Lessons
With over twenty years of teaching experience in private studios and in the classroom, Dr. Loken has taught complete beginners through advanced students of all ages. He teaches classical, jazz, and pop styles and works with each student to tailor lessons to individual interests and goals.
Lesson Pricing
30 minutes $40
45 minutes $60
60 minutes $80
Teaching Philosophy
Goals: I believe teaching is a partnership between student and teacher. In individual and classroom teaching, I aspire to be kind and honest, and by developing trust and a sense of mutual responsibility, I create a space where students learn in a supportive but rigorous environment. Over the course of many years of teaching, I have devised strategies to foster not just technical skill, musicality, and mastery of information, but also to develop confidence through discipline and organization.
Environment: For me, teaching begins with understanding who students are and where they come from, their personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. From this, I build upon their knowledge base and systematically work through areas needing improvement. Spending part of each lesson or class talking with students allows me to ask challenging questions that develop critical thinking skills in a low-stakes situation. For instance, in the classroom, I begin each meeting by inviting students to share a musical example from their cell phones or iPods. After the class listens to a pop-song verse, a jazz solo, or a movie soundtrack theme, I quickly transcribe an element of the piece and relate it to a relevant class topic, like harmonic progressions, counterpoint, or use of extended harmonies. This exercise builds a sense of community through sharing personally meaningful music. It also develops active listening skills and encourages students to apply course material to their own musical interests and contexts. In my experience students are eager to share, often staying after class to play more of their music, ask questions, and listen in new ways.
By having an active classroom, where students constantly interact and participate, students have no choice but to engage directly with the material. I structure my classroom so that everyone participates through group and paired activities like performing clapping or singing duets, writing group compositions on the board, turning class piano into a piano ensemble, or beginning homework together before class ends. I make clear it is okay to be confused and to make mistakes in the classroom, that this is part of the learning process. As a first-generation college graduate, I understand how overwhelming the first years of college can be and know the best learning happens in a supportive atmosphere. I believe it is my job to guide all students through the learning process and do my best to inspire them through my own enthusiasm for the material.
Organization: A crucial part of my teaching is setting clear and attainable goals and guiding a student through progressive steps to reach them. In my theory courses, I constantly reinforce the use of a systematic method. I create interactive outlines for each class and cheat-sheets with suggested steps for component parts of a larger topic, which are then used to guide the exercises or analyses in class. Collected, these become like tools in a tool chest students use to analyze larger sections of a piece, harmonize a melody with pan-diatonic harmony, or compose an exposition to a fugue. In addition, I ask students to constantly think about their own process for accomplishing a task and encourage them to devise their own learning strategies. Approached in this way, the sometimes overwhelming complexity of part writing, contrapuntal writing, or analysis is simplified into a series of attainable steps.
These focused goals are also important in individual lessons. By completing specific, progressive assignments, students learn to work systematically toward their goals. They also gain confidence as they accomplish these smaller goals week by week. This step-by-step process allows me to challenge students, keeping the level of difficulty just within reach of their current abilities. Like in classroom teaching, I ask students to reflect on their process, to honestly assess their own strengths and weaknesses, and to develop a system that works for them.
Strategies: I have students approach playing the piano through a three-fold process: 1. Sentiment: practice and perform with a purpose, with an idea of the emotion or character of the music; 2. Sound: before playing a note, audiate the desired sound; 3. Sensation: once the desired sound is produced, remember physically how to create it, both at the keyboard and away from it. Approached through these steps, sentiment-sound-sensation, students learn to engage both mind and body when making music.
I encourage students to improve understanding of new material through a multi-layered visualization process. For example, if students are learning how to calculate a transposition of a pitch-class set, I suggest they visualize it as letters, numbers, notes on a staff, sound, and also to imagine the physicality of the set on their respective instruments. I ask students to combine a visualization with which they are strong with one they feel is less developed, for example notes on a staff with numbers. As this multi-layered visualization becomes habit, their ability to learn and manipulate new concepts increases dramatically.
Along with exercises and analysis, I always assign creative composition projects. I believe this is an essential step toward mastering the information because it requires the student to think not only about a step-by-step process, but also the larger aspects of form and the aesthetic qualities of the melodic and harmonic materials. I have found most students take pride in these creative projects, spending extra time to compose something personal and meaningful.
Assessment: Organized and systematic teaching simplifies the assessment process. By having progressive goals, regular assignments, projected outcomes, and grading rubrics, expectations are clear to both the student and the teacher. Quizzes and exams are based directly on class discussions and homework, and these, in turn, inform and lead to larger creative projects. In individual lessons, students are required to meet criteria appropriate for their major and level. Primary majors are held to a professional standard, attaining specific criteria as they progress through their degrees, whereas secondary students are assessed on the attainment of specific functional skills.
Development: Whether teaching keyboard topography, showing methods of practice for increasing speed and control, or guiding a student through a twelve-tone composition modeled on a Chopin Etude, I have always found teaching rewarding. Whenever assigned a new course, such as class piano, ear training, theory, or appreciation, I have begun with a survey of relevant syllabi and pedagogical methods. I am constantly seeking out new ideas about the teaching process, sharing thoughts and experiences with colleagues and even my wife who is also a university professor. I believe it is important to continue challenging myself as a teacher by constantly reflecting on and refining my own teaching process. As a researcher, I continue to remain current with trends in music theory and pedagogy, incorporating new research into my teaching. I model what I expect from students by fostering my own curiosity and enthusiasm, and by engaging them with respect and dedication.