Last weekend, our local association sponsored our annual Music Progressions evaluations. Students are evaluated in performance, keyboard facility, applied theory, rhythm and pulse, sight-reading, written theory, and listening. We call them student evaluations, but in reality we all know that it’s an evaluation for us as teachers, right? Hence, I was inspired to compile this […]
Teaching
Review of Maestro! the Board Game
You may remember that I was so enthralled with the Maestro! game at the MTNA Conference that I purchased it to use with my students. Well, the opportune time came last Thursday when we had our fifth Briefing Session (a.k.a. group class) of the year. We had some extra time at the end of all […]
Monday Mailbag – Helping Students Take Ownership in their Playing
I should start off first be mentioning that I’m 24 yrs old and my student is a married 38 yr old mother of two. She also happens to be a professional singer/dancer/actress locally here in my city. She basically wanted to learn piano so she can accompany her students (she is a director of the […]
Special Book Price for Music Matters Blog Readers
One of the things I discovered (quite to my surprise!) when I connected with people at the MTNA Conference this year is that many of the readers of this blog had formed certain ideas about who I am that are not quite in line with reality. 😉 For example, I found out that quite a […]
Pre-Piano Camp Ideas!
In addition to offering a regular summer piano camp for my students this year, like I’ve done for the past several years, I’m also planning to offer a pre-piano camp for 3-5 year olds. I’ve taught preschool music classes in a co-op setting before, but haven’t ever offered such a camp here in my studio. […]
Melodic Minor Scale Fingering Diagram Added
For those who missed it, I updated last week’s Free Piano Scale Fingering Diagrams post to include the melodic minor scales. Originally I didn’t create melodic minor scale fingering diagrams because I figured there wouldn’t be much demand for them. So much for that theory! Based on the feedback and requests I’ve received, I went […]
