Color In My Piano » resources / links

April Blog Roundup

joy (admin) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:31:53 +0000

Here’s some blogs I’ve stumbled upon lately…

A Tad Bit Creative is a blog by Chrissa, who blogs about piano teaching among other creative and crafty topics. I love her photography too.

At DenleyMusic.com, Dianna blogs about violin and piano teaching. She has some nice resources and game ideas that she shares on her blog:

At thefameschoolblog.com, Dana runs a blog called “Kids & Keys” where she talks about creative piano teaching and piano parenting:

At the new Made For Music Teachers blog, “Mrs. S” shares some very nice printables she uses with her elementary music classes.

At the Nola Piano Teacher blog, the blogger writes posts about piano teaching, composers, performers, and more:

[Visit April Blog Roundup to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

Music Fonts: The Ultimate Guide

joy (admin) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:35:14 +0000

I’ve been wanting to write a post about using music fonts for a long time. Finally, here it is! If you have been wondering how you can create your own music worksheets/resources, this guide will help you get started.

For my worksheets/materials, I use graphics exported from Finale about 30% of the time, and music fonts the other 70% of the time. The great thing about using music fonts is that anyone can use them, without having to buy an expensive program like Finale. However, using music fonts is a little more complicated than you might think. This post will attempt to demystify the process and point you to some links and resources.

Using Music Fonts

If you own a music engraving software like Finale or Sibelius, then guess what: You already have music fonts on your computer! Using Fontbook (on Mac computers) or “Fonts” in the Control Panel (PCs), you can view all the fonts installed on your computer.

If you don’t have any music fonts on your computer, you can find them online. Then you must download and install them onto your computer. It’s pretty easy to install fonts, but you can find tutorials online that can lead you through the process if you need some help (just Google it).

That is the easy part. Once the music font is installed on your computer, it’s a little bit tricky to figure out where the various notes/symbols are located within the font. If you open a new document in Microsoft Word (or whatever word processing software you use), select a music font, and press some random letters of the alphabet, you will see some of the symbols contained in the font. You can guess and begin to memorize where the various notes/symbols are, but that is time-consuming and somewhat impractical. Besides, many of the characters you might need are not represented by the buttons on your keyboard. For example, the currency symbol for Yen could be the barline. To insert the Yen symbol, normally you have to go to “Insert A Symbol” in Microsoft Word because it’s deep in the font somewhere. So, how do you know where the characters you need are? This is where character maps come in.

Character Maps

For some of the fonts listed below, you will find character maps available to view on the website or as a pdf download. A character map is a chart that shows all the characters of a font, and if you are lucky, where they are all located!

Some computers have built-it character map utilities. Macs have something called the “Character Viewer,” but it is only mildly helpful because it shows font characters by category across all fonts, rather than allowing you to choose one font to view at a time. PC’s have some kind of character map utility built-in too.

You can also buy separate character map utility software. One such example is PopChar (for Mac; pictured at right). Even the free trial version is helpful in getting an idea of what symbols are included in a font. Some character map utilities come with the ability to insert the symbol you click in directly into the document you are working on. This is the most ideal and convenient way to use music fonts.

Music Fonts

Here’s a complete list of available music fonts that I’m aware of. You may be able to find these fonts and their character maps by googling them. Just be sure to follow the copyrights for the fonts you download. For example, if you plan to sell the worksheets/materials you create using any of these music fonts, you first must check that the music font has a commercial-use license. Some of these fonts are free only for personal/educational use.

The fonts in this list with asterisks are the ones I highly recommend. If you know of other music fonts to add to this list, please leave a comment on this post.

