Is everyone else in the midst of Christmas music and preparations for Christmas recitals? Somehow it snuck up on me this year, so I didn’t get the recital selections to all my students until last week. Gulp! I hope they are motivated to work really hard between now and the recital to get them learned […]
Teaching
Monday Mailbag – Finding Music
You seem to have plentiful sources of repertoire at your fingertips. I am having a hard time finding good supplemental music for my small, beginning studio. The closest music store is about an hour away, so I rely heavily on internet searching and shopping. However, I find it difficult to know the level of the […]
For all those who despise sight-reading…
I wish all of my students who are resistant to sight-reading would read this excellent article by Derek Polischuk, of the Michigan State Piano Pedagogy Blog: Musical Understanding through Sight Reading. At any given time, I have a handful of students who are naturally very musical and have a good ear for music, but lack […]
Monday Mailbag – Game Idea Resources
Where do you get your ideas for your games? Here, there, and everywhere! Isn’t that helpful? 🙂 Seriously, I’ve been accumulated game ideas and books with game and activity ideas for almost 15 years. I have a huge collection of idea books that I reference if I need some inspiration for new games. Some of […]
Lots of Free Music!
Rebecca W. just alerted me recently to this fabulous Musopen website! Have you seen it yet? They have an enormous selection of music (audio) and sheet music that can be accessed for free, played from the site, downloaded, and embedded into other websites. In fact, as I type this, I am enjoying listening to a […]
Scale Labels
One of my favorite new tools to use with students are these fabulous keyboard labels that Susan Paradis, of the Piano Teacher Resources blog, created. I’ve started sticking one or more of these labels in the student’s assignment book and having them say the whole-step half-step pattern and place X’s on the corresponding keys. In […]
