Several weeks ago, I received a nice fat stack of books in the mail, compliments of Jerald Simon, President of Music Motivation. Before I even had a chance to play through them, several students eyed the cover of Sea Fever and picked it up to find out what was hidden beneath the cool-looking design. The music inside is the same kind of attention-getting music with lots of repetitive figures and big, flashy sounds. Each piece is preceded by a brief lesson that introduces key theory concepts and technical skills contained in the piece. The selections are full of 4-note chords, sixteenth note passages, and lots of moving around on the keyboard, so I would classify the arrangements as late-intermediate to advanced.

Each of these other books contain a similar layout and style, and you can hear recordings and view samples of many of the selections on the Music Motivation Blog.

Triumphant – “10 original piano solos”
Hymns of Exaltation
Jazzed About Christmas – “For beginning and early intermediate students”
Playin’ Around and The Jazz Song – “Two Jazz Piano Solos”
Jazzed about Jazz – “For the Intermediate Piano Student”

An Introduction to Scales and Modes, part of the Theory Therapy series, contains scale and chord letterings and fingerings for all the Major and minor scales and each of the modes. A handy reference guide!

Variations on Mary Had a Little Lamb, part of the Innovative Improvisation series, is designed to introduce students to various improvisation techniques using a familiar folk tune. The Teacher’s Tips scattered throughout the lessons help even the most improvisationally-challenged teachers feel like they can help a student grow in this area.

Now, for the great news…Mr. Simon has graciously offered to give away a copy of a book of your choice to three Music Matters Blog readers! So, take a look at the links above, pick out your favorite, and leave a comment below in order to be entered in the drawing to win your chosen book. The drawing will be held on Wednesday, March 17 at noon, CST, so be sure to leave your comment before then! I’ll notify the three winners as soon as I hold the drawing, and will announce them here on Thursday.

Well, it’s about time for my annual Music Teacher’s Helper sales spiel. But instead of writing another review, I’ll let you watch the video that I produced for their recent testimonial contest. Plus, I’m super excited that they are getting ready to launch a completely revamped website! I love new things like this!

Read Review One | Read Review Two

Last weekend I received the e-newsletter from the fabulous Music Educator’s Marketplace and saw this brilliant new product: Nate’s Scale Plates. They were developed by a 9-year old piano student, and they are exactly what several of my students need! It baffles me that scale fingerings are as difficult as they are for some students, but even some of my most diligent students struggle to master them. These scale plates seem like the perfect solution. According to the newsletter, Music Educator’s Marketplace will be at the MTNA Conference next month, so I’m putting this at the top of my list of things to buy. I can hardly wait to give it a try!

If you don’t already receive the free e-newsletter from Music Educator’s Marketplace, you can sign up for it at the bottom of their home page. I highly recommend it! In addition to product information it also contains some great teaching tips and other helpful links.

St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner, and if you enjoy hearing holiday-themed music in your studio you’ll want to grab a copy of Wendy Stevens’ latest sheet music: Irish Celebration. The melody is fun and catchy – one that any early elementary student will love learning and playing over and over…and over and over.

Set in a simple 5-finger position, Irish Celebration is very accessible while still managing to sound great sans duet. The accompanying duet, however, would be perfect for an older sibling or other early intermediate student. It adds a great sense of energy and excitement without detracting from the melody. Lots of fun!

Other favorite Irish Music selections in my studio include:

From the Emerald Isle by Melody Bober
Highland Jig by Mary Leaf (one of the selections in this In Recital book)

I’d love to have some other suggestions of favorite Irish repertoire. What pieces do your students really like playing?

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!

Attaching the tag line, “stylish arrangements” to a collection of early elementary hymn solos may seem like a bit of a stretch, but composer Wendy Stevens manages to pull it off! I recently played through each of the hymn arrangements in her new three-book collection of Easy Hymn Solos published by Hal Leonard and was delighted with them. Early-level arrangements of this caliber are hard to come by, so I know they are going to be well-used among my students! In fact, truth be told, I’ve already parted with a couple of the books because I just couldn’t wait to let my students get started on some of the pieces.

