How “strict” are you about your students playing popular music from films, radio, etc. as notated? The piano arrangements are never really identical to the song the student knows, and they naturally play the rhythm they know. Lately I’ve been going through the notated rhythms with them correctly and then giving them permission to play […]
Teaching
A Week of Year-End Evaluations
Eight years ago, I started doing Year-End Evaluations with students and their parents at the last lesson of the spring semester. This has been such a helpful tool! A couple weeks prior to the evaluation, I send home a Student Questionnaire and a Parent Questionnaire. I change the questions a little bit each year based […]
Year of Collaborative Music
Did you know that we are in the midst of the Year of Collaborative Music? It commenced at the March MTNA conference in Albuquerque and will culminate at the MTNA conference in Milwaukee next March. I am really excited about this and am thinking about designing my practice incentive theme around this initiative for next […]
A New Approach to Teaching Thumb Position
At our fifth Briefing Session this year, the theme was “A Galaxy of Theory Concepts for Creative Minds.” Each student had to present a musical concept of their choice. The presentations could be simple or elaborate – basically as creative as the student wanted to be with it. It turned out pretty fun, and I […]
Monday Mailbag – Explaining Time Signatures
I am useless at explaining Cut Time. In fact time signatures in general. I was trying to explain this to a student today and just kept going round and round in circles with the poor girl getting more and more confused. I tried to explain that the bottom number refers to what kind of beat […]
4 Tips for Dealing with Unmotivated Students
Especially this time of year, it seems like a lot of motivation is fizzling out and everyone is ready for a break. I still have some students going strong, but there are definitely a handful that are squeaking by until summer break! That’s why I thought now would be a perfect time to address this […]
