our treble clef, and Gina has a G, and it's Gina's G. there's plenty of crazy things we've thought up over the years. Foundation really focuses on that, and by the time it gets to the end of Foundation, so maybe they're year two, three, they're they're reading quite competently.
They can read whole staves, they, they recognize rhythms, they can put hands together, they're playing quite well by rote as well. and they're ready for depending on how quickly they're working at initial grade one level. obviously the groups we try and keep roughly in line. So we have a group of children who are that these are all phase four, but that they're all pushing out, they're all doing quite well or this, these children phase three, but they need to take longer because they're all, all in year one still.
We need to take our time. So we try and be really careful with how the groups are organized and I think that's a huge thing with groups. Yeah. You have to have them. roughly working at the same kind of level. not, it doesn't need to be that they're all exactly the same, but it does need to be that you can pitch it in a way where everybody can access it in one way. You can't have
Garreth
that means kid might kids might move between or be moved between groups.
Jeni
Absolutely. Absolutely. and it works almost better the more children you have, because you can have groups that are more specific. So you're like, "Oh, this one's not quite suiting you, but you can go over there."
They've got space and they're exactly the right place for you. Obviously, the fewer children you have, the harder that makes it. but it's getting to the point now that we can really do that quite well.
At the end of foundation, we foundation naturally continues into our creative stream, which I know is something that we wanted to talk about. And that's the sort of age seven, eight, nine. If, you are a complete beginner and you come into us at nine or 10, you would go straight into the creative group. we are going to bypass foundation because it's a little bit childish, maybe the curriculum on there, but a lot of those things will still be covered just in a little bit more of a grown up way. and I think just to get, it's almost a taster as well at that level to see you're an established nine, 10 year old, you know what you like, you know what you don't like, what kind of music you enjoy. And we're going to give you an idea of how music feels, what it's about, and then you can decide how seriously you want to take this.
And I think, and a lot of our children carry straight on from foundation into creative. and they don't, obviously they're not in the same groups as those beginners, but they then start to go through kind of grade one level things, grade two level things. And sometimes we will benchmark it with an exam and say, we are going to do as a group, we're going to do grade two next year.
And they'll go, grade two? We've not done grade one. I'm like, what? I know, but you're that good! I didn't realise how good you were getting. And so yeah, that's obviously a whole teaching method in itself. I think people seem to be more, bemused by the creative groups than with the foundation groups.
It seems to be a natural thing to expect. for little ones to go together and do this kind of game learning. and it's almost oh, they're not ready for proper lessons yet. Therefore, we can keep them like this. But when we start doing it at year kind of seven, and people are like saying, oh, they're in high school.
How on earth are they? they need a proper lesson. and for me, that's actually quite funny now, because I can see how well it works and what it does. But it is so different. Like you say. We also have an academy stream that works by the side. So our academy stream is run by Madalina Rusu, who is a concert pianist internationally and she's got the fellowship from Guildhall. She's extremely, experienced professional performer and so she has quite high standards, which is absolutely what we want in there. It's, our route for, okay, you really want to take this seriously, right? We will push it. And they do two recitals a year.
They come to three workshops in a year. we give them so many opportunities to really, take their music outside of those four walls, even though they're having their lessons on a one to one, then we then say, okay, you're having your lessons on a one to one, but you're going to aim for this, a lot of those children as well knew each other when they were in foundation or when they were in creative groups and then they meet up at recitals and go, Oh, I was doing that piece. I love that. And then, Oh, can I do that? Because I saw somebody doing one and do you think I could do that?
And so we've still got, even at that level, you've still got this community because we've fostered that elsewhere in the school. So that is really how the kind of the children work. Adults are entirely a law unto themselves, and I think anybody who teaches adults would agree.
You cannot put them in any kind of box. What we do is we give them opportunities. a lot of our adults are taught during the day because our evenings are crazy busy. obviously they come on a one to one. We do a beginner's course in an evening. It's like a three week course. And even just to come and have a go.
I run that quite like that. It's a really nice cause it's like it isn't a group. and they just have a goal and quite a lot of people then sign up for lessons after that.
