Category: Resources

improving as a teacher, Resources, Technology

Readers, Introduce Yourself! …on the Color In My Piano facebook page

Joy Morin

Get to know the other readers on this blog – please take a moment to introduce yourself on the discussion page of the Color In My Piano facebook page!  There are a few introductions there now, and I’d love to get to know more of you.

To receive blog updates right in your facebook newsfeed, click the “like” button on the facebook page.  It’s a very easy and convenient way to stay updated.  Please give it a try!

Resources, Technology

A Piano with 4 Pedals?!

Joy Morin

Stuart & Sons is a Australian-based company who build hand-crafted pianos.  They are unique pianos for a number of reasons:

What is so special about Stuart & Sons pianos?

  • They have 4 pedals.  The fourth pedal is a second soft pedal, called the dulce pedal.  It brings the hammers’ resting point halfway up to the strings, reducing the intensity of the hammer strike and giving the pianist more control over sound quality and color.
  • They have a “bridge agraffe” string coupling device, which “enables the string when struck by the hammer to vibrate vertically and for a longer duration than in conventional piano designs.”  This allows the piano to have an unusual clarity especially in the low and high registers, and to have better dynamic and sustaining qualities.  Read this article for a more information. January 2018 update: “An Australian applied mathematician, Dr. Bob Anderson, was asked to look at the bridge agraffe. The first thing he noticed was that the equations defining the vibration of strings were deficient in that they did not take not account the changing length and tension of the string throughout each cycle. He won an international award for his revision of the mathematics of vibrating strings. He then showed that the conventional pinning of the strings resulted in elliptical polarisation of the vibrating string. This resulted in a rapid decay, a poor sustain, wasted energy in the string’s ending up vibrating horizontally instead of vertically, and non-harmonic DISTORTION of the note. (Harmonic distortion is fine, non-harmonic distortion is noise).” (credit: Ian Lowery)
  • Stuart & Sons pianos have 97 keys instead of the usual 88.  The outermost keys are both F’s, putting middle C exactly in the middle of keyboard. January 2018 update from Stuart & Sons: “My second point is that the Stuart is now running to 102 notes, and by mid 2018 will be running at 108 notes, which is the limit for the piano. (Any lower is inaudible, although its presence can be FELT. Any higher, the string is too short for the hammer).” (credit: Ian Lowery) Continue reading “A Piano with 4 Pedals?!” →
repertoire / methods, Resources

A New Adult Student Book on the Market: “Returning to the Piano” by Wendy Stevens

Joy Morin

Check out this announcement at the ComposeCreate.com blog: Wendy Stevens has written a new adult piano book entitled: Returning to the Piano: A Refresher Book for Adults.  I often have a hard time deciding what adult method to use with my adult students.  Especially when they aren’t true beginners and have had previous experience with piano, I don’t like putting them through overly method-y books!  In addition, many adult students want to learn pieces with tunes that are familiar to them.  This book looks like it may be a good alternative for those types of situations, or simply as a supplement to an adult method.

Here is the description from the Hal Leonard site:

I just ordered a copy from SheetMusicPlus.com and I can’t wait for it to arrive so I can try out all the arrangements myself!  =)

Composition, Resources

Decorate Your Studio Idea: Bach Invention Manuscripts

Joy Morin

I just discovered these manuscript copies of Bach’s 2-part inventions over at the IMSLP’s Petrucci Music Library.  I always find free pdfs of music scores that I need on their site, but I never realized that they also have pdfs of some hand-written manuscript copies to download as well!  Although this is not Bach’s handwriting, but it is still a remarkable part of history — and looks really cool.  According to the site, this manuscript copy dates from around the 1790s.  Can you imagine having to copy music by hand?  What an art!

While I was so captivated by this manuscript copy, it occurred to me that printing some of these sheets off on acrylic print paper and then framing them would be a great way to decorate the walls of a piano studio!  I think students would really enjoy admiring the hand-written manuscripts, especially if they were working on the same piece.

