What do you do in your first interview with a student? Check out this Student Interviews post for an overview of what I include in Student Interviews and for free interview questionnaires that you can download and use in your studio. In a nutshell, though, here are the main things that I aim to accomplish […]
Teaching
Monday Mailbag – Jazz and Pop Music
Yes, I know it’s not Monday, but I have a backlog of questions, so I thought I would take a week to try to catch up a bit! What do you think about jazz music and popular music? Do you use it in your studio? Honestly, it depends a lot on the student. I don’t […]
Intervals by Ear
Have you seen the Create Your Own Interval Examples page on the EarMaster website? What a fabulous resource! Our Music Progressions evaluations are in April each year, so I’ve been assigning several of my students to work on specific ear training exercises at different websites. This is with the hope that maybe they won’t all […]
Monday Mailbag – Duets with Students
When you do an ensemble recital, with duets, how do you work with the students in their individual lessons? Do they each practice their parts separately, then get together a few times to work together? Do you play the other duet part with each of them so they know what it sounds like? I would […]
Game: Chord-Building!
For this game, I just used three dice and three game markers. One die had Major, minor, augmented, and diminished on various sides, another die was just a 9-sided number die, and the final die had Root Position, 1st Inversion, 2nd Inversion on varying sides. The student rolled the three dice and the built the […]
Game: Interval Grab
This is the game that I used all last week and everyone loved it! Here are step-by-step instructions for how we played Interval Grab: 1. Dump out a bunch of scale blocks on the piano fallboard (or a table) and place a bell within reach of the student. 2. Instruct the student that you will […]