And, we offer opportunities for them as well to get together. For example, at Christmas, we get together at Christmas and we do like a Christmas cabaret and they can, come along and play or just listen. And nobody wants to play at the beginning. And it's just the staff doing a little bit of Christmassy stuff. And so the Prosecco and the Mulled Wine has come out and then suddenly they'll have a go. And by the end, it's just a free for all and everybody's doing duets with everybody else.
So we try very hard to get our adults to also take part in this community feeling, but it's up to them how much they want to do that.
Garreth
Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating, Jeni. It's really fascinating.
I think, the thing that intrigues me is about, I know it's not just you, there's, you've got some partners and you mentioned the concert pianist. You need a range of skills in order to do that, don't you? And obviously your experience working in the, was it primary schools that you were working in? Yeah, that would have certainly helped because that's much more of a group environment. When you were setting up the structure, where did the idea come from and how did you know that you had the skills that you needed in order to make it work?And how did you recruit the people to fill the gaps in the skills that you had?
Jeni
A wing and a prayer.
Garreth
A wing and a prayer. Yeah, okay.
Jeni
Let's see, when I first set this up, and it was me originally, it wasn't ever destined in my head to be what it is now. It didn't feel that big, it was literally the do better voice.
I was starting to take over my living room with a big roll out piano from Manumat, and I wanted to just get a little bit of movement going on. I didn't have room in my little room, and I wanted to get a few five year olds in together and do a little bit of kadahi because, I just thought that would be a really good start.
And that's all I wanted. and so all I wanted was some space and some resources. And I wanted to really explore the idea of group teaching because I thought we could reach a lot more children that way. Also you've got to think of the, the area and what people want in the market here. And people aren't generally, there's not that, That culture that you get some places of push, push exams, that there isn't like a, we want a grammar school scholarship and all these things.
There is a little bit of it, but it's not, that's not the prevailing attitude here. This is, we want our children to have some fun and do something creative with other children. And there was a big market for that. Now that wouldn't necessarily work everywhere, but that was the market I was tapping into.
Very quickly, I, I managed to make contact with Jennifer Howarth, who is one of the partners as well now. and she really came with me from the beginning to share the load of the teaching. although I had been I am doing this, I am going for it, I'm going to just put the savings into it, get a load and hope for the best.
She was like, Okay, I'm coming along for this and I will, we were very brave in that we didn't really know each other. and obviously she, really did trust me an awful lot because financially, it was a huge gamble. but it did take off very quickly and we started needing to find more staff.
and just to go back to where we were, although I was the owner and I was leading creatively, Jennifer has a degree in early years and special needs as long with alongside her piano career. so she, obviously has a completely different head of, this is what we need for the little ones and this is how we need to get these children engaged and these are the resources we need.
And, she could really lead that side of things. And she was absolutely brilliant with those little ones, which meant I could focus a little bit more on the older ones and setting up kind of opportunities. So it was a good, it was a great partnership to start with, but it was post COVID.
We started thinking, or maybe just before this is growing faster than we thought we might need to do some reassessing where we're going. and we already had another, couple of people had been working for us the odd day. and Madalina and I became really great friends and that was, Through a mutual friend, and she ended up coming to me, for a workshop with the children, and she saw what we were doing, and it was like, oh my goodness, there's nothing like this anywhere, and she was based in Biggleslade!
It was like, the most random, anyway, strange, random, coordination of events, and she ended up moving up north anyway, and part of that was, Would you have a job if I was to move up North? And we were like, yeah. So that, was when this partnership was established. And at that point, we then realized, okay, we have got a hell of a great team here.
Cause we have got special needs in early years. I've got a trained teacher. I don't want to quite label myself composer, but that's where my skillset is and and and Madelina's epic technical skill and performance experience So we were like, okay, we've got a quite a good team here. So where do we go from here?
So we then did a legal kind of transition to make everything into kind of the three of us running it. And we now also have five other members of staff. and they work, some of them work four days a week, some of them work one. and they, everybody has slightly different school sets and they teach in different places.
So some people only teach one to ones in academy. Some children, some teachers are absolutely, perfectly placed in foundation, etc. It just depends on experience, skill set, and availability really as well. so it does change a lot. We also have five, students working with us who are between sort of 15 and 17 and they, help us out in the evenings.
So obviously all our little ones…
Garreth
and that contributes to the community feel as well, doesn't it?
