Our second day of piano camp arrived, and with it 8 pairs of little feet scurrying to the studio ready for another adventure! One of the moms told me that she asked her boys yesterday what they thought (this was their first piano camp to attend), and her older one exclaimed, “It was much better […]
Group Class Ideas
Piano Camp Day One – To London with Handel and His Messiah
It’s one of our favorite weeks of the year – piano camp! We are continuing with our Piano Expeditions themes, this year To London with Handel and His Messiah. Here are a few highlights from our first day: Day One supplies are ready to go! We’ll be using several of the new printable full-sized piano […]
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 […]
Free Full-Sized Piano Keyboard
In preparing for piano camp this year, I searched far and wide to find a full-sized piano keyboard that I could use for some music theory games and activities. The few options that I found were much more than I wanted to pay, so I decided to see if I could create a simple printable […]
Review of Extreme Heterophony by John Pitts
When composer John Pitts contacted me about reviewing his newest book, Extreme Heterophony: a study in javanese gamelan, I was intrigued for two reasons. Not, mind you, because I had any idea what it was about! But because, firstly, there has been an increased effort in the music education community to explore more diversity in […]
