Playlist management
Found in: Claiming Territory, Practicing & Playlists
Felicity E., Australia
The biggest struggle I have with my students is the playlist. Most of them are not interested in using it, forget, or just don’t do it despite my best efforts. Keeping their songs instantly playable is an ongoing problem and uses more lesson time than I would like to use. I’m not rushing my students by any means, but after three and a half years teaching SM I still haven’t found a way to make it work. They all seem to eventually end up with too many songs to maintain and complaining about spending too much time playing from the playlist and not working on new material at home.
What do you do and how well should they be able to play their playlist songs? It seems they can forget some of their pieces within just a couple or a few weeks, which makes coming back after holidays difficult.
Ruth P., North Carolina
I encourage my students to keep their “top hits” alive. This way they have some choice in picking pieces they love to play. I don’t stress about them keeping everything alive. I know this may not be the party line, but for me it seems to work better.
Laurie Richards, Nebraska
This is probably the most common issue with regard to the ‘claiming territory’ and ‘request vs. requirement’ topics. Neil also talks in the Foundation Session about why the playlist is so important. Namely, these songs are going to be the foundation for later learning in other streams. If your students are practicing regularly, it should be very easy to keep all the songs alive.
I have been where you are, and I understand. Eventually I wasn’t willing to keep that frustration and decided to work on being requirement-based. I’ve learned to be very clear about my requirement – it makes a HUGE difference in their experience and their success. It has also made a difference to me personally as I’ve learned how to be more of an influence on my students.
Regarding the length of the playlist, eventually you can remove songs that no longer serve a specific purpose. For example, in Level 4 I drop Jackson Blues, Honey Dew, and Amazing Grace. JB and HD are foundation pieces to learn the 12-bar blues and accompaniment style. Those foundations are set by Level 4. Amazing Grace is now learned in different keys in the Accompaniment program. Moving forward in the curriculum, I make sure to always have around 40 pieces on the playlist (including all streams). It is very manageable as long as students are practicing regularly.
Basically it comes down to those core conversations. I highly recommend listening to those again in the Initial Teacher Training Program. Those helped me a lot.