Jeni
absolutely. And then the holiday club. Holiday club's epic. We just love it. we have 20 children every day and we do an awful lot of really great consolidation things through really fun ways, things that they would have been doing in lessons, but you don't have that much time to really, really do it solidly enough.
You need so much repetition. So holiday club's great for that. And obviously our students are there with them as well. And the children know them and they know each other. And it's a really, nice atmosphere now.
Garreth
It's so lovely that there's so many opportunities for people to interact with one another, isn't there?
Jeni
Yeah, it's really cool.
Garreth
And I guess my final sort of question about the way that the structure of the school works is, And this is maybe a bit of a daft question considering the title of my website, but why is creativity, why is it there? Like it's that post foundation thing, it's not the academy thing. Why have you chosen creativity as your focus there?
Jeni
Because I think what we want to do is develop not just as musicians, as people, and you can never be, we say this to children all the time, you're never going to be a copy of somebody else. "You've got to be, you've got to be a first rate Gershwin, not a second rate Ravel," as Ravel once told Gershwin.
And I think that is who you, that is what I believe as a musician, is that music is, essentially about communication. And that's really where that community has come from, because it's, like the, if, a tree falls in a forest and no one's around to hear it, does it actually make a noise? are you actually Is the music really happening if you're not really sharing it with other people that you know, that's the thing is storytelling without a listener, isn't it? So in that sense if you are communicating all the time and you need to have a story to tell And you don't want to be a carbon copy of the person next to you because that's not you know, it's not relevant, really.
You've got to be, relevant to your own life and your own experience. And if that means that the kind of music you choose to play is different from the person next to you, then that's fine. And if it means that the way you interpret it is different, then that's even better. Yeah. And then if you want to create your own, complete your own music through here, then, I think that's, that's the best you can get.
So I think that there are two elements, again, that we were talking about in the beginning, there's creative teaching and there's creativity in music. And I think if you, Like I say, if you teach creatively all the time and you do improvisation on this new key signature, the time signature you've just found, or, you use the new key signature in, in, in different ways and try and think about how the chords work in that key and have a bit of a jam on, we're going to do one, four or five in this key, and then we're going to put it into the relative minor and all of these things, they just help build that vocabulary of what music is built from, how it can be jumbled up, what the correct ways are, and what the totally wrong ways are, that you can do it if you want to, but this is what the rules are, and, then, you can then decide which pieces of these puzzles are you, and which you can appreciate in other people and in other composers, but don't, necessarily fit with your musical kind of, sound.
So I think that's what I want for our children. I want them to feel like they are valid as musicians in whatever they choose to perform or do, but I want them to be confident enough in it. To communicate that and not to be I only play in my house with my headphones on with it Because that actually makes me really sad.
I know that's what people, some people do it for and I'll never you know, obviously i'll never judge that but I think it makes me a little bit sad when they have all this skill and all this musical kind of world going on can't share it with anybody else. I think
Garreth
Yeah, I feel, I've spent a lot of time, I obviously work with adults and I also, I attend piano courses every now and then, and usually with some very good amateur adult pianists. and these people love their music and they're really good, but so many of them actually struggle to, they want to play in front of people, but they've got so much fear built up around that. And I think that's what's lovely about, the way you're doing it is that you, right from the get go, you're sharing music and, it's powerful, isn't it? and you realize, as one of my other students said, you realize that you can have a place in the overall musical ecosystem. I thought that was a great analogy. This is a very wise lady to teach. And that, idea that we all have a little niche that we can fill and that it's, and that, it is important.
It's not, like I, as a composer, I am not going to be Beethoven and I don't want to be Beethoven because Beethoven is Beethoven. And that's great that he exists. But I shouldn't try to be like this is the Gershwin quote again, isn't it? But seeing that lived like it's all very well to hear that said but actually to see it lived Practically and demonstrated by you guys.
And again, I think that's why I was interested in how your you divided the roles amongst your partners because they're seeing it in that way as well. You're, the specialist in one area. Was it Madelina? Madelina was the specialist in the other area and, the other Jennifer, it must be confusing having two Jennifer's. But they're seeing it, they're seeing it lived. And then, again, we're modeling the behaviors that we want to, we want them to have.
