In honor of our Christmas Recital tonight, I thought I would post a video of one of the selections that will be on the program. Brittany did a “practice performance” of What Child is This? last week at her lesson. A “practice performance” means that we turn off all the lights except for the one on the piano (which simulates a spotlight!), and do the whole approach to the piano, bow at the end, etc. The goal, of course, is to try to make the student feel at least slightly nervous so that we can identify weak spots, and learn to work through the nerves.

James has had to work really hard to develop his rhythm skills. He especially loved this piece, so he was motivated to count consistently through the whole thing to make it sound right.

Here is a link to the printed music for the Bitterroot Mountains piece that James is playing:

Stories in Sound - Book 2 By Valerie Roth Roubos. For Piano. FJH Composers in Focus. Performance. Level: Late Elementary. Collection. Published by The FJH Music Company Inc. (FF1687) See more info…

Initially Ryan thought that Sun Chaser was still too hard to learn, but once I showed him the patterns, he took off with it. This was a great piece for rote teaching!

Here is a link to the printed music for the Sun Chaser piece that Ryan is playing:

Sun Chaser By Timothy Brown. For Piano. FJH Written For You Piano Solos. Animals and Nature. Level: Early Intermediate. Solo Sheet. Published by The FJH Music Company Inc. (W9111) See more info…

Doesn’t everyone teach a few of those students whose technical facility and musical talent far exceeds their music reading ability? I have found that such students love learning really cool sounding pieces that are quite a bit harder than what they could actually read from the printed music. One of my favorite pieces to teach by rote is the expressive Poet’s Lament by Jon George.

Here’s an example of my student Graham (who is just starting the Faber Level 1 books) playing this piece. We still have a ways to go with fluidity and musical phrasing, but can you tell he loves this piece?!

I’m always looking for great pieces to teach by rote that will capture the students’ imagination. Anyone have any favorite rote pieces that they like to teach? Do tell!

Since we were getting ready for our first group event last week, I took the opportunity to film several of my students playing their pieces so they could watch themselves and use it as a tool for improvement. I really need to do this more often! I finally decided to create an official YouTube channel for Music Matters Blog and you can subscribe to my videos by visiting my YouTube page here. And if you have a YouTube channel for your music blog or studio, please let me know!

Naomi has cerebral palsy, so she doesn’t have fine motor skills in her left hand. This has not deterred her from becoming a very fine pianist, though. She is incredibly disciplined and perseveres until she learns her pieces with excellence! Here she plays The Clear Stream, Op. 100, No. 7 by Johann Burgmuller.

Joey thought this piece was the perfect fit for our mystery theme this year, so he decided to play it at last week’s Private Eye Workshop. This is a recording we did at his last lesson before the event. He is playing A Mysterious Moment by David Karp.

Isabella has a lot of natural musical talent and expresses it nicely in this performance of Whirling Leaves by Nancy and Randall Faber.

Caleb and I had fun playing this duet called Blink of an Eye by Janet Vogt.