[Natalie's Note: Following is a series of questions I received pertaining to this treble clef game - a favorite in my studio!]

I began teaching beginner piano lessons this summer.  Being a teenager with no experience, I feel like I “run out” of new ideas quickly. I really like your game ideas, and I have a few questions about the Treble Clef game.

The treble clef shape is cut out of white posterboard and orange and blue circles are placed on the treble clef to create a path. Then I laminated it to preserve it. To play, each student places their game token on the first circle and draws a card from the draw pile. If they answer the card correctly, they get to roll the die and advance their game piece.

First, what is written on your cubes?

The dice are made from foam cubes and then I used a black ink pen to draw a keyboard or staff with a different interval on each side. The student rolls the die that corresponds to the color space he is on on the treble clef board. He must identify the interval and then move the equivalent number of spaces (i.e. 4th – move 4 spaces).

Can you explain how many spaces a student would move based on what the cube says?
The above answer should have answered this. Incidentally, I have them move how they normally would in a game, not how they would count intervals on a keyboard (i.e. including the starting space in the count).

What do you suggest I write on the flash cards for a pre-reading student?
* pictures of a piano keyboard with an “X” to identify the name of the key
* simple rhythm patterns
* note values
* basic dynamics
* pictures of instruments to identify

I also have a student who just started reading the staff.  What kind of flash cards should I make so she will keep advancing, without feeling overwhelmed at the difficulty of the questions?

You could make cards with all the staff notes and just include a specified range of those in addition to other easier cards. Or you could make it multiple choice. Another fun approach might be to do a series of notes and have the student see if she can identify the word that is spelled. (Click here for a list of Musical Alphabet Words.)

Also, another game that seems to work really well with students learning their notes is Whack-It! This is great for identifying key names or notes on the staff.

Hope this info is helpful! Feel free to comment below if you have suggests for other cards that could be made for pre-reading students.

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

Do you have a favorite adult method series?

Honestly, no. I don’t really like any of the adult method books that I’ve used. For beginning adult students, I usually use the Faber Accelerated Piano Adventures. Many of the adult methods are more chord-based in their approach and I feel like that is a disservice to an older beginner who really needs to develop good technique and reading skills in both hands.

I also start adults almost immediately on scales, chords, and cross-hand arpeggios. They tend to have lots of questions and want to understand what they are playing, so I think learning applied theory is the best way to do that. In addition to the method book, I try to track down a supplemental book with a bit more challenging music along the lines of what they want to learn to play – hymns, praise songs, classical themes, folk music, etc. This is especially motivating and gives them a chance to learn big-sounding music or favorite tunes while still developing their reading and technique skills through the method books.

Well, that concludes our week of Mondays! That made a bit of a dent in the Monday Mailbag folder. It’s so much fun discussing these sorts of issues and getting input and different perspectives from other teachers. Thanks to those of you who have contributed to the discussion!

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

At what point do you discontinue using method books with more advanced students? What does their curriculum consist of (i.e. what do you do for repertoire, technique, etc)?

Wow! Like my Introducing Baroque Music post, I’m afraid this will reveal my lack of structured lesson planning when it comes to the higher levels! Just don’t report me to the pedagogy police, ok?

If a particular student really thrives on sequence and structure, then I’ll keep them in the method books (Lesson and Technique and Artistry) through all the levels, but otherwise, usually after the second or third level of the Faber series, we transition into early classics and other supplemental music. I’ve used a whole variety of early level Classical repertoire books over the years. Usually when a student gets to that point, I spend some time at the music store pouring over the new releases and looking back through the previous series’ I’ve used, trying to pick the books that I think will be just right for that student.

I look for books that have representative repertoire from each of the time periods so that I can incorporate stylistic techniques and tidbits of music history along with the learning of the pieces. The Exploring Piano Classics series is my newest favorite! I’m not very good at remembering book titles, but here are a few others I really like that come to mind:

Essential Keyboard Repertoire edited by Lynn Freeman Olson

Masterwork Classics by Jane Magrath

Beautiful Etudes by Victoria McArthur

Expressive Etudes by Suzanne Guy

Succeeding with the Masters Festival Collection by Helen Marlais

I’m sure there are other great ones as well, so hopefully some others will chime in! What are your favorite repertoire and technique books for advancing students who are moving out of method books? Also, at what point do your students move out of the method books?

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

What do you do in your first interview with a student?

