Guest
Jason Sifford, NCTM is a freelance pianist, teacher, and composer with a wide range of abilities and interests. He maintains a private teaching studio in Iowa City and appears frequently on stage with local artists. He is currently a composer and clinician for the Willis Music Company/Hal Leonard, and is the composer for the Footliters’ Traveling Playhouse, a children’s musical theater project of the City of Coralville, IA. Jason serves on the boards for the Iowa Music Teachers Association, the City Circle Theatre Company, and currently on the program committee National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy.
Items Mentioned
Transcript
Drew: Hello there. If you haven’t figured it out already, I am not your regular host Amy. In fact, I’m known around these parts as, oh, you’re Amy’s husband, as if it was my name. Let me introduce myself. I’m Drew Chaplin. It’s Drew, not Andrew. I’m filling in for my lovely wife today, as the letdown following the craziness of the month of May and her spring recitals has left her with a nasty cold.
In today’s episode, Amy is chatting with Jason Sifford, a teacher and composer from Iowa. Two things Amy thinks you’ll especially enjoy are hearing about the large-scale summer camps he’s composing for and how he often wraps up lessons with students in a memorable way.
Jason Sifford is a freelance pianist, teacher, and composer with a wide range of abilities and interests. He maintains a private teaching studio in Iowa City and appears frequently on stage with local artists. He is currently a composer and clinician for the Willis Music Company, Hal Leonard. And is the composer for the Footlighters Traveling Playhouse, a children’s musical theater project for the city of Coralville, Iowa. Jason serves on boards for the Iowa Music Teachers Association and the City Circle Theater Company and is currently on the program committee for the National Conference for Keyboard Pedagogy.
Amy: Jason, thank you so much for joining us today on the Piano Pantry Podcast.
Jason: Thanks for having me.
Amy: Would you be able to start out by just sharing a little bit of your background with the listeners, where you’re from? How did you get to where you are today, and what does your current situation look like?
Jason: I grew up in Springfield, Missouri. That’s where I’m from. I started college there at Missouri State. I don’t know. I was the music nerd in high school. I did a lot of choir and jazz band and marching band. And then, went to College for something completely different than music, but then switched because I found myself spending all my time in the music department I like the people and I like the stuff I was doing there After that, I did more school.
I went to school in Louisiana. I went to school in Michigan. At that point, I got a job in Texas. So I moved there, Met my wife in Texas, and then she got a job in Iowa. So we moved here, so In all of those things, I’ve done a variety of different, I don’t know, different jobs. I was a university professor for a while in Texas, and then we moved to actually El Paso for a while, and I taught middle school strings., which was an adventure. And then we moved to Iowa in 2008. And so I’ve just been freelancing an independent teacher and doing a wide variety of things here. Every year is different, which seems to be how I like it if I’m honest with myself. But that’s the short version. I’ve been all up and down the middle of the country.
Amy: So tell us a little bit about what you do in the composing world. How long have you been doing that? Are you with a publisher? Do you do your own?
Jason: Yeah, so I was; I think the composing sort of started because I was that student who would come in with his own version of the sonatina I was assigned. I would often be so frustrating for my teachers because I would change notes and dynamics, and I would add pauses and rests and turn things into little jazzy moments of whatever. And I didn’t really start writing anything down until I got out of school. I took some orchestration and composition classes in college, but mostly as an elective for fun.
But then, when I moved to Texas, and I started teaching full-time, I had a student. And it’s, the story of I couldn’t find the right piece for that kid. So I wrote one. And then my wife told me that I should send it in to a publisher. I had four little pieces that I had written. They were all little jazz pieces. I sent them to a publisher. They wrote me back. They said they liked two of them. They didn’t like the other two. But if I could do eight or nine more in the style of those two that they liked, then they’d do a book. That book ended up being Gumshoes, which was the first collection I had with FJH. .
After that, I just, once they figured out that I could write and teachers actually liked it, they asked me to do more. So I did more with them. So I worked with them for about 10 years. And then most recently I’ve started working with Willis Music in Kentucky, and they’ve been wonderful to work with as well. And then. Also, I’ve started writing for musical theater.
Children’s musical theater, of all things. And so that’s been the new adventure in the last couple of years. That was a post-pandemic project. We write 45-minute musicals for a day camp that handles about 50 or 60 kids. So we put on little musicals all summer long.
Amy: What a unique opportunity.
Jason: It’s pretty amazing. It was a program that they had in Iowa before the pandemic. The theater that was doing it closed during the pandemic. A friend of mine who’s the executive director of the city’s community theater group said, hey, we should continue this because it’s a really worthwhile thing for kids.
He had a friend who was a playwright, and she’s wonderful. So she writes the script and the lyrics. Then, I put it into music and record the tracks. Then, we hired actor friends to go out and be like the camp counselors and teach the kids the show. And then we’ve got a friend who does costumes and another friend who does all the sets and everything.
