A note from Natalie: I’m excited to welcome Diego Cardini, founder of thedrumninja.com to Music Matters Blog today! His guest post below includes a wealth of easy, practical, engaging ideas to use with your piano students to help them improve their rhythm skills. I’m looking forward to trying these creative suggestions with my students! Introduction […]
Feeling the Pulse
New in the Studio this Fall – Ready to Play
While perusing the Piano Safari website late this summer, I came across a couple of books in their Musicianship category. Ready to Play books 1 (Off We Go!) and 2 (Moving Up!) by Sally Cathcart. Forever on a quest to improve how I teach my students musicianship, I was intrigued and added a copy of […]
Heartbeat Rhythms in Action!
We’ve been having fun using the new Heartbeat Rhythms music dictation game in both group classes and private piano lessons the last couple of weeks! For group class, I gave each student a copy of the pulse sheet and had piles of the note value hearts in the middle that they could utilize. I played […]
Heartbeat Rhythms – a hands-on dictation activity to help students understand musical pulse and rhythms
Ever since I came across D’Net Layton’s post on rhythm blocks many years ago, I’ve had it in mind to make a similar rhythm resource for my studio. Wood blocks cut to size were a bit more ambitious and space-consuming than what I wanted to create, but after lots of pondering and experimenting in the […]
Tapping Telephones Rhythm Game is a Hit!
Since I hold a monthly group piano class in my studio, I always love incorporating some kind of game or activity along with performing for each other and learning about music history. At last week’s group class, I dusted off a game that I purchased years ago, but have used sparingly over the years – […]
Free Downloadable Rhythm Cards and Game Idea
One of my studio go-to’s for an easy, educational game for group classes is Team Rhythm Dictation. The students are split into two teams and are given a set of individual rhythmic note cards to use. (Click here to download a free set of individual note cards to use in your studio.) The barlines are […]
