Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The Music Professional Learning Network

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Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The Music Professional Learning Network

Posted by Thomas J. West on July 23, 2010 at 7:12 AM

It's hard to believe that it has been less than a week since the official launch of the Music Professional Learning Network website. In the first five days, membership has grown to nearly 300. That's a hundred more than the projected goal of 200 by October! More importantly, the conversations within the groups' forums are dynamic, detailed, full of expert "in the trenches" advice, and just pure gold.

Most of us are familiar with the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" In the show, a contestant attempts to answer trivia questions of increasing difficulty. They have three "lifelines": phone a friend, ask the audience, and 50-50. So here's my "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" thread from yesterday on MPLN:

Thomas J. West posted an update: 15 hours, 47 minutes ago · updated 10 hours, 5 minutes ago ·

Anyone have any suggestions for beginning #guitar method books? #musedchat #musiced
- David Ahrens · 15 hours, 16 minutes ago ·
  I really like Leavitt’s Modern Method for Guitar – http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0876390696/ – It is aggressive, and thorough. No folk songs etc. like many books – all original writing. The version with the DVD-ROM is valuable – especially for individual learners or teachers who aren’t primarily guitar players. I supplement from other sources to provide material that is familiar to the students.
  - Thomas J. West · 14 hours, 37 minutes ago ·
    Thanks! I’ll check it out.
  - Thomas J. West · 14 hours, 29 minutes ago ·
    Wow! The guitar teacher at my school is a Berklee graduate – I’m sure he’d find this book to be a good one. He’s sick of the method book he’s currently using – he might really go for this.
    - Richard McCready · 14 hours, 21 minutes ago ·
      Leavitt’s is really good, by the way.
- Richard McCready · 14 hours, 22 minutes ago ·
  David is spot on with the need to supply supplementary material.. The students thirst for more than is usually provided in any method book, and they will hunt it down. Unfortunately if you don’t put good quality stuff right on front of them, they’ll hunt on the internet and get all sorts of awful tab transcriptions, which are wildly inaccurate, kill their reading skills, and are of dubious legality. I keep several copies of the Hal Leonard ”ultimate Guitar Songbook”, ”Fantastic Guitar Songbook”, ”Definitive Guitar Songbook” etc. in the classroom, and the kids are forever finding fun stuff in there which challenges them and keeps them interested in learning beyond what is in the method book. In our school, we start with the Russ Shipton ”The Complete Guitar Player” and then move on to the William Bay & Mike Christiansen ”Mastering the Guitar” series, but we just use those as a ready framework, and try to go beyond that with the supplementary material.
  - Thomas J. West · 13 hours, 30 minutes ago ·
    Thanks, Richard. I am just beginning my foray into guitar playing/teaching. The market’s just WAY too big for me to ignore at this point.
- Kevin Coyne · 13 hours, 3 minutes ago ·
  I’ve been using Jerry Snyder’s guitar method for years with my high school groups. I think it’s fantastic. Tons of material, including prepared homework sheets, quizzes, tests, and supplementary pieces. There’s also an ensemble book and make sure to get the teacher’s manual.. I’ve been playing guitar professionally for years and this is the best method book that I’ve found.
  http://www.amazon.com/Jerry-Snyders-Guitar-School-Method/dp/0882849026/ref:/d_sim_b_11
  
  Mel Bay is a huge publisher of guitar books too. They have a lot of resources as well but I’m not as familiar with them.
  - Thomas J. West · 12 hours, 57 minutes ago ·
    The Mel Bay series is the one I currently use with my students simply because it’s the one that the guitar teacher at my school uses with class guitar. In general I like the pedagogical approach, but the folk songs in it are not interesting to students. http://astore.amazon.com/thjwemu-20/detail/0786613696
    - Richard McCready · 11 hours, 32 minutes ago ·
      The Mel Bay I use is slightly different, and I like its use of both tab and standard notation. Some pieces are in tab, some are in standard, and some are in both, so it teaches several methods of reading. The original compositions in there are not too unpleasant at all. I really have no problem with hearing my kids twang their way through them.
      
      http://www.amazon.com/Mel-Bay-Mastering-Guitar-Book/dp/0786605642
      
      There are 7 books in the no-so-humbly-named Hal Leonard Guitar Songbook series, as far as I know – Phenomenal, Super, Incredible, Fantastic, Ultimate, Definitive, and Greatest.
      
      http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Guitar-Songbook-Collection/dp/1423421086/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1279842826&sr=1-1
- Yoon Soo Lim · 10 hours, 5 minutes ago ·
  Hi Tom,
  
  There are several books I use for my MS guitar students:
  
  There are many good texts but I use Hands-on Training : First-Year Guitar by Nancy Lee Marsters & Guitar Expressions (Student ed): Bill Purse, ed. They are both excellent texts with great supplemental CDs. Sometimes, I get materials from J. Snyder or Mel Bay books as mentioned!
  
  Has anyone used Scott Tennant’s Pumping Nylon for classes?

As you can see, I posted one simple question at the top and within 5 hours had a half-dozen or more methods to check out, including some tips on how to use them in the classroom and what to use to supplement tham! I also got a few replies from Twitter, as I used the MPLN engine to post the same comment directly to my Twitter stream. MPLN member Nicholas Cowall sent me these lists of methods to choose from:

RT @NicholasCowall: @thomasjwest http://bit.ly/ainZqT and http://bit.ly/bearud guitar method lists #mpln

Fantastic! It's phone a friend and ask the audience all in one, except these audience members are all practicing music teachers or pre-service music education students!

In addition to asking questions like this, MPLN is turning into the place where innovators in the profession are meeting to flesh out the future potentials of online music learning. There are several forums where collaborative efforts to move music education into the 21st century are well under way. What an exciting thing to be a part of!

Whether you are a professional music educator, a private music studio teacher, a college music professor, a music education student, a regular education professional with an interest in integrating music into your classroom, or just love to learn about music, the MPLN is a powerful new resource that is going to keep growing. Eegad, we're not even to the school year yet here in the U.S. - imagine what the membership count and conversations are going to be like then!

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