Jeni
you've got to take down, I think quite a lot of barriers as well to have something that we have. There's quite a lot of, forgive me for saying, possessiveness in, piano teaching is "this is my student and I do it this way" and, I, think we because it's quite a singular thing often with teaching that you have a very close relationship with that one student and you get so connected to that one student which is brilliant it's exactly what is needed in a really great teaching relationship is a really good relationship but you get so in one, one way of doing things that you sometimes think your way is the only way.
And what we are very big on is nobody is anybody's one student. We all know all of these children and it's quite difficult, especially for me. I end up in this middly kind of place. It's where my, I've just landed. So Madelina takes a really high achievers because that's her skill set.
And Jen obviously takes a lot of the children who need a different access. Sometimes she manages those, those huge groups of children who are all going between different foundation groups and, all of those. So I end up somewhere in the middle would be a lot of children that sort of grade two, three, four, who are, I'm starting to really get to know them really well.
And then you go, you know what, you're doing really well now. And I think somebody else might need me. you want to, why don't you go and have some lessons with Madelina now? Or somebody else who's really going to take you on to those higher grades. Because I think my, expertise is probably needed elsewhere.
And, that as a teacher is people look at me and go, but you did all the work. Is it not really had no actually it's a privilege to be able to say i've done all right with you now you can go and get a different input and i'll still see you all the time i'll see you recitals i'll see you at workshops and we'll check in and and i'll you know i'm looking forward to seeing what you do
Garreth
I often think our job is an odd one in that our goal should be to make ourselves redundant. "you don't need me anymore. Go off and be you." And it's really hard. I had, I let go of a wonderful student who just got a distinction in his grade 8 and was just like, just a joy to teach. He's better now than I was when I was his age. It was just great fun. And I was really sad to see him go, but , but you have to let them go and do their thing, don't you?
Jeni
Absolutely. Absolutely. yeah, it is very much kind of a collaboration and all our teachers are very much on board with that. We all understand that is the way it works and, and, we just make sure that we do keep on, we have these recitals every twice a year. And so we see everybody play and we know, especially with, academy, with, with creative, they have tons of different opportunities to perform at different times, but there's no pressure on to actually, always do that. We do tend to know everybody and I think that's the real strength of the place.
Garreth
I skimmed through the content that you cover in the creative stream and it seems, it does genuinely seem creative, which is great and I was wondering if you might give our listeners or viewers an overview of what kind of things you try to cover in that stream, because I think it'd be really interesting for people.
Jeni
I think if you consider all of the things that go into any piece of music, and you just take one piece of music, and you break that down into all those little elements, and you take like a spider diagram of all those little elements, and then you look at all those elements, and you just go, okay, how could we explore that? And that is what we do.
But it's not necessarily from a piece, sometimes it's just a concept by itself. I'll give you a rundown of what we would do in a lesson, and then you can see, how it works. Our group lessons are 40 minutes long. unless, I run over in the end of 50 minutes and it's no, you're not going on yet.
It's daily and we still do it. No, we ain't 40 minutes, but there'll be lots of different kind of 10, 15 minute bits going on. so for example, I've got two groups at the moment who are working at around great too. and they are, they're actually going to do great too, because we, I, I've looked at the Trinity, we, we use Trinity, we are a Trinity centre.
and just by the way, that, the reason we do that is because the composition is valid as a third, a third piece. And if they are in a creative stream and they do an exam, They always do a composition for their third piece. It's, just standard for us. so for example, we're working on scales such as B minor.
Now this is a, quite a tricky one when you're thinking you've come from grade one, you've got F major, hands separately, one octave, and suddenly you've got B minor and B flat major, two octaves, hands together. So this is like massive challenge. So what we'll do is we'll be focusing on probably for a few weeks and just looking at lots of different combinations of that key.
So we've done quite a lot on D major. and so when they come in, I've got my big rollout piano. and I probably throw some beanbags out and say, D major, make yourself D major. And so they've just got to make a D major two octave scale. And they obviously get their kind of little, Concept blips coming out because you can see that one child is not putting the F sharps as F G's as G flats or something.
They know there's a black note there, but not quite sure how, but you're seeing straight away that is the concept. And it's that one child because the others have got it. And then a child will come and say, actually, no, it's that one. It's that way around. And they'll go, Oh yeah, that stops that interaction from teacher going, no, you got that wrong.
And they've learned that already without you even having to say anything. and that's. That's a big deal. And then we might, I might do okay, go and play that one octave, one hand, one octave, the other hand, who can do two octaves. So it's already differentiated. It's a quick though. We're on the floor.