Maestro | Maestro is one of the fonts that comes with Finale. It contains a complete set of music symbols. If you download the free Finale Notepad software from their website (yes, in 2012 they decided to make Finale Notepad available again! This is great if you have student interested in composition), you can get a selection of music fonts that way. Here is a guide from the Finale user manual that shows the keystrokes needed for inserting each symbol.
Petrucci | comes with Finale. It’s similar to Maestro, but just has a slightly different look. Also available here.
Engraver | comes with Finale. It’s similar to Maestro and Petrucci. Here is the guide from the Finale user manual that shows the keystrokes needed for inserting each symbol.
Finale Alphanotes | Finale comes with a variety of other special fonts. One of them is Finale Alphanotes, which provides noteheads with letters inside.
Opus | Comes with Sibelius software. This font is similar to the ones above. View the character map here.
Helsinki | Comes with Sibelius software. It’s similar to Opus.
Marl | Another font of music symbols, similar to Maestro. Available here.
Sonata | A font created by Adobe with a large variety of symbols. To use for commercial use, it costs about $29. There’s also Sonata Thin.
Sonora | A font of musc characters by Christian Texier. It’s similar to Maestro. Scroll up on Texier’s website page to see the variety of other advanced fonts he has created for electronic music, quarter-tone music, complex percussion music, etc..
Musical Symbols | Another musical symbols font similar to Maestro.
ShpFltNat Medium | Another musical symbols font. It includes a few symbols that other fonts are missing, like time signatures (nice looking too), crescendo, decrescendo, and scale degrees.
StaffClefPitchesEasy | Matthew Hindson has kindly made his fonts available for free! This font is different from the ones above because it is designed to show notes on the staff. You can’t make chords but you can make short examples of single-note melodies. The noteheads are all filled in with no stems.
*Rhythms | Rhythms is another font by Matthew Hindson. The notes all appear on a straight line, which is perfect for creating rhythms. Time signatures are included too. I highly recommend this font.
*MusiSync | This font is by Robert Allgeyer and is similar to Hindson’s “Rhythms” above, but it contains more symbols. It’s great for creating strings of rhythms. My only regret is that the time signature numbers were nicer-looking. View a semi-complete character map here. This font is commercial-use friendly. I highly recommend this font.
*MusiQwik and MusiQwikB | This pair of fonts is also by Robert Allgeyer. It is great for great simple melodies (no chords) on the staff. It also contains clefs, time signatures, key signatures, and a variety of other staff symbols. According to Robert, “You may use the hyphen (-) key to insert a tiny segment of staff, if alignment of the notes is important. Regular sections of staff are inserted using the equal (=) key. Be sure that word wrapping is turned off, or your staff will break in unexpected locations. This font looks best at 24 point size or larger.” MusiQwikB contains sixteenth notes. I highly recommend this font.
NoteHedz | Another font by Robert Allgeyer. It’s a simple font with the letter names A-G in the noteheads. There are quarters, eighths, and whole notes, but no way to get half notes (as far as I can tell).
Lassus | Like MusiQwik, the notes in this font appear on the staff. There are no time signatures. A partial character map can be viewed here.
Bach and Kodaly | Bach is a very advanced and powerful font, but not so easy to use. Kodaly is a simpler version of Bach, but without noteheads. I haven’t figured out how to use these fonts, but you can check out their website to learn more.
Kodaly (different from the Kodaly font above) | This is a simple font showing the notes on the staff with dotted lines underneath for naming the notes. Also includes traceable notes on the staff, and solfegietto under the staff. It is pictured on the right. There are no time signatures available.

More Resources:

StaffWriter and SingASong | These fonts are available to purchase on a CD from macmusicfonts.com. I haven’t tried them myself, but the fonts look pretty comprehensive and I’ve seen other teachers recommend it.
Here’s a huge list of paid music fonts that can be used in word processing software and are compatible for use with Finale.
A font for notating djembe music!
Paid fonts of the piano keys, for showing fingering, showing chords, or showing names of keys.
A paid font of the neumes used for notation during the 15th – 17th centuries. Very cool!

Good luck with your music font creations, and let me know what you create!

My New Laminator

joy (admin) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 15:47:45 +0000

Just wanted to show off a picture of my new laminator today…

I bought it a couple of weeks ago for $15 at Aldi, believe it or not! At that price, I figured it was worth trying out. I’ve been so happy with it and have been laminating a lot of my games and flashcards.

I am off to NYC for the MTNA conference very soon!! I am very excited. I will be taking off from blogging for most of next week, but when I return I will have lots of conference notes and photos to share! I’m also looking forward to meeting some of the other piano teacher bloggers who are going.

