“Grand.” “Enjoyable.” “Really neat piece.” “I loved it!” Those are the descriptions and exclamations that I heard from students after one week of them playing Kori Buchanan’s excellent piano compositions! Kori has been a longtime follower of Music Matters Blog and contacted me recently about reviewing some of her piano compositions. I thought it would […]
Resources
Review and Giveaway of I Wish I Didn’t Quit: Music Lessons
With bookend stories about the fictitious piano student Olivia in his new book, I Wish I Didn’t Quit: Music Lessons, author Nathan Holder paints a picture first of an all-too familiar scenario and later an ideal scenario when it comes to studying music. Himself a member of the “I-wish-I-didn’t-quit” statistic, Holder writes from a collection […]
New Piano Sheet Music for I’d Rather Have Jesus
It only took me about 5 and a half years, but the piano sheet music is finally done and available for the original arrangement of I’d Rather Have Jesus. I posted the video of it in 2013: And I’ve been procrastinating notating and publishing it ever since. 🙂 But after many hours of work over […]
Review and Giveaway of 100 Left Hand Patterns Every Piano Player Should Know
One of the most valuable skills any pianist can learn is to play popular tunes by ear and easily play them with an appropriate accompaniment. If you’ve ever found yourself blank when trying to think of a new melody to play or out of ideas for a left hand accompaniment, this is the book for […]
Want to Learn to Play or Teach Jazz Piano?
In the last issue of the American Music Teacher, there was a brief review of the new Jazz Piano Basics series by Eric Baumgartner (apparently, it’s “a revised and vastly expanded version of the Jazzabilities series”). It piqued my curiosity, so I decided to order books 1 and 2. I confess that I’m not especially […]
Free Musical U Masterclass with Forrest Kinney this Saturday
Perhaps one of the most transformational moments of my music teaching career was attending a showcase by Forrest Kinney at the MTNA conference in 2010. It is not an exaggeration to say that my teaching has never been the same since! I began incorporating his ideas on improvisation into our lessons right away and was […]