Just to give you a taste of what you’ll find in these books, here’s an annotated list of the contents of Book One:

Amazing Grace – The damper pedal is sustained for the duration of the piece, creating a sweet overarching mood and leaving lots of room for expressive playing.

Brethren We Have Met to Worship – A syncopated rhythm (well-notated for the beginning student) in the introduction gets this piece off to a lively start! A brief legato, lyrical section in the middle provides a nice contrast. The performer of this piece will need to have good counting skills and a great sense of pulse!

Come, Christians, Join to Sing – Probably the first thing you’ll notice about this piece is the character created by the rests that appear frequently on the first beat of the measures. Along with the well-articulated staccatos, this piece will be lots of fun for a student to tackle!

For the Beauty of the Earth – Students will love the mature sound they can achieve with the harmonic thirds and fifths that adorn the opening of this reverent hymn. They’ll also get a brief chance to explore voicing left hand melodic notes while the right hand supplies the harmony.

Doxology – This is one of the two pieces in the collection that utilizes harmonic pedaling, so this could provide a great introduction to pedaling techniques for an early level student. A lovely left hand inverted arrangement of the melodic notes provides an echo effect throughout that can be a great lesson in balance between the hands.

God is so Good – Lovely and simple, with a very open sound – perfect for this song. No doubt a few reminders to count all the notes for the full value will be necessary with this arrangement, but it will be a great experience in counting and listening to the sound of the music.

How Firm a Foundation – A few surprising harmonies dot the landscape of this familiar hymn, giving added color. Played up to tempo, this well-articulated and lightly syncopated piece will have you tapping your toes!

Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee – What would an early hymn book be without this song? Open fifths comprise much of the harmony, giving this a nice cheery sound. A straightforward melody with a few register changes, combined with the familiarity of the tune, would make this a great first choice for a student playing from this book.

Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho – A super fun arrangement! It will probably take a while to master, but will be well worth the effort for any precocious student who wants to have an exciting, impressive-sounding piece to play!

Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us – Tender and expressive, with mostly a single melodic line split between the hands. Written in G-Major, this is the only piece in the book in a key other than C-Major or a-minor, but all the F#s are notated individually, rather than in the key signature.

The other two books in the series are equally varied, with a mixture of both lively, fun arrangements, and gorgeous, lyrical arrangements. I love seeing my students get inspired and excited to reach new heights in their musical endeavors, and music like this often provides the impetus they need to launch into that adventure. So, whether you have students who could use a little inspiration to take the next step in their musical studies, or whether you have students who would love some easier stylish arrangements to bring out their musical expressiveness, these Easy Hymn Solos books are sure to be a hit!

I’ve been hearing rumblings about MuseScore for several weeks, but Joy’s review of it earlier this week prompted me to finally take a closer look. Like Joy, I was very disappointed to find that Finale decided to charge for the NotePad software that they previously offered free of charge. I had quite a few students who used it for their compositions. MuseScore looks like a great alternative (it’s free!). I’ve downloaded the most recent version and look forward to checking it out for myself.

Today, I am pleased to welcome Elizabeth Wellburn, author of the children’s book Echoes from the Square, for a special interview.

What prompted your interest in writing this story about Vedran Smailovic, cellist of Sarajevo?
My daughter Amy is a cellist, and we had heard about Mr. Smailovic’s actions on the internet. I believed that what he had done was inspirational and I was intrigued by the idea of telling the story from the point of view of a child who had witnessed the performances. My husband Deryk Houston did the artwork for the book, so it was a bit of a family project.

What sort of background do you have in music and/or writing?
I am an educator and my specialty is really education technology. But the technology is something I see as a means to an end. Information literacy and critical thinking are what I believe should be the main goals of education in this information–rich era. And I am a huge supporter of the arts – to make us human and allow us to connect in important ways (some which can be enhanced by technology). So a project that could incorporate several of these aspects was appealing to me.

How long did the process take from conception to finished book?
The book was published just over ten years ago and the exact amount of time from start to completion is a bit fuzzy in my mind now. At least two years — but that time included gaps when we were “on hold.”

