KANSAS EDUCATION ENRICHMENT PROGRAM EDUCATION MARKETPLACE

Educational Value

Alison Gruber's Voice and Piano Studio teaches how to play the piano and to sing in the western classical tradition and to transfer to any genres/styles. With an uplifting approach that inspires curiosity, students learn through studying theory, heard music and written music how to read, write, compose, play, improvise, sight-read, sight-sing and perform -- all with the historical and cultural context for the pieces they are playing/singing. Piano lessons include reading/writing with the (Treble, Bass, etc.) staff system, chord notation which translates to improved spatial temporal reasoning among other complex eye/brain/body awareness for many future studies/activities: the up/down pitch and its correlation to the right/left configuration of the piano keyboard paired with the left to right passage of time notation (rhythm), develops spatial orientation understanding that translates later to many complex eye/brain/body tasks (see article linked at end as a simplified reference to this claim). Voice lessons teach breath support and other neurological/musculoskeletal coordination that enables healthy resonance and phonation while the student is communicating text involving phonemes from various languages, most commonly: English, Latin, French, Italian, German, Spanish. Singers learn to translate texts to their native language as well as learn how to correctly pronounce the words in the language of the lyrics. All of this is then applied to the music across the musical range of the melody as the students learn how to support the various pitches, vowels and consonants across their entire vocal range. Through this process students develop coordination of their soft palate, tongues, lips, face, floor of mouth, larynx, respiratory muscles, postural muscles and more through a method that prioritizes and frames the technique through attention to anatomical alignment, breath and vowel. Students of both piano and voice learn aural and visual comprehension of pitches and rhythms, music history, music theory, and how to perform. Voice lessons are taught so that the student learns breath support and other neurological/musculoskeletal coordination that enables resonance, phonation and overall vocal production to be produced with minimal amount of effort through healthy biomechanics. The lessons include poetic evaluation of lyrics, musical artistry in performance, language pronunciation and contextual understanding of the piece given its date of composition. Students learn how to perform in front of others while using their voices healthfully and naturally in a way that their individual voice is developed. Students who study music (voice or other instrument study) develop skills that transfer to many pursuits in life: psychosocial understanding, communicative confidence, emotional expression, mathematical reasoning (intervals, patterns, rhythmic fractions, layering of patterns to name a few), understanding of World History to name a few. While there have been many studies documenting these findings, here is a link that serves as a succinct reference: https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/instruments/piano/helps-brain-body-graphic/