We're doing that. Go quick, do it, come back and then, How are we going to change this to the relative minor? You get top two beanbags and you put them at the bottom and then learn this system now, and you get your relative minor. and then we might have a little go play in that.
What's not sounding right. What have we not done? Okay.
Oh, you need to change the A to an A sharp. So all of these little things are done through moving around. Big piano and kind of keeping it fast. And I think that's something that can really get lost in a one to one sometimes is that things can get quite laborious.
And as a teacher, you seem to, sometimes you want to jump in to help because it feels like it's been too long and they're not getting it, but actually they might just need a different way round and they'll work it out themselves. And this is why I think it's so successful in these groups because they're really working and bouncing off each other.
And, they get things faster sometimes because there's so many ways to get it. we might have, this is just literally out of my head what I've been doing with some of these children recently. But yeah, we've done a lot on D major and B minor. We've explored the chords in D major as well, cause this will lead on to composition.
so we've done a lot on perfect cadences, chord 5 and then we'll do it the next, next week and it'll be like, what's the cadence again? Let's just do it. and, so that, that will be like a starter, really that kind of thing and a bit of technical stuff. we obviously do have pieces we're learning and when we start a new piece, I can get quite.
I carried away with going into lots of different elements of the piece and exploring it and doing activities on it, but once we get going, we are quite, I do get them to sit and work at it. And we go right, we're going to work on this line, what I am looking for now is that you are keeping this in your right hand and that you are doing that in your left hand.
Just watch again, make sure you've got it, go get on with it if you can. And what you find then is that by the time you get to them, they've either got a question, It's something they can't, do themselves, or they've actually figured it out by themselves and they don't need you at that point, which is brilliant, in which case you can give them an extra challenge, say, try this next bit.
What can you spot that's the same and that they're on it? And the best thing is when they put their hand up, I can't do this. Miss, I can't get it. I can't do it. And then, you get to them in just, you're just with somebody, you get something, it's fine, I've figured it out now.
Garreth
That's good. Yeah, exactly what you need.
Jeni
Yeah, it is. You've got it. It was just, I was forgetting my F sharp or something like that. And those are the best moments because you think that they are becoming their own little people here,
Garreth
Yeah. wonderful. Yeah. Become independent.
Jeni
Yes, exactly. and, then maybe if we start in a new piece towards the end of the lesson, that might be where things get really exciting and creative.
I love working with, the big gymnastics balls for Delcroze, bouncing balls on the beat, making up actions for different sort of time signatures, what you're going to do on beat 1, beat 2, beat 3. Can you notice where I've changed the time signature? one of the things I've done recently with some of my kind of great wands is, Delacroze does quite a lot of kind of structure movement.
So whenever you hear this section, this is the movement that goes with this section.
And when you hear this bit, you're going to change to this movement. And they absolutely love this. And it means that they're hearing a piece lots of times. So they're getting really familiar with it while you play. But also they're building those relationships.
They're listening really well. And then somebody will go, no, it's not that bit, it's this bit. it's a lovely, thing to do. So we might do some of that. Yeah. so there's lots of, there's lots of different ways that we will get into a piece. We'll probably do a bit of all of that when we're starting something new.
And that will probably be the last sort of 10 minutes of a lesson. before they kind of finish and we just round up what the things that they need to practice this week are.
and yeah, they're quite independent because they're coming to this because they're leading it more. When you've got a one to one situation, child gets dropped off, teacher leads, child gets taken away.
And it's that child almost is having the piano lesson done to them in a way. And that's not that it's a negative thing. I think sometimes they, they can get into that very, passive learning is that I'm here to be told this, it'll go in and then it'll come out and then I'm on to the next thing I have to do.
Whereas in this way, They're having to engage with me because if they don't get something done when I get round to them, I'll be just like, you haven't done anything, come on, you need to have done this, I'm coming back in one minute. And they have to engage. And then they want to be slightly ahead of the person next to them because, there's a little bit of competition going on.
So the group thing for me is a huge benefit of the whole place and, and I, really do think that there's an awful lot there that's being missed in, in piano teaching at the moment. and I'm very passionate about it as you can tell.
Garreth
Yeah, I can tell. and I think there's an awful lot of stuff that we do reflexively because we've always done it, we all, like I had, What I would call traditional piano lessons.