When we started, our first one was in 2021. It was an experiment. We ended up doing, I think, four camps and had about 120 kids. Then, in the second year, we did 10 camps for about 500 kids. And this year, we’re on track to do a little bit double that.
Amy: Oh my goodness. That is so phenomenal.
Jason: We’re amazed by how popular it’s been. Like we have kids coming back to do, we write a different musical each summer. And then we run all of them simultaneously.
Amy: Oh my goodness. That sounds crazy.
Jason: Yeah. It’s one of those things that would not be possible without an enormous team. And so, I give full credit to Evan for spearheading the project and to Katie for all of her writing.
Amy: But what an opportunity for the kids. What a unique experience for their summer.
Jason: It’s great. And so it’s the city of Coralville is the city that does this. And they loan us the city vans. And so we’ll do about half the camps here in town, but then the other half the camps are done in rural communities where the kids don’t have access to these kinds of experiences.
Amy: This sounds like a presentation you need to do for MTNA or something. Like how we put together this camp. What a unique thing. That would be really interesting to hear about in the session. Just an idea for you, though, Jason.
Jason: No, it’s a phenomenal thing. I’ll have to see it. Yeah. I’d have to get Katie to come talk about it.
She’s the genius mastermind behind the whole thing.
Amy: Your compositions, I’m curious. Do you have a set thing where you publish one book per year? Is there some kind of a timeline that you run on with something like that? Or what does that look like?
Jason: I have my own timeline. I try to do like a book a year. But like I, I mean, I’m my own worst critic. I have a lot of rules for myself. Like another friend of mine, I send her things to look at every now and then. And I remember her saying once to me that I sent her something, and she looked at it and she asked me the question. She’s, so why does this piece need to exist?
Amy: That’s a good question.
Jason: And I’m like, Ooh, that’s. That’s real, because, when you write something and you put it out there like you’re asking for people’s time, like the teacher’s time, you’re asking for the student’s time, you’re asking them for some money, you’re asking, just, it’s a big ask for, somebody to work on something that you’ve written, and so when I put something out there, I really want to respect that, and it’s so I, it’s just this thing, I want to write something for people that like, They can’t get somewhere else.
Yeah. Cause I’ll tell ya. I can write one of those little Takatas like Robert Vandal all day long. But his are better than mine. And there’s already a bunch of them.
Amy: But then that’s the thing about your compositions that I’ve noticed. They are so unique. And the word that I came up with was quirky. They’re not all quirky, so I don’t want to put it like label them. But yeah, yeah, your publisher, the covers are just gorgeous and fun and something that you would set out and a kid would go, I want to play that,
Jason: and that’s been fun because, when I, so I don’t design the covers, and I get very little input, but like the input that I’ve given them is that I say, please try to make it so that it’s not, Too specific in terms of age or gender.
Because most of what I write is intermediate, early intermediate. And that covers a lot of different people. Yeah. And I just say that, and then they run with it. And there have been a couple of different designers that have done those covers and they’ve done a fantastic job. I’ve loved everyone that they’ve come up with.
Amy: I’ve only used a couple of your books, I have to admit, but I love them. And they were the perfect thing for the kids at that moment. And just really opened their imaginations, I feel like. The most recent one was The Keyboard Bop, book one. I used that whole book with…is he a third grader or a fourth grader? And man, he just ate up the whole book. It was just so fun for him and
Jason: yeah, that was a fun passion project for me. It took me about six years to write that book.
Amy: Wow.
Jason: But because it’s one of those things, it’s I wanted it to feel like jazz. Do you know what I mean? I didn’t want it to be like; this is jazz because I’ve used seventh chords and wrote swing at the top. I want it to feel like a normal thing.
Amy: Also, I used the creeps, which I love. Halloween time, it’s got some really trans. Is it like Transylvania or, yeah?
Jason: I still can’t believe that thing got published.
Amy: Really?
Jason: For the level, I’m writing in like E minor and C minor and G minor and some keys that you don’t get, and then the music’s not easy.. Harder than maybe what the level is labeled. , But you can really sink your teeth into it. So yeah, for kids that like that, like it’s one of those books. It’s like, when I give pieces in that book to a student, it’s because it’s going to be one of those pieces that they love so much, they’ll rise to the challenge. So it’s one of those. It’s, and it’s funny, Keybop is almost the opposite. Keybop is the one that you give to the student who needs to be well within their comfort zone.
Amy: Do you have a favorite book yourself out of all of your series? Do your students have a favorite book of yours?
Jason: You know what’s funny? Is, I always the latest thing, and I always like the next thing. My students seem to like Weightless a lot.
Amy: The space kind of themed one?