Check out this Student Interviews post for an overview of what I include in Student Interviews and for free interview questionnaires that you can download and use in your studio. In a nutshell, though, here are the main things that I aim to accomplish in each interview:

1. Get to know the student and parent and ascertain if we will work well together. I try to get a feel for their personality, how they learn, and what their interests are.

2. Assess the student’s musical aptitude and interest and the parents’ expectations. Only under rare exceptions will I accept a student who is not personally interested in taking piano lessons. If they are interested, then I like to get an idea of what their musical strengths and weaknesses are/will be.

3. Give the student a chance to make music at the piano. I do simple activities and a couple of improvisation exercises to try to build excitement for learning to understand and make music. One of my primary objectives is for them to go home from the interview even more enthusiastic about lessons than when they arrived!

4. Discuss policy issues, studio opportunities, and scheduling considerations. I want to make sure that we are all on the same page and give the parent an opportunity to ask any questions before they sign that they agree to abide by my studio policies. We also figure out lesson times at this point.

I’d love to hear what things others include in the initial student interviews. What else have you found important to include?

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

Yes, I know it’s not Monday, but I have a backlog of questions, so I thought I would take a week to try to catch up a bit!

What do you think about jazz music and popular music? Do you use it in your studio?

Honestly, it depends a lot on the student. I don’t make a special point to include jazz or pop music in lessons, but if a student requests it, I will try to help them find something appropriate for their level of playing. Also, tend to evaluate or determine what I teach based on the individual piece rather than the genre. If I like a piece, I will eagerly recommend it to a student and help them work on it. Same goes for if they bring in their own piece that they are interested in learning. But if I don’t like a piece of music, I figure that I won’t be very effective or encouraging in helping the student work on it.

For example, if a student is interested in learning jazz music, I don’t just give them a book of pieces at their level, I’ll play through numerous books until I find a piece that really grabs me and then I’ll introduce that one to them. Same with pop music, although it’s a little harder to be picky with these because the options are more limited if you’re looking for a particular song!

Incidentally, I use the same approach with classical music, method book pieces, hymns, etc. I am always open to learning new music, finding out about different composers and arrangers, and looking through newly released books, but if I don’t find the song/arrangement appealing, I usually pass it up and look for something else. I tell my students the same thing, if they don’t like a piece of music (because of the sound, not because it’s too hard!), we skip it and move on to something that they do like. There’s too much music available to spend our time playing music we don’t like. That’s my philosophy, anyway.

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

Do you ever have issues with students taking off the month of December? For example, do they ever take off because they don’t want to pay for the whole month when they will only get 2 or 3 lessons?

In years past, when I was still making the transition to a monthly flat rate for lessons, this was an issue. It was hard at first to help families understand that the lesson fee included more than just the time at the lesson, but all the other “perks” that come from being a part of my studio. That’s why the monthly rate is the same, regardless of the number of lessons from month to month. Now that I’ve learned how to communicate better with families, this doesn’t seem to be an issue.

One thing that I have learned over the years is to openly and clearly communicate when these sorts of issues come up. Several years ago, I had a situation where an adult student contacted me to let me know that she wouldn’t be available for several of her lessons in May and suggested that we just take the month off and resume in June. I did a little digging and was able to track down the e-mail response I sent her:

Thanks for letting me know about your schedule. I just wanted to run something by you so you would have my perspective…one of the reasons I charge a flat monthly rate for lessons is because teaching piano is the way I make my living and I have to be able to budget a certain amount of income so that I can meet my expenses each month. Even though I am incredibly blessed that my parents have allowed me to continue to live in their home, there are a lot of expenses associated with running my own business (insurances, license, professional association fees, continuing education, website fees, etc.), in addition to just my regular living expenses. I have to factor all of these into the amount I charge for lessons and then teach a certain number of students to meet those expenses. While I certainly understand the dilemma you are in with various scheduling conflicts and it may seem best to just skip a month of lessons rather than paying the same amount and receiving fewer lessons, for me the result is a fairly significant reduction in the income that I was expecting to receive that month.

I hope that this doesn’t come across wrong. I just thought that it was important for me to express this to you. I wish I had more flexibility in my schedule to work out other times when you have other commitments, but sometimes things are just too tight to try to find other times that will work for both of us. If there is another time that you think would be better for you in the fall when I rework my schedule, just let me know and hopefully we can work that out!

