Author: Dianne Hammerand

Teach Me Something New

Michelle asked to learn something new from her students and fans, and you responded. What did we learn? So much! This edition is specifically for artists, songs, or instruments that we don’t already know because of geographic, religious, or cultural origin.

British Singer-Songwriter Ewan McColl

From New Zealand, including some Maori language:

Maori Instrument: Taonga Puoro

Portuguese Guitar (guitarra portuguesa)

Shulem Lemmer

Keith Jarrett

The Köln Concert – Wikipedia

Poor Man’s Poison

Baba Yetu by Stellenbosch University Choir

How to Make Gravy by Paul Kelly

From the UUA general assembly Sunday Service 2020: We Are

Anything else we should learn? Feel free to post in the comments or send us an email at lessons@michelletuesday.com or text 614-418-7110. We love learning new music and sharing it with everyone else.

October Theme: Jazz

Every month, the music lab teachers select a theme for the Music Technology and Learning Lab. Students explore the theme in the Music History, Composition, and Listening Stations during their scheduled music lessons. The topic for the month of October is Jazz.

Jazz began with African American musicians in the early 1900s. Despite some less reputable beginnings, this mix of European, Latin, and African American musical styles led to many of the popular music genres today, like R&B and rock’n’roll. Jazz is an American classical music genre.

As you can hear, jazz music creates complicated melodies and rhythms. It’s difficult to define but you learn to know it when you hear it. It also has heavy lean into improvisation and syncopation, which leads to its unique sounds. Because of those two qualities, jazz isn’t meant to be read on a page of music but experienced live.

The ‘Roaring 20s,’ also known as the Jazz Age, are long past, but jazz is still very alive and very American. Below is the playlist for our students to learn more about jazz.

New Music Rooms

We’re keeping up with the demands of our music community. We needed more space, and now we have created two new lesson rooms. With these new lesson rooms, we can now teach two drum lessons at once!

This renovation took us a while. We needed a wall, a door, some electrical outlets, and lights – not to mention some attention to the sound. If you didn’t guess, music schools can be very loud places.

As we got our first estimates last summer – original idea was in early 2023 – we looked to contractors to help us with the work. We chose Spectrum Builders who are local in our Gahanna Blacklick area, partly because we love investing in the area around us but also because we found Ross (one of the owners) to be extremely knowledgeable about sound attenuation and the Gahanna permit requirements. We were willing to wait to get the project done right with the builder who suited us best, and we’re finally ready to unveil the results.

This is lesson room 8.

This is lesson room 9.

These lesson rooms are ready to go and we’re very happy with our renovation. Thank you, Spectrum Builders, and also to our patient students for giving us time to get it done right. Let the lessons commence!

I’m an Adult Music Student

Hi. I’m your favorite MTMS blogger. I have two kids who have both been students of Michelle Tuesday Music School. Recently I picked up the guitar and asked myself why I’m not taking lessons.

Part of that is an easy answer, right? I work full-time, and I get my kids in lessons to enrich them for the future. My thoughts aren’t centered on what my own goals and dreams are, so I sometimes forget to take the time out of my day to do them. I’m slowly changing that attitude.

Fun fact: Michelle taught me my first guitar lesson in 2008, before she opened the school, on her guitar. I’m not focusing on how much better I’d be if I’d started real lessons with her then. I’m enjoying that I can play some now.

There’s difficult things along my journey. While I learned piano and trumpet when I was younger and my parents reminded me to practice daily, now I’m learning to practice when my kids can hear me. They haven’t started goading me into it, and I beat myself up for skipping a day when I had family stuff to do or I had to work on other projects.

One of the cool parts about taking a piece of my day for myself is that I’m happier. It’s a fun thing that sometimes gets sandwiched between the laundry and the dishes and I look forward to playing. Once I left my guitar on the bed for a few minutes to take care of something and the cat played a string by plucking it with his teeth. I’m waiting for that to happen again, but it hasn’t yet.

Enrichment and fulfillment don’t end when we become adults. Yes, we need to do give our kids the opportunities, but don’t forget yourself when we’re busy doing all of the things for family.

September Theme: Bollywood

Every month, the music lab teachers select a theme for the Music Technology and Learning Lab. Students explore the theme in the Music History, Composition, and Listening Stations during their scheduled music lessons.

For September’s Music Lab theme, we’re focusing on the music of Bollywood – and all forms of Indian cinema. Bollywood is just one location where the music and dancing occur, in the language of Hindi. Tollywood (Telugu) and Kollywood (Tamil) are other examples, each in different languages and cities of India.

India may not have created the first movies, but they’ve been creating their own style of movies for more than a hundred years. The music and dancing are hallmarks of their unique style no matter which language or province is creating the films.

For a sneak preview of what students are learning in Music Lab during their music lessons this month, enjoy a few Bollywood favorites here:

Naatu Naatu Full Video Song (Telugu) | RRR Songs | NTR, Ram Charan | MM Keeravaani | SS Rajamouli (youtube.com)