Tim Topham recently wrote a fabulous article that presents 4 Tips for Teaching Beginner Technique to piano students. He outlines the importance of non-legato touch, emphasizes forming a naturally curved hand, discusses naming musical gestures, and describes rotating the wrist. These closely parallel some of the technique principles I’ve discovered over the years and incorporate […]
Free Resources
32 Free Folk Songs and Popular Tunes for Easy Piano
One area of particular interest for me is folk songs from different countries. Especially when I’m putting together the Piano Expeditions piano camp curriculum, I enjoy trying to find folk songs from the country we’re “visiting” and see if they can be adapted for use in our week of piano camp. I was recently checking […]
Anytune App
At a recent Dennis Alexander workshop sponsored by our local music teachers association, Dennis mentioned that Anytune app. Maybe I’ve been living under a rock when it comes to new apps, but I had never heard of this one, and boy, have I been missing out! Anytune is a free app that enables you to […]
A Collection of Free Music Manuscript or Staff Paper
When I was perusing the Virtual Sheet Music website the other day, I came across their section of free resources for music teachers and noticed that they have a music manuscript file that you can adjust and print in either landscape or portrait mode with your specified number of staves. Since I rarely use theory […]
Huge Free Multimedia Library of Piano Repertoire Performances
In the spring piano repertoire sampler from Kjos Publishing I noticed a link to their Multimedia Library. I was thrilled to discover that they have a HUGE collection of piano repertoire recordings for most of the books in their library. The model performance recordings are by Diane Hidy and would be a fabulous reference to […]
Rediscovering Free Piano Sheet Music at Virtual Sheet Music
I just downloaded a 36-page Virtual Sheet Music edition of Schubert’s Two Marches, Op. 121 for piano duet. For free! It’s one of the two featured free music downloads that Virtual Sheet Music is offering this month. I discovered that they offer two new free downloads every two weeks. Definitely have that page bookmarked now! […]
