It’s official! The year has begun in my studio! We had our September Surprise kickoff last night and it was a ton of fun! Almost every one of the students in attendance played something, and I was quite impressed that most of them worked up new pieces and did a very nice job with them. […]
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Win a Free Djembe
Last week I received some information about the X8 Drums website. As I was perusing it, I noticed that they have a drawing for a free djembe at the beginning of each month! A couple years ago, I got a free djembe at the MTNA Conference and we use it pretty regularly during lessons for […]
Composer Quotes
I spent a good deal of time last night collecting quotes for a game that I am planning to have my students play at the September Surprise tonight. There’s a handy composer category of quotes on the brainy quote site – from which I pulled all the quotes. Although you can’t be 100% sure of […]
Practice Problems and Strategies or Why I Don’t Just Give You Answers!
Do you ever have a student come to their lesson and say that they couldn’t practice an assigned piece because they couldn’t figure out what note to start on? Or do they play timidly and explain that they aren’t sure if they are playing with the correct rhythm? Here’s what NOT to do. Don’t point […]
Happy Labor Day!
Since it’s an official holiday, I’m officially taking the day off here. Plus, I’m fully absorbed in another website project at the moment, so any answers to Monday Mailbag questions might be less-than-coherent. 🙂
MuseScore – A Free Notation Software
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 […]
