Listening to good music is such a critical component of learning to become a good musician, but one that is often overlooked. That’s why I especially appreciated this question I received from another teacher: One of the things that I am facing with my piano students is that they lack an accurate concept of how […]
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Monday Mailbag – Students and Pop Music
How “strict” are you about your students playing popular music from films, radio, etc. as notated? The piano arrangements are never really identical to the song the student knows, and they naturally play the rhythm they know. Lately I’ve been going through the notated rhythms with them correctly and then giving them permission to play […]
137 Tech Resources for Teachers and Students
Looking for just the right resource or program to energize your teaching, inspire your students, or just add to the fun of teaching? You’ll probably find it on this massive list of 137 Tech Resources for Teachers and Students, compiled by Joel of the So You Want to Teach? blog. This is a great list […]
A Week of Year-End Evaluations
Eight years ago, I started doing Year-End Evaluations with students and their parents at the last lesson of the spring semester. This has been such a helpful tool! A couple weeks prior to the evaluation, I send home a Student Questionnaire and a Parent Questionnaire. I change the questions a little bit each year based […]
Year of Collaborative Music
Did you know that we are in the midst of the Year of Collaborative Music? It commenced at the March MTNA conference in Albuquerque and will culminate at the MTNA conference in Milwaukee next March. I am really excited about this and am thinking about designing my practice incentive theme around this initiative for next […]
A New Approach to Teaching Thumb Position
At our fifth Briefing Session this year, the theme was “A Galaxy of Theory Concepts for Creative Minds.” Each student had to present a musical concept of their choice. The presentations could be simple or elaborate – basically as creative as the student wanted to be with it. It turned out pretty fun, and I […]