Happy weekend!

[Visit My New Laminator to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

March Blog Roundup

joy (admin) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:03:56 +0000

I haven’t done one of these in awhile! Here’s a roundup of some great blogs you may not have seen before:

The Plucky Pianista – Melody Payne has started a great blog and has already shared some fabulous worksheets!

Susan Johannessen is another piano teacher with a new blog, “Keyboard Magic.” She has some very creative games and activities for students!

Rachel is a string and piano teacher who has also started a new blog: “Studio In A Box!” I love the look of her website:

Joette has a nice studio blog where she shares her students’ activities and accomplishments. Her recent post about floor staff twister looks like fun!

Last, but not least, keep an eye on the new pedagogy website run by the distinguished New School for Music Study in New Jersey. The blog page and “Teaching Videos & Tutorials” page are bound to be a great resource for music teachers in the future!

[Visit March Blog Roundup to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

January Blog Roundup

joy (admin) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:07:29 +0000

Today, I’ve got some blog links to share! Here’s what I’ve stumbled upon recently…

Leah’s “For Love of Piano” blog has moved, gotten a facelift, and a new name! You will now found her blog at MyPianoPlayground.com.

Tim Topham is an Australian pianist & teacher who has a very nice blog at timtopham.com.

Tara is both a piano teacher and a adjunct professor teaching classes in neuroanatomy! Her “Training the Musical Brain” blog provides an interesting, scientific perspective on many issues related to teaching and learning music.

At the Teaching Children Music blog, Tamsyn shares printables and other projects:

Natalie’s Music Matters Blog has also gotten a complete redesign! Check it out the new look if you haven’t already.

[Visit January Blog Roundup to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

Recent Purchases: Scale Blocks & A Technique Monkey

joy (admin) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:19:14 +0000

I don’t know about you, but I’m always on the lookout for creative and inexpensive items for my teaching. The dollar store is one of my favorite places to go!

In the craft aisle at Dollar Tree right now, there are packages of foam cubes, as shown in the picture. I’ve always wanted to make scale blocks like Natalie Wickham’s, but have never got around to buying the wood blocks and paint. These foam cubes seem like a pretty good alternative, although they may not last as long I suppose. On the upside, it doesn’t take long to write the alphabet letters on these little cubes with a marker! I am going to go back to buy a couple more packages, so I can make a nice set of scale blocks using the orange colored cubes.

With the rest of the colors, I am going to make rhythm dice, Major/minor/augmented/dimished dice, time signature dice, and whatever else I can come up with. I’m sure they will be useful for games down the road!

Now, you may be wondering about the “technique monkey” mentioned in the title of this post. Well, I can’t claim this idea as my own either. Irina Gorin uses a similar monkey with her students, to teach them about arm weight.

This little friend (yes, also from the dollar store) has velcro on his paws, so you can wrap the monkey around the student’s wrist and have them swing the monkey for a ride with loose, weighty arms. I always find teaching basic piano technique to young ages pretty challenging, so I’m happy to have any kind of prop that may help! Once the student has experienced an awareness of arm weight away from the piano, they can hopefully begin to transfer the same feeling over to when they are at the piano. :)

[Visit Recent Purchases: Scale Blocks & A Technique Monkey to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

September Blog Roundup

joy (admin) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 13:44:17 +0000

It’s not September anymore, but here’s a list of what’s new to me around the blogosphere!

Accidental Piano Teacher | Janice journals about her piano teaching experiences.

PianoMother.com blog | Yoke Wong asked me to include her blog, too – she blogs about tips and advice for self-learning adult students, and more:

An Eclectic Piano Teaching Experience | Dustin sent me an email recently with the link to his new piano teaching blog. In his own words, it’s “a site designed to break the mold of the conservative piano instructor.”

[Visit September Blog Roundup to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

August Blog Roundup

joy (admin) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 13:04:42 +0000

Here’s what’s new to me in the blogosphere! I’m always amazed at how many resources there are on the web. What would we ever do without the internet?!

