The Voice Lesson Notebook

I'm reading Bonnie Blanchard's book Making Music and Enriching Lives.  I have mixed feeling about the book overall.  I'll do a full review of it later.  One of the concepts that I love is her two notebook system.  The first notebook is one that either the teacher or student uses during the lesson to record information about what the student needs to work on and how to work on it.  I do similar lesson notes that are saved on my MTH website and emailed to the students each week.  The second notebooks she refers to as the Music for Life notebook.  In this notebook, the student copies the lesson notes into the appropriate subsection:  theory, tone, fingering, etc.  They then have an easy reference to do their own problem solving in practicing.  And the more students can fix at home on their own, the more we can give to them in lessons.

Because I'm a total nerd and because I really want to find ways to give my students more ownership of their learning process, I took it a little further.  I want my kids to have one big binder for EVERYTHING.  Because that will be a big pain to haul around, I'm fine with them having a little folder like this that snaps in and out of the binder that contains currently materials and that they can bring to each lesson.

The current plan is to start them out small and take at least half of a lesson each quarter to check up on where they are with their books and introduce some new ways to make them even more helpful.

Baby beginners won't have all these categories yet, but this is what I would like the binders to grow to include.  Let me know if you can think of anything else to include.

Table of Contents

My Goals (Long term, short term, and plans for how to achieve them)

My Lesson schedule

My Due Dates

• Tuition
• Contest/exam registrations 
• College auditions

My Timelines: Preparing for Contests, exams, auditions

• How early do you need to know the notes, rhythms, and words? 
• When do you need to be memorized? 
• When should you be totally polished? 
• What performances will you do to get ready for these important events? (Studio class, friends and family, etc.)

My Repertoire (I will give them the format for creating a repertoire list.)

My Assignments and Lesson Notes

My Tools (pencil, straws, mirror, etc. in a pouch)

Personal Positive Pep Talks (a reminder list I have students create to review just before they go onstage.)

• General
• For Specific Songs or Specific Performances

My Music

• Sheet Music and Octavos
• Research 
• Composer bios
• Context: How does this song fit in the show, opera, or song cycle? 
• IPA
• Word-by-word translations
• Blueprints, maps, etc. (more song study homework I assign)

My Practice Record (see Robinett Studio Practice Journals for one way to record this information.)

My Evaluations and Certificates from Exams and Contests (originals or copies)

My Team (contact info)

• Voice teacher
• Choir directors
• Musical directors
• Accompanists
• Acting Coaches
• Diction Coaches
• Choreographers
• ENTs, speech/language pathologists

For Future Reference—In this section, you categorize and file pieces of information from your lesson notes and research for future use. One note may be filed in multiple categories. 

• Practice strategies
• Breathing
• Resonance
• Vowels
• Diction/Articulation
• Flexibility
• Expression/Interpretation
• Posture/Alignment
• Anatomy
• Music History (including composer bios)
• Classical style periods
• Renaissance
• Baroque
• Classical
• Romantic
• Contemporary
• History of Musical Theatre
• History of Popular Music Genres
• Theory
• Sight-reading/tonal memory
• Musical Terms
• Recommended Reading
• Other