The Zombie post

I like zombies.  I like watching movies about them.  I like reading about them.  I like playing video games about plants fighting off zombies.  They are funny to me.  On one occasion, I watched a zombie movie before bedtime and had zombie-filled dreams.  Anyway.

The reason I bring this up is because I use zombies in my teaching.

The zombies come in when we are playing along in a duet or the student is playing something out of their lesson book or an etude.  Because we are all fallible human people, with not-so-perfect brains (braaaaaaains!) a student will sometimes play in a rest. 

My high school band director had a habit of telling us to "not step in a hole", by which he meant: don't play in the rest (a 'rest' is the musical symbol that means "don't make sound here").  I tell my students the same thing, but add that there are zombies living (un-living?) in the rests and by stepping in them, they will have their brains eaten out. 

This silliness does a couple of things. First, it keeps the lesson from becoming too dreary or serious and (usually) makes the student smile or laugh.  Second, it makes their braaaaaaaaains associate the rests with something novel and unique.  Something that they need to remember to do. 

My zombie trick seems to work for me, and now I just need to say "zombie" to a knowing student who accidentally plays in a rest and they know exactly what happened and how they can fix the mistake.  Pavlovian zombies?