I did all my ABRSM exams and then I was on my own the whole time. And so I, by the time I was 18 I hated sight reading and I, and I'd not really played piano with anybody and that's it. That's fine. And I, I clearly, I love playing the piano still. And actually now I love sight reading, but I, but it has unintended consequences.
and I think it's really good to reconsider some of the stuff that we just take for granted as how it was, how it's done. It's not necessarily, doesn't need to be done that way.
It's fascinating. So the, when you're working with the Kids in the creative group. I know that you create compositional activities because I've seen them because we're both part of the Curious Piano Teachers.
And there's a couple of resources that you've put in there which I just thought were brilliant. one of which is like how to turn your name into a musical melody. That's really fun. And I've actually used it in my own compositions a little bit. But I wouldn't, yeah, I wouldn't want to tell you to where exactly but it sometimes it finds its way into stuff. But when you're working with the creative kids, how much of it is your own sort of material, your syllabus, or how much are you bringing in from outside using resources from other people?
Jeni
I have done quite a lot myself because I think that our set up is so different to a lot of places that I feel like I design things that suits our needs.
I tend to do things that I would do in my own compositions because then I know that I can demonstrate it really clearly because I understand exactly that method of composition. So I can say, for example, with that, make your name into a musical. phrase, then you can turn it upside down.
You can look at the intervals. You've got so many things teaching wise, you can take out a bit. So that was a, whatever you do, you can explode into so many different teaching things with composition all the time. I love Forrest Kinney. I think the Forrest Kinney improvisation things are lovely.
I don't tend to use them as composition starters. I love them as, exercises in themselves in comp and improvisation and I think they teach some really great things especially technically and You know using different scales and keys, and blue scales and intervals and things like that. There's lots of lots of benefit in doing that improvisation just for its own sake and just for having a nice time.
And that's a huge thing of creative as well. It's just, what did we do today that just felt really nice? And that's a nice thing. I don't always get that in a lesson. And I feel like I want to have that as a standard, but sometimes, you get so carried away with teaching and imparting knowledge that you sometimes forget to just make it really nice.
So there's there's definitely more room for that kind of thing for me, and I think I would love to engage with more resources like this. the reason I'm not necessarily doing it enough recently is just because we're flat out with managing the place. Yeah. I am coming to a point where I want to go out there and see what else there is now, and I know in the last couple of years there's been a huge movement towards improvisation, composition's an awful lot out there now than there was even when we set keys.
So I think it, it is time for me to go and explore other people's ideas as well. But at the moment, yeah, I've stuck with my own. Try it and test it really, in that this is how I know composition does work. And, things like, my, my dice cards, that goes down pretty well. cause obviously, as I said before, at grade two, we're looking at all the cards in, D major.
So if you're thinking okay, card three is F sharp minor. And, how does that work if you put that in, a sequence, and, you know, it's...
Garreth
Just to explain for people that you're rolling the dice in order to choose which chord within the key that you're using, right?
Jeni
Yeah, so we might, I'd give them, say, start off with your home chord. And then roll the dice, what card are you going to get next? So you might get four, and you've got a G major card. Or you might get five, you've got an A major card. and then sometimes you might get things that are really strange, that you don't think are going to work, and then actually they come out really good.
So I get them to generate a few different sequences. and they, love that just rolling a dice seems to, just seems to be a really exciting thing to do, when you're nine, it's brilliant. so yeah, I think that, that's a good one. And then the one that we do a lot of is, question and answer phrases, which is not a rocket science thing, it's very simple.
and you can do it loads of ways, just putting notes to a poem, in five finger position. It's like a. An initial sort of level. and if it finishes on the home note, then it's an answer. And if it doesn't, then it's a question. And we just need seven notes with a rest at the end. So you've got two bars.
And we just start there and then they can take that as far as they want to start putting intervals in the left hand. and I, tend to start with those, I say those three, the, cards and the dice, the question answer phrases and, the generating, melody, not in that order. I, probably three staples.
The other thing I love is whole tone scale. I think the whole tone scale itself is, you can use it very early. I think then switching it and using the opposite is, that then takes it a completely different level, I think.
Garreth
Let's move away from the school slightly and, find out a little bit about you.