To download:

Click this link to visit the Bach inventions page.  Scroll down until you see the download with the editor listed as “Peter Gronland” and says “Undated manuscript copy, 1790?”.  As always, be sure to carefully follow the site’s copyright restrictions for your country (in the US, basically all works published before 1923 are in the public domain).

repertoire / methods, Resources

Great Resources for Teachers with Beginner Staff-Readers

Joy Morin

Susan Paradis from the Piano Teacher Resources blog has written has excellent review of the The Perfect Start for Piano by Kevin & Julia Olson, a series of books intended for reinforcing note-reading on the staff for beginners and elementary level students.  They look great – I love that fact that they are designed to work with whatever method books you are using with your student!  To learn all about it, read her review here.  Thanks, Susan!

The Perfect Start for Piano also has a corresponding website, theperfectstartforpiano.com, which provides additional FREE resources for the teacher and student.  Check it out and you will find:

  • a variety of printable flashcards
  • note naming worksheets
  • audio files which correspond with the book
  • and other resources, including practice record sheets, keyboard stickers, and posters to post in the studio.
Announcements, Resources, Reviews

Book Review: The A to Z of Foreign Musical Terms

Joy Morin

Book Review:

Ammer, Christine.  The A to Z of Foreign Musical Terms: From Adagio to Zierlich a Dictionary for Performers and Students. Boston: ECS Publishing, 1989.

Ever try looking up a musical term, only to find that the word or phrase you are looking for is not listed in your musical dictionary?  This has happened to me fairly often…until I bought this book, that is.  Somehow, this slim book has so far always managed to contain definitions for all the terms I’ve needed to look up!

I ordered this book from Amazon.com when a voice professor at my college recommended it to me.  It’s a great resource for students, vocalists, solo pianists, and collaborative pianists – and at about $11, you can’t beat the price.

My rating: 5 stars (out of 5 stars)

Games, Group Classes, Motivation, Music Camps, Music Theory, Resources, Rhythm, Teaching Piano

Group Piano Class Ideas

Joy Morin

I recently came across this great video/podcast on Mario Ajero’s YouTube channel: an interview with pianist and piano pedagogue Dr. Julie Knerr.  Both Maria Ajero and Julie Knerr are graduates from University of Oklahoma’s widely recognized piano pedagogy program.  In this video, Dr. Knerr shares some of her game ideas for her group piano classes — which she holds weekly in addition to her student’s weekly private lessons — to build a variety of musicianship skills.  Check it out!

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EbQDrLwkxo&feature=PlayList&p=F4AF6DA098C0399F&index=0&playnext=1

Most of these activities could be easily modified for use during a private lesson, music camp, studio party, and other settings.  You can visit Dr. Knerr’s website at julieknerrpiano.com.  She has recently been co-writing a new piano method series called Piano Safari (as mentioned back in this post) available by order via PayPal at pianosafari.com.

Be sure to also check out more great podcasts at Mario Ajero’s website, The Piano Podcast.

Early Childhood Music, Resources, Rhythm

Babies and Music

Joy Morin

Check out this interesting news article, reporting about a research study done on babies and their response to rhythm versus speech.  Here’s the summary from another site reporting on the same research:

Human infants are born to dance, researchers report online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Psychologists from the United Kingdom and Finland played an assortment of classical and children’s songs, drumbeats, baby talk, and regular speech for 120 infants ages 5 to 24 months. Speech inspired little motion, but music consistently got the babies into the groove. They moved to music with a clear rhythm and adjusted their movements as the beat varied. And the better the babies matched their motion to the music, the more they smiled. So while it remains a mystery how humans evolved our musical wiring, it’s now clear we enjoy it and always did.  (news.sciencemag.org)

Also see the corresponding video here.

Whether you believe that humans evolved their “musical wiring” or were created with it, this research confirms that humans have some sort of natural inclination towards music, apparent even at the youngest of ages.  It confirms what we as teachers have always known — humans should be developing their musical ability when they are young!

Isn’t it kind of amazing how well those babies in the video have a natural sense of beat?  I wish some of my students could keep a steady beat half as well as the babies in the video!  =D