Jason: Yeah. That was a weird one because I didn’t, it wasn’t my favorite when it came out, and it’s grown on me. And it’s, sometimes you can predict what people will like, and sometimes you really can’t,
Amy: so I had suggested that you make, turn your camp into a session, and that made me think of the first time that I met you, right? Was at an NCKP session, actually. I didn’t really meet you, I should say. I attended one of your sessions because you were Jason Siffman. And I remember it was an evening session, after dinnertime, and it was a, I don’t remember, they called them like a roundtable thing, or something like that? I remember that one, back in 2015, it was a manipulation station, and you just had all these really creative things for us to do, for teaching a variety of things, and the things that I remember is just the popsicle sticks, with the stickers on them, for chords, singing chord patterns or something, and then you were using the popsicle sticks for playing legato, Or something like that. Yeah. It looks like that.
Jason: No, that was one of those things. It’s we needed something to put at the end of the day. At the time, I was a member of the independent music teachers committee, and I pitched them this idea because in my studio, I just have a lot of. Stuff lying around that I just pick up and use at the moment. One of the things about my teaching style is that I don’t have a lot of ready to ready-made things.
I just have toys and stuff lying around that I’ll pull out. Formal,
Amy: Formal games and manipulatives and stuff like tha, dot you mean for teaching certain content? Yeah,
Jason: I don’t, actually. Like when I go shopping, I go to the dollar store or a Daiso market or something like that and just buy whatever. Anyway, I had this thing where I liked to play with toys, and then I came up with the name Manipulation Stations.And I just thought it was catchy.
Amy: And I love the idea of just using random things. I know, Leelavis is always really good about that. Showing stuff that she does, like off bench things, and I remember an article, I think it was on the Piano Safari blog, maybe by Dr. Christopher Fisher, I think. I’m not 100 percent sure on that, but it was one of the Piano Safari people. And they were talking about using bubble popping wrap. For teaching technique, and I was like, again, just like something that you have and how can you use it in a fun way? And that’s so creative.
Jason: It’s a lot of fun. And the thing is that you have to be like willing to fail. Yeah, there are lots. For example, when we did that little session at NCKP, that was the best of it. Things that I had tried, like for everything that we did, that was fun. There were like 10 that I had tried and the kids didn’t get it.
Amy: And it’s funny when you do stuff like that with students, you’re like, that didn’t work
Jason: well. And then the funny thing is that you’ll do something with a student and it’ll work great. And so then you try to use it with everybody, and it’s ih no, this only, yeah, this only worked with her. And yeah.
Amy: Do you have any tips for teachers who want to delve into the world of composition themselves, or maybe any tips for helping teachers just help their students compose?
Jason: Oh gosh, when I, when I To help students compose, it’s usually just letting them do things that they want to do. And if I have a student who is playing something but wants to play it in a different way, or they’re like, I wish it would go like this. I just let them do it. And so we’ll end up with stuff, even on recitals that are like, quote-unquote, arranged by the student with this different ending, or like we did a recital a couple of weeks ago and I had a student, she wanted to do like a video game tune except that the version she had was like way too hard for her and didn’t have an ending. And so I’m like, You need to figure out an ending, and she did. She had the motivation to do it, and so she just figured it out. So that’s where I go with teaching students to compose. I don’t have a lot of recipe based do this and then do this and then do this kind of thing.
Amy: It’s improv. It’s you have to just create with what you know, like given things. Okay. Now, how can we change this? And that has just become a huge thing in my studio. We’re just trying to always like. Change it up. Yes, we want to learn maybe how to play this piece how it is, but then, okay, now what can we do with it? What do we know? How can you change it? Can transpose it? Can you play in a different octave? Can you switch from duple to triple? Switch from major to minor? Just anything like that.
Jason: In my mind, a composition is just an improvisation that you write down so you can do it again the same way.
Amy: So one of my favorite questions to ask all of my Teacher Talk guests is for you to share a little peek into your daily routine. So what’s a day in the life of Jason look like?
Jason: Oh man, so my, it’s different every day. So anyway, I knew you were going to ask this, so I actually pulled up my Google Calendar because I live by my Google Calendar. So this week, let’s see, Monday, I woke up, and I don’t have much of a morning routine. I walk the dog, and I get breakfast and coffee. That’s it. And then, let’s see, I worked on that musical for a little while.
Cause, due date’s coming up. And then I went downtown and accompanied a couple of student juries. Cause it’s jury week at the university. I came home and then taught until the evening. On Tuesday. It was more work on the musical, more juries downtown at the university, more teaching, and then going to a friend’s recital that night.
This morning, for your listeners, it’s a Wednesday right now this morning, I went and got coffee with a friend I haven’t seen in a while, and now we’re here doing this, and then I’ll come up with lunch, and this is my longest teaching day, so I’ll teach straight through from 2 to 7. Today. Tomorrow, I’ve got to check in about some kind of webinar thing.I need to practice because I’ve got a performance at our state conference coming up of this really weird piece that I agreed to do.