Upon receiving my response, this student was not only understanding, but she was also incredibly grateful that I had taken the time and effort to share my perspective with her. Even though her children had previously taken lessons from other teachers for years, no one had ever taken the time to communicate this to her. I have had similar situations with other families that have helped me realize the importance of not getting upset or offended, but being gracious and patient, and equally open to hearing their perspective. Just like any business should, I want to make sure that I am providing the best value for my clients so that they always feel like they are getting their money’s worth. It takes a while, but eventually each teacher should be able to figure out the right balance between professional policies and a friendly personable approach to operating their studio.

Hope this helps! As always, any additional input is welcome!

Remember, if you have a question you’d like to contribute to next week’s Monday Mailbag, leave it in the comments below or send me an e-mail sometime this week with Monday Mailbag in the subject line!

Those of you who are church pianists, or those who just enjoy playing sacred arrangements, should check out these free arrangements at KoertsMusic.com. So far, there are three arrangements available: For the Beauty of the Earth, Praise to the Lord, and Joy to the World. And while you’re there, you should click over to the page for the CD Wondrous Love and listen to the tracks. The CD is described as “Christian music with piano and orchestra.” Amazingly, you can listen to the whole track for each song, and you can download the entire album for $9.99! So far, I’m loving all of it and have added it to my universal wish list!

HT: The Church Pianist

Have you seen the Create Your Own Interval Examples page on the EarMaster website? What a fabulous resource! Our Music Progressions evaluations are in April each year, so I’ve been assigning several of my students to work on specific ear training exercises at different websites. This is with the hope that maybe they won’t all bomb the listening test like we do most years…aural skills is not one of my strengths and it’s an area I rarely devote time to in the lessons, other than having students pick songs out by ear and compose original arrangements, so unless they are naturally gifted in this area, they usually don’t fare so well.

Anyway…I’ll be passing along the link to this interval example page. I love that it has links to YouTube videos so that students can immediately listen to songs representing each interval! (Maybe I should spend some time there, too… ) Do you have any other good resources you’ve found for working on aural skills with students? Please do share – I can use all the help I can get in this area!

HT: Wendy

One thing that I highly value is organization. I don’t function very well when things are cluttered, so I am always looking for better and more efficient systems that will help maintain order with minimal effort. An area where I have not developed a good system is with the variety of flashcards and small paper and game pieces that I use for games and activities. I’m constantly sifting through a stack of flashcards to pull out all the treble clef notes in a certain range, or to separate the sharp from the flat key signatures, etc. So I was absolutely thrilled to come across this brilliant idea in Laura Lowe’s post, 5 Tips for Studio Organization: Storage Pockets! Now why didn’t I ever think of that? That is definitely going on my list for my next studio re-organization day.

When our local music teachers association dubbed our first meeting of the year a “New Music Review” I knew exactly what I wanted to play. I had recently received Wendy Stevens’ newest book, How Sweet the Sound, and fell in love with the first arrangement – Day of Arising. It’s a gorgeous setting that just makes the piano sing (of course, it helps that the teacher’s studio where I performed it is the new home to a magnificent Kawaii grand piano!).

Each of the other intermediate/late-intermediate arrangements are also enjoyable, offering the fresh, vibrant, elements that players of Wendy’s music have come to expect and love.

In How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds and Amazing Grace, I was pleasantly surprised to experience an arrangement of Amazing Grace that didn’t leave me feeling disengaged due to overuse, as often happens on those songs that have almost become too familiar.

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence exhibited a somber character with lots of open 5ths and a pretty drawn out feel, complemented nicely by the passionate, thicker-textured section toward the end.

Take Up Your Cross, the Savior Said was, like a number of the hymns in this collection, unfamiliar to me. This is a fun, lively arrangement in 3/2 with a quick triplet figure and crisp staccatos leading the way into the theme. You can almost feel a bit of suspense or mystery in the sound as you play that grabs the attention and keeps the listener engaged.

There Is a Balm in Gilead was a pleasant and easy read with an overall soothing quality, set in large part in the upper register of the piano.

The collection finishes out with arrangements of Thine Is the Glory, This Is My Father’s World, ‘Tis So Sweet, and We Walk by Faith and Not by Sight. As is often the case with unfamiliar melodies, a couple run-throughs are helpful for assimilating the style and drawing out the character of each arrangement. But I found them all to be very accessible and a welcome addition to my collection of sacred piano solos. I look forward to incorporating them into my Sunday music selections and know that many other church pianists and congregations will also enjoy them!