Starting Tune Toolkit with Advanced Student
Found in: Composition & Improvisation, Curriculum
Gabrielle B., Iowa
Mark S. Meritt, any suggestions for starting Tune Toolkit with a student in level 7? Is there a way to accelerate through each project without impeding the layering process? I’ve been through the program a few times with other students but this particular student is a transfer and already improvises beautifully. He just doesn’t remember structure at all. Thanks in advance!
Mark M., New York
In the TTM Audio, after the numbered projects themselves, there’s a set of chapters on Teaching Techniques. Several of them — especially Avoid Skipping Steps, Multiple Entry Points, Precocious Students, Enhancing Assignments — inform what you’re talking about. I’d also impress upon the student the value of seeing what I do in the final “Possibilities” video chapter for each project.
Also: I think you kind of answered your own question when you said he just doesn’t remember structure at all — that means it’s something for him to practice. It’s just like the advice about students who come to Simply Music with reading experience, that it’s probably that much *more* important to delay the reading process *longer* for them than for other students. Someone who improvises comfortably but doesn’t remember structure probably needs that much *more* practice in *order* to internalize the layering process. The good news is that this doesn’t mean that he needs to be kept at some simplistic skill level when improvising. Every project in the program is a concept that can be applied in complex ways — including far more complex ways than I myself demonstrate in the “Possibilities” video chapters.
Original discussion started October 1, 2018