Amy: Are you regretting it now?
Jason: I’m not regretting it. It’s just one of those things it’s I just, I realized that Oh, this is three weeks away. I really need to have this ready to go. Yeah. So yeah, I’ve got to start putting in time at the piano. Let’s see, what else? Thursday, I’ve got a counseling appointment in the afternoon because, mental health, everybody take care of yourself. I’ve got more teaching that afternoon, Friday is gloriously free, which basically means I’ll be writing all day trying to get this musical ready.
Amy: You need, as creatives, you need those large blocks of time. That is, like, the hardest part about being creative is you can’t just do creative stuff in one hour.
Jason: One of the things is, there used to be this saying going around that’s like one hour of really good practice is better than four hours of mindless practice. And what I tell people, and it’s the same with creative work, it’s yes, but you don’t know when that hour is going to come. Sometimes, you have to do two or three hours of bad work to get to the good hour. And yeah, so that’s going to be Friday. And then I’ll teach on Friday evening and Saturday evening. Only till 6:30. What else am I going to do? I’m not that interesting. And then Saturday, it depends. So if it’s nice out on Saturday, I’m gonna go play golf. And if it’s raining on Saturday, then I’ll be on the couch playing Tears of the Kingdom. Because the new Zelda game just came out. And that may be a hobby of mine.
Amy: I love you have a plan B.
Jason: Or whatever else comes up, who knows? But that’s this week. And if we did this in a month, Then it’d be a totally different answer, except for the teaching. The teaching always stays the same. It’s the other things that kind of rotate.
Amy: So this past year, you attended several of my Piano Pantry Power Hours. So you know that I’m all about productivity and organization. So could you share with the listener’s anything, even if you don’t consider yourself an organized person, just a tool, maybe it’s a favorite program or a protect productivity hack or just anything that just saves your life in your daily workflow?
Jason: The first hack was tuning in to the power hour, right? Like accountability is so important. And it’s hard to find that these days. Do you know what I mean? Like it’s, so anyway, that’s been so helpful. Like I’ve done pretty good work during those hours.
Amy: I’ll post a link in the show notes for all the listeners. If anybody wants to join, you can join the email list and then you’ll get notified when they start up again. So just a little side note there.
Jason: Yeah. And it’s great. Come and join the power hours. And then I’m not naturally a very organized person. People think I am because I’m good at. Presenting an organized front, but it’s one, I’m one of these people, if I turn my camera around right now, then you’d see just how much of a mess my life is, but it’s, I try to, Google calendar is where my schedule is and my life is.
And then I use Notion to take notes, which I like because Notion’s kind of a, it’s fantastically complicated and I use maybe 2 percent of its capabilities, but it’s a nice blank slate to put all your stuff.
Amy: Exactly. I call it a second brain. So it’s like the place where you just keep. You keep yourself organized digitally, like your to-do list and like projects and stuff like that. Yeah, I agree. Notion is fabulous. Do you have any fun little silly facts about yourself?
Jason: I can juggle a little bit. And so that ends up being a treat for the students.
Amy: I feel like you may have juggled in your manipulatives thing.
Jason: I probably did. It’s one of those things, it’s you get some kind of quirky little thing that you can do, and then you pull it out at a moment. When you need something to be memorable. I do this in lessons. This is great advice. Okay, this is really great advice I got once. I was talking to a fitness instructor, and they’re like, you know, how we get people to come back is that we know everybody after a fitness class – they remember two things.
The hardest thing and the last thing. And I always remember that. In lessons, I do the same thing. The most quote, unquote painful thing is gonna be, like, in the end. Like in the first third of the lesson, like not at the beginning, but get into, and then at the end, you need something fun and memorable. So we’ll find something that we’ve get to celebrate. And that’s when I’ll pull out the toys or the juggling or the fun, whatever.
Amy: I love that.
Jason: And so it’s great. I like, I want students to leave. Wanting to come back. And, not every lesson can be, like, an amazingly fun time. But, if you can end on a positive note, if you can find a positive note at the end, then, yeah, you’re in good shape.
Amy: If anyone wanted to connect with you online, where is the best place for them to do
Jason: I guess I’m in all the places, so you can find me on Instagram and Facebook, and I’ve got a website that’s just my name, and it’s got a contact form you can email me through that, but I try to be pretty easy to reach. One of the nice things about me is that I have an unusual last name, so when people want to find me, it’s easy.
Amy: Jason, thank you so much for chatting with me today. It’s been great getting to know you a little bit more.
Jason: Yeah. Thanks for having me on. It was really nice.
Drew: Today’s pro-level marriage tip. When your spouse is not feeling well, do whatever they ask, even if it’s recording the intro to their 70th podcast.