Like, how did you first get into composition and improvisation? What triggered that in you?
Jeni
I wouldn't necessarily say I know what triggered it. It's always been, it's always been a way that I've communicated, I think. I was very lucky. I was brought up in a house full of musicians. There was always somebody playing something.
Somebody on the way out for a concert, or somebody having an after concert party at my house. Pianos and instruments everywhere. So it was just, I just messed around from being very little. And I think it, age three and four, I'd worked out the third sounded nice. And it just started from playing around.
And, just because it was everywhere and it was what everybody did. And my dad's one of those, my dad was a music teacher, all his career. And he writes a lot for different, especially for things like choirs and the bands he used to have at school. And, as a teacher in a busy music department, you're having to throw out arrangements of things all the time, just like the odd random collection of instruments you've got.
And so that was his thing. He would do that very easily and stick a few extra chords in and make it sound really good. And he was very much an ear player and obviously he learned to play the violin very securely and very well, but his piano was totally self taught and just played by ear and stuff until he got to the point where everything clicks for him.
It was very much by ear. That was our kind of culture at home, was a "mess around" culture, and I think that's something that I did want to model a little bit for children, because they thought that isn't, that's just something that other people do. And, oh, wouldn't it be amazing if we could do this?
And I was like, it's just trying, it's just trial and error, it's just playing, it's experience, it's messing around, and if you don't try it, you won't get good at it. There's not going to be a sudden button where we suddenly go, oh, now we can play by ear, you can't specifically teach that. You've got to let people play with it.
and I think that's what happened with me. I just, I almost just wanted to speak the language of the family.
Garreth
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're really speaking to me right now. Like I was thinking about how you were messing around and I've always thought how, if you put a child, a young child in front of a piano, they will just mess around.
It's what they do. And then what happens at some point in there as they grow up to most children, and certainly to me, was that you learned that: you don't mess around, and you've got to do what you're told to do. and I, so I didn't have the same journey that you did, but then at some point in my teens, my teacher was like, You can do this and I was like that emoji with the exploding brain and I and it was we were doing it with The Snowman, you know that "We're Walking in the Air" and I just messed around with that for hours and then I probably drove my parents crazy but no one told me not to and it sounds like You had that right from the get go and that's also what you're trying to give the kids that you're working with
Jeni
Absolutely. I luckily had both sides of the coin because my piano teacher, I learned at home and with my mom for, a good few years because it was just convenient for everybody. And then, as I got towards grade four, Ish. I was about nine I think. I think my mom was like, okay, we need to get somebody else who's actually gonna make you read things.
I could read the music. Didn't really wanna bother 'cause yeah, pretty good by ear, so it was like, great, I know how this goes now. I can probably not bother with that now. and it, I needed somebody to really take me properly to get me working, that I couldn't just argue with.
'cause you know what it's like with your own kids, they just don't listen to you. and and she never. Was really interested in the composition, improvisation side of things. But that was fine because that wasn't her, wasn't what I needed from her at that point. And I was very lucky to have that at home.
and, I would mess around and I'd be playing with something and Dad would shout from the other room, No, you need, you need a major second chord there. Okay, major two. Ah, now it makes sense. Seventh. Okay. so yeah, he would do that really. And then, and my piano teacher really pushed me technically and things like that.
I was playing Rachmaninoff preludes before she would let me do my grade eight. really pushing. So you don't just get the grade. You really go as far as you possibly can. And I think at that point when I was probably about 16, I was like, These two things are actually the same thing.
Rachmaninoff did this because I can see where it came from. And actually that was like the total lightbulb moment where you just think, everybody's doing the same thing here. It just feels very different in whichever style and genre and period of time. But at the end of the day, it's a universal thing.
And we need all of it. We can't just go, this is the only right way. because, Yeah, it was, we love Rachmaninoff, but he's not here and now in Bolton. we need a bit of everything. But yeah, it was, I was very, lucky to have those influences. And again, hugely. influential in what I want to do at Keys is getting those influences there for the children to see all these different things that are going on.
Yeah, Madalina is playing concertos and she'll do extracts of concertos for us as little performances and you can come and see her recitals for free because we invite all our students to come and see that. But also, we are. Very happy for you to do jamming sessions and find a chord sequence and improvise together and do some duets and all of these things are relevant and important. and
that's really what we wanted to be and a lot of that is because I had access to all that as a child. And also a really healthy circle of friends who were also quite good, and it was a race to your grade eight, who's going to get grade eight piano first and who's going to get the highest mark.