Busy B’s Piano Studio | Gabriele has a lovely blog where she discusses various piano teaching topics:

Repertoire Review blog & podcast | Luke D. Bartolomeo reviews repertoire books and talks/writes about them on his website. What a great resource! It’s a great way to become familiar with various supplemental materials for students.

Notes About Music Notes blog | Lesa blogs about music among her other interests, and shares lots of nice photos too.

3-D Piano with Frank Karphoff blog | The 3-D Piano with Frank Karphoff dvd is a great resource which won the 2011 MTNA Frances Clark Keyboard Pedagogy Award. Their webpage includes a blog with well-written articles you may be interested in checking out!

[Visit August Blog Roundup to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

MiniMusic Kit for Early Childhood Music Classes

joy (admin) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 02:36:08 +0000

In my last post, I mentioned the MiniMusic kit by Paula Manwaring (Kjos Publishing) that I purchased while I was at the NCKP conference. The photos and description of this curriculum on the Kjos Publishing website do not do it justice! So I decided to show you some photos I took myself. I think many of the materials included in the kit are great resources for group lessons and games with students of ANY age.

Here’s a list of what is included:

Teacher Handbook with 9 months worth of weekly lesson plans.
Student Workbook (you can buy these individually for your students from the Kjos website)
Staff/keyboard scarf
Music notes printed on transparency sheets (to be cut out and used on the scarf staff)
2-sided Bingo sheets: music symbols or musical instruments.
Plastic markers for the staff and the Bingo sheets
Puppet friends (to be cut out and glued on wooden craft sticks)
6 different kinds of flashcards, all printed on card stock paper and laminated.

Here’s a peek at what the Teacher Handbook and Student Workbook look like inside:

And here’s a close-up of the two-sided staff/keyboard scarf. It’s machine washable!

Here’s a picture of all the flashcards. They are all printed on card stock and laminated.

Rhythm Cards
Interval Cards
Key Cards
Note/Rest Value Cards
Instrument Cards
Musical Alphabet Cards

What sold me is that this is a flexible curriculum. I chatted with Paula at the Kjos booth after the showcase that morning, and she encouraged me to modify the lesson plans in any way I choose. As is, the lesson plans are quite theory-heavy, and personally I’d like to begin with plenty of movement and listening activities before jumping into the theory right off the bat. But, to be far, I haven’t looked at the lesson plans in great detail yet. I’m just so pleased to have found a curriculum that I can completely customize to my teaching style, needs, and goals! I’m really looking forward to seeing how this works with my students. :)

[Visit MiniMusic Kit for Early Childhood Music Classes to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

July Blog Roundup

joy (admin) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 11:18:40 +0000

Here’s what’s new (to me) in the blogosphere this month!

Pianimation | Jennifer Fink has moved her previous jenspianostudio.wordpress.com to pianimation.com! Now you can find her posts and printables all in one place!

Lacy’s Music Study Studio blog | Lacy Range shares some creative ideas she uses in her studio.

Awkward Classical Music Photos blog | I find this blog to be hilarious!

Piano and Life | a blog by Edelir Garza, a piano instructor in Texas who is recently getting his studio set up in a new commercial location.

Studio Helper Blog | “Studio Helper” is a resource similar to “Music Teachers Helper,” but it’s intended for larger studios with multiple teachers. Just like Music Teachers Helper blog, Studio Helper has its own blog too!

Happy reading!

[Visit July Blog Roundup to view the original blog post at Color In My Piano.]

Color In My Piano » resources / links

April Blog Roundup

Related Posts:

Music Fonts: The Ultimate Guide

Using Music Fonts

Character Maps

Music Fonts

Related Posts:

My New Laminator

Related Posts:

March Blog Roundup

Related Posts:

January Blog Roundup

Related Posts:

Recent Purchases: Scale Blocks & A Technique Monkey

Related Posts:

September Blog Roundup

Related Posts:

August Blog Roundup

Related Posts:

MiniMusic Kit for Early Childhood Music Classes

Related Posts:

July Blog Roundup

Related Posts: