The Light and Shadow of Nightshade

 You may have heard of the term “nightshade.” It is often associated with poison. But did you know that one of the four types of vegetables belong to the nightshade family? Learn to tell the difference by “eating up” these online activities.

 

CONNECT:

• See the various types of nightshade at https://kids.kiddle.co/Nightshade
• Watch what eatable foods belong to the nightshade family at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdFSi2csCag
• Hogwarts students learned to plant mandrake, which is a member of the nightshade family. Get the real facts about mandrakes at https://kids.kiddle.co/Mandrake
• Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Explore the controversy at https://youtu.be/9m81GlfA1BE

 

CREATE:

• Play with your nightshade food: potatoes; get the details at https://tinybeans.com/play-with-your-food-10-games-that-use-potatoes/
• Try fun things to make with potatoes at https://stpeterfood.coop/crafts-with-potatoes/
• Get active with tomatoes at https://seedstosuccess.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/HfHK_Tomatoes_Activity_Plan.pdf

 

CARE:

• Deadly nightshade is just that: highly poisonous. Learn how to recognize it at https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/wildflowers/deadly-nightshade
• For centuries, people thought tomatoes were poisonous; find out why at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBXwTVlwvQ8&t=86s
• Learn how to grow potatoes from a potato at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzcXXuYBDqg

 

CAREERS:

Not scared about nightshade? Want to follow the light to a career with nightshade? You could be a scientist, a chemist, a doctor, a farmer, a gardener, a cook, a nutritionist, a grocer. Check out some possibilities:

• Vegetable grower: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2mJHn_I-T0
• A day in the life of a vegetable packing factory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5sRBzIqeLc
• The ketchup industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKVGzKoQ8X4
• Jobs in vegetables for the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boaZLAful3I

How are weeds related to the piano?

 Increasingly, Tomoko likes gardening. She likes to start the day in the garden to recharge her psychic batteries; "It's a fresh feeling." She also likes bringing order to nature, and that includes weeding. 

Tomoko contends that learning to play the piano is like gardening.  Both take much planning, work, and patience. The rewards can be immediate, as when planting or weeding – such as working through a particular section of a composition – and sometimes it takes years to see the results. But planning is necessary in either case; “It brings order to life.”

More specifically, weeding is often needed when starting to play the piano as well as when learn an individual piano piece.

Good playing starts with a healthy body, just like a garden needs good soil, water and light. Good eating habits, sound sleep and regular exercise all impact how you play. Even the time of day and your schedule can impact how well you practice. your immediate environment can also upset your playing; distractions such as noise, other people, phone calls. If those conditions are not met, it may be time to weed out those bad daily life habits and environmental negatives.

Obviously, If it is a new piece, you are more likely to make mistakes. Tomoko says, "You need to be well grounded in your music That takes deep roots in the knowledge of music and performance."

Let's say that you are in the middle of practicing a piece.. When you make a mistake, you need to stop and identify the mistake -- the musical weed -- and figure out why the mistake was made. Is it a new piece? Is it a physical problem, such as hitting the key alongside the right key? Are you playing too fast -- or not paying close enough attention? Are the notes hard to read? Does this section of the piano piece differ from the prior one in terms of signature, rhythm, tonality, theme; is that transition hard to do? Is a passage particularly difficult such that you get nervous when you know it's coming?

In any case, take the time to figure out the mistake and why you are making it. Then you can weed it out. Mark the mistake and difficult parts of the composition. Start playing just before the mistake until just after it, remembering the reason for the mistake and how to correct it (e.g., adjust the fingering, getting the muscle memory to play correctly, slowing down, figuring out how to transition more smoothly). Sometimes it helps to practice each hand separately to focus on the issue. More generally, you need to focus on the problem mentally, not just physically.

Just as you need to pull out a weed completely, including all the roots, you need to pull out the mistake completely by overriding it with correctly playing the passage. A good idea is to repeat that passage correctly seven times so that your mind and your fingers remember it faultlessly.

We all know that one mistake can spoil the enjoyment of a piano piece, so weeding out inevitable mistakes at the start, just like weeding in the bad, is a good i9nvestment of time.

Tomoko advises, "Playing well takes patience. You need ongoing weeding of bad habits. Music is to be cultivated through preparation, development, and maintenance."

  

Piano Music for Gardening

 

The adage “April showers bring May flowers” signals the time for gardening, a favorite pastime of Tomoko. She considers it as a way to wake up, to recharge her psychic batteries. “It’s a fresh feeling.”

Refresh yourself with these ten piano pieces inspired by gardens, with a little information about each piece.

In the 1930s Hungarian Bela Bartok wrote a collection of 85 short pieces entitled For Children. One of those compositions is "Rose Garden." These pieces attest to his belief in the importance to educating youngsters in contemporary musical styles.

Amy Beach was the first major American female composer of large-scale art music. Her 1922 Opus 97, Grandmother’s Garden, consists of five parts, each capturing a different flower.

Aaron Copland’s Down a Country Lane was commissioned by Life magazine to be featured in a 1962 issue, which includes photographs and an article explaining that this piano piece was one of the few compositions written express for young students by a major composer.

Claude Debussy’s “Jardins sur la pluie” (Gardens in the rain) is part of his 1903 composition Estampes (Prints). It captures the round of raindrops that storm a French garden. 

As a gift to his mother, Australian Percy Aldridge Grainger arranged an English folk tune into the 1918 piano piece “Country Gardens.” The piece was his greatest success financially, selling over 40,000 copies yearly in the United States. However, Grainger came to resent having to perform it constantly.

A visit to a monastic garden inspired English composer Albert Ketelbey to write “In a Monastery Garde.” In 1915. Ketelbey was known for light orchestral music, and wrote music for silent films.

Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu’s 1938 suite Window on the Garden consists of four lyrical movements. The piece reflects his short stay in Paris just before escaping from the forthcoming Nazi invasion.

Edward McDowell was America’s best known composer at the beginning of the 20^th century. His 1902 piano New England Idyls combines classical European harmonic elements and American textual imagery, as exemplified in the piece "An Old Garden."

Rachmaninoff became known for his lyrical inspiration, where the piano captures the sentiments of the text. Lilacs, Op 21, No. 5 “Lilacs, along with Daisies” was composed in 1902 as a song with accompaniment, but was later transcribed as a sensitive piano solo miniature.

In 1893 Tchaikowsky wrote his last solo piano work, 18 Pieces, one a day. Value-bluette, No. 11, was dedicated to the daughter of his lawyer and friend Nikolay Kondratyev.

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Advice to a New Piano Teacher

Tomoko started giving piano lessons when she was a teenager, so it was no wonder that she first made money in the United States by giving piano lessons to Japanese families – and continues to this day as a piano teacher. With her lifetime experience, Tomoko is well positioned to give advice to a new piano teacher.

She begins by saying, “Don’t expect anything.” Remembering her long way to success, Tomoko asserts, “There’s no payoff right away. You need patience.” Tomoko uses an analogy to gardening, an activity that she increasingly enjoys. “You need to be well grounded in your music.” That takes deep roots in the knowledge of music and performance, daily toil in maintaining your skill, and ongoing weeding of bad habits. “Music is to be cultivated through preparation and development.”

Tomoko cautions, “As a teacher you will have bumpy feelings. Parents can be demanding. Student progress can be uneven. Sometimes it seems as if nothing is happening – and then there will be a spark.” She continues, “Think of this as positive pressure.” And that feeling can be transmitted to the students when they have a hard time. Tomoko knows that the teacher has to be a diagnostician, a problem solver, and an encourager. “Sometimes I trick students to do well, “Tomoko admits.  “Always give hope.” 

Over time, experience helps refine teaching. The variety and the fun sustain efforts. "You become classier; you become a better person." In any case, "Do your best," concludes Tomoko.