And I know that's not all very healthy, but that bit of competition and the kind of, I'm not the only person from this level here. And what can I learn from them? And how can I be better so that I'm keeping up. I don't want to get left behind. You need that and that isn't actually around that much now, I don't think.
Not in schools. I think there's more of so much pressure on exams in school, school exams. It's not something that parents really are investing in as much.
Garreth
I mean my impression growing up was that I was probably one of the best pianists in my school. I didn't have many musical friends at school. They did different things and so there wasn't that sense of competition, but then we would, I grew up in Wales and we did the Eisteddfod every year, and that was explicitly a competition and you could win it or lose it. and, and that I found increasingly off putting. Because I do think, I think, like you said, competition does have a place.
It's this kind of, we grow together, like how, if you put, if you plant several plants next door to each other, they've got to compete to get to the sun, haven't they? And they'll all grow taller as a result. But you don't need to then give the tallest plant a prize, you know? Like it's a bit absurd.
Jeni
Absolutely, yeah. And I don't really enjoy the, explicit competition situation. I don't, how can you compare to individuals, which is, what we're saying is you are valid as an individual and whatever your contribution is here. We value that. We value you. So we do give out medals at Keys.
We give them out for different things. So we give out inspire medals and share medals. And, we had a whole lot of children who went out to care homes and played for the people in care homes. And we actually did a big fundraiser.
I and so we gave out medals for, those children who went out and played and they might have only been five and they played Cowboy Joe from the Primer book, but they got a medal for going out there and doing it because those are the values we want to encourage and not the I played the hardest, fastest piece, it most cleanly on that day. that, that's not necessarily where our heart is, really.
Garreth
The other thing I've been thinking about as we've been talking is this maxim, it takes a village to raise a child. And I, that's something I think you're really living and you lived as a child. Like you had different things from different people, your friends, your teacher, your parents, and.
Then you're trying to give that to the kids that you're working with.
Jeni
Absolutely.
Garreth
Yeah, it's very fascinating. Quite inspiring, Jeni.
I think we'll probably draw it to a close Jeni. I think we've covered a lot of ground and I think we've covered a lot of useful and interesting things and I hope people will find it very inspiring. And the school is called Keys Piano School, isn't it? And it's in Bolton and the website is, I think, keyspianoschool.com. It's a good website. I've spent a bit of time exploring it and there's lots of information on there about what you do, which you've expanded on a little bit. For people who, like me, who are curious about what you're doing. You can learn a lot just from browsing the website.
Jeni
Yeah, and just getting an idea of how different it can be. It is, I think financially though it has been a challenge. And I think it, you, It's a massive risk to do something like this. It's not an easy thing to, to just jump into. I think it's very important to be able to know your area and what people want in your area and how much you can charge. And the maths that goes into it has been huge. It took a long time to get to the point where I thought it would work financially.
I needed to, do a lot of thinking. It was about two years of spreadsheets before I actually got on a formula that would work in to pay the rent and to pay us in this situation. And obviously it's still not really being paid very much at the beginning. It's starting now, it's starting, it's on two feet after six years.
And so it's a long job, but I would definitely. I would definitely encourage anybody who thought they could do this kind of thing to do it, but just be aware that it's going to be tough for a bit, but yeah.
Garreth
And different to, just private teaching, you need a financial plan. maybe you need a financial plan with private teaching, but you really need a financial plan when you're investing money, don't you?
Jeni
Yeah, you need to get advice because there are so many places that you can be tripped up with stuff. And, it's a hard thing to do to run your own business. They don't make it easy. There are so many ways you can get it wrong. and I just still live day to day hoping that I didn't get something major wrong at some point and it's held on a good grudging now. you just have to live for the day and hopefully it all just stays together.
Garreth
Presumably what you've done in that, in those six years, actually and the eight, the two years before, so eight years in total, is that you've created something that you can see yourself doing for the rest of your life. Is that fair?
Jeni
Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't want to do anything else now.
Garreth
Jeni, thank you so much. I'm gonna, I'm, gonna say thank you and we'll call it a day. And yeah, thank you very much.
Jeni
Thank you.
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