Can you describe your process for researching the information that went into the story?
Ahhh… it was a great research project and it involved a bit of detective work and a lot of luck. Smailovic’s actions were reported widely, so it was easy to find out which music he had performed, where he had played, etc. And there was plenty of heartbreaking information about the Bosnian war and its impact on the people and the area. I wrote a quick draft and Deryk did some rough artwork based on our daughter’s cello teacher. Rubicon, a small Canadian publisher, was interested (our timing was good), but we all really wanted to to base the artwork on the real Smailovic and have his opinion of the story. He was almost impossible to find, though. Amazingly, one day we received a postcard for our daughter from a friend in Boston, a dear person who we see, if we’re lucky, every couple of years. The card had Smailovic’s photo on it and was signed, to Amy, 1000 times love, Vedran Smailovic. Our friend didn’t know we were working on the project, but had been to a performance in Boston and thought Amy, as a cellist, would like the card. This led us to the person who had booked Vedran for the Boston performance, and we were then able to find him. Meeting him added a richness to the story and artwork that we couldn’t have achieved otherwise.

What sort of responses have you received from children that hear/read the story?
Children are so direct and wonderful. They often ask “why was there a war?” Many schools have used this book to as a starting point for art projects incorporating music themes, and it’s been very gratifying to see children’s interpretations of the power of music to make people feel better. One boy wrote and recorded a cello-violin duet that he has named “Echoes from the Square.”

You can imagine that we are thrilled that we’ve been able to help promote the idea of music for peace.

Any additional comments or thoughts you’d like to share?
We are delighted that our work aligns with the concept of “Creativity over Destructiveness” that is a main premise of the Zimbardo/Langdon “heroes in waiting” project — a curriculum to promote the conditions that lead individuals to seize the heroic moment. I’ve created a social media site to discuss this, in the context of:
- peace/conflict resolution
- creativity over destructiveness
- civic responsibility/resisting unwanted influences
- the role of culture and the arts in all of the above

We welcome people to participate at: http://echoesfromthesquare.ning.com/.

Recently, I received an e-mail from Elizabeth Wellburn, author of the colorful and captivating book Echoes From the Square by Elizabeth Wellburn. It is the beautiful story of cellist Vedran Smailovic, retold in this heartwarming children’s book.

The video below is a recording of Ms. Wellburn reading the story, accompanied by images from the book and music performed by violinist Tasmin Little and Vedran Smailovic himself.

Don’t you think students would love watching this? Be sure to stop by tomorrow for a special interview with Ms. Wellburn.

Michael Griffin, author of Music and Keyboard in the Classroom and developer of the helpful website Music Education World has produced another great resource for music teachers and students.

His newest book, Modern Harmony Methodology, describes itself as being “of value to all students of composition and musical arrangement, and also to classically trained pianists who yearn to play modern sounds and extend their harmonic vocabulary.” And it certainly delivers!

The book is divided into two parts :
A – Harmonizing Melodies
B – Chord Voicing

It starts with a basic overview of primary triads and how to use them to harmonize the chordal notes in a melody. The next section moves into secondary triads and uses the same melody to illustrate how secondary triads can be effectively substituted for the primary triads to produce a different sound. Next is a clear overview of the different types of 7th chords, followed by a more detailed discussion of when it’s appropriate to use each type of chord. This is followed by an explanation of the Circle of Fourths and some points on how it can be utilized to assist in harmonization. Following chapters expand into 9th and 13th extensions, chord alterations, suspensions, secondary dominants, and more!

The second part of the book shares tips on the range and which voices to use where. Helpful examples of poor voicing choices with opportunity for students to identify what makes it a poor choice.

There are numerous exercises included in the text, as well as in a supporting workbook designed for this purpose. Solutions are included at the end of each book so that you can check the student’s work.

Mr. Griffin does a superb job giving clear and concise steps that students should take when approaching the task of harmonizing a melody. The book is laid out in a clean, easy-to-understand format. Mr. Griffin is obviously a gifted teacher, and has developed a book that would be a great resource for any music teacher or student interested in understanding and implementing more complex theory/harmony concepts! I encourage you to check out his website and order your own copy of Modern Harmony Methodologies.