Yes, I know I’m a day late. Yesterday, March 1, was the 200th birthday of the renowned Frederic Chopin. 200 is a pretty big milestone, though, so I think it’s acceptable to prolong the celebration for a little longer. Thanks to Gerald Klickstein, of The Musician’s Way Blog, for putting together a great collection of resources Celebrating the Chopin Bicentennial.

For one of my more advanced students this year, I am using a different approach. Instead of having her work on repertoire representative of each historical era, we’re focusing on one composer at a time. She loves lyrical, Romantic music, so Chopin was the perfect start! While working through a variety of repertoire, I also had her complete a research assignment each week to learn more about Chopin and the time in which he lived. Here are the assignments I gave her:

1. Research and define each of these: Prelude, Etude, Waltz, Polonaise, Nocturne, and Mazurka.
2. Find video clips of performances of each style of piece; listen to and watch them to familiarize yourself with the various styles.
3. Research Chopin and write a brief biography.
4. Look up three great pianists who performed Chopin, then compare and contrast them using a circle diagram.
5. Look up three of Chopin’s contemporaries and write a short essay discussing their work and its similarities and differences with Chopin’s work.
6. Investigate what was going on in different parts of the world during Chopin’s lifetime.
7. Explore other fine arts and discuss the common threads and undergirding philosophies: art (sculpture, paint, architecture – find images), literature (authors, philosophers, theologians), and theatre/dance.
8. Collect some of Chopin’s writings to identify his worldview, philosophies, motivations, etc.
9. Research Poland and list: interesting facts, famous people, famous landmarks/places, and famous events that are associated with the country.

The whole process was quite interesting and informative for both my student and me, and this approach is working really well for this particular student. I will probably use it with several others in the future as well. Plus, putting this together for her has given me a good framework that we can use as we move on and study other composers.

This isn’t exactly a music-related resource, but I’ve found it to be a great tool for earning money to spend on music-related resources, so I thought I would mention it again now that I’ve been using it for a while (plus, I get some sort of special credit if you sign up through my link)! Swagbucks is an online search engine that you can install in your toolbar along with your other search engines. As you use it to search, you earn credits that can be traded in for various products and gift cards. I always use mine to buy Amazon gift cards and have earned $60 so far just by searching like I regularly would online. Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of the search engine, so if I need to do some fast or serious searching online, I still use Google. But if I’m just doing routine searching and want to earn money for it, I happily use Swagbucks.

Last fall, a friend of mine who is a vocalist and I decided to trade lessons – she would teach me voice and I would teach her piano. I’m afraid her job is considerably more difficult than mine! She alerted me to this website with Free Online Singing Lessons that has a wealth of information that is a great supplement for anyone teaching or taking voice lessons. Of course, we all know that online reading material can never truly take the place of a live music instructor, right?

If any of you vocal teachers or students have other recommended resources, I’d love to know about them! I do think I’ve improved considerably, but I still have a long road ahead of me…

Yesterday, I shared a little bit about the Galaxy of Composers group class that we held in the studio last week. In preparation for this each student selected (or was given) a composition by a composer of interest to them. I tried to keep the duplicate composers to a minimum, but of course we did still end up with several of the more famous names!

I used to be opposed to using simplified arrangements of classics, but now I love them! I’m still not a huge fan of simplified arrangements of piano repertoire, but I love using themes from other instrumental and symphonic works to help familiarize the students with music they might otherwise never hear. I’ve compiled a list below of the pieces that were prepared for the Galaxy of Composers group class, along with links to the books in which they are located (these represent some of my favorite collections for both piano and simplified classical arrangements!). Hope it’s helpful!

Prelude – Isaac Albeniz

Kind im Einschlummern (Child Falling Asleep) – Robert Schumann

The Village Prophet – Jean Jacques Rousseau

Theme from New World Symphony – Antonin Dvorak

Theme from Trepak – Pyotr Tchaikovsky

Maple Leaf Rag – Scott Joplin

Rondo Alla Turca – Frederic Burgmuller

Solfeggieto – C.P.E. Bach

Fur Elise – Ludwig Van Beethoven

No Fear – Luke Wisner (original composition by the brother of a student)

Theme from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Pop! Goes the Weasel – Benjamin Schweitzer

Theme from Symphony in C Minor – Ludwig Van Beethoven

Wedding March – Felix Mendelssohn

Caprice No. 24 – Niccolo Paganini

The Magic Fountain – Szidor Bator

Firefly – Nancy and Randall Faber

In the Hall of the Mountain King – Edvard Grieg

Night of the Tarantella – Nancy Faber

Country Dance – Ludwig Van Beethoven

Theme from Fantasy-Impromptu – Frederic Chopin

German Dance and Allemande – Michael Praetorius

Stars and Stripes Forever – John Philip Sousa

Romance – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Taps – Daniel Butterfield

Theme from Spring – Antonio Vivaldi

In the same e-newsletter from Music Educator’s Marketplace that I mentioned Tuesday, there was a link to free online music resources. The page it led to is this fabulous collection of Free Online Resources for Teachers, Students, Parents. The page is divided into several helpful categories:

• Teacher Helpers and Resources
• Free Teaching Aids to Print Out
• Free Music Graphics and Clip Art
• Free Online Student Activities
• Resources to Share with Parents
• Free Piano Music to Download/Print
• Not Entirely Free But Worth a Look.

Karen Koch is the one responsible for compiling the list and she has done a fabulous job of it!

One of my goals this year is to purchase a piano to replace the current acoustic piano in my studio. The current piano is a low-end instrument that is 30+ years old. Some of the repair work it needs now would cost significantly more than it’s worth, so I finally decided I better get serious about saving for a new piano. I’ve started doing some preliminary research and came across the Piano Buyer website. Larry Fine’s popular Piano Buyer Supplement can be read for free online! There are lots of other great resources on the site as well. A place I will undoubtedly be visiting many times this year!

I would love to have input from some other teachers on pianos. What brands and models do you really like? Which ones do you not like? Any other advice on choosing a piano? As much as I would love to have a grand piano, right now both space and financial considerations have limited me to an upright. I’ve heard that some upright grands are a close second to a real grand, so that’s what I’m hoping to find!

Jerald Simon, of the Music Motivation Blog, is developing a page full of fabulous free downloadable music theory worksheets! Current worksheets include major and minor pentascales, intervals, chord inversions, and chord progressions. What a great resource, especially for students preparing for state theory tests! He is planning to add one new download every day for the next eight months, so you’ll want to keep an eye on this site.

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 of the families in my studio sent me a link to this brand new blog that has been launched by Sonlight (a curriculum for homeschoolers). The blog is primarily geared toward families pursuing music education (rather than teachers), but I think it will be a great place to get ideas! You can also download a free report titled, “How Music Can Dramatically Affect Your Child’s Development and Life-Time Success” from this post.