Studio Business

Recommended: Daniel Patterson’s New Blog

Joy Morin

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I recently connected with an Indiana-based piano teacher named Daniel Patterson who is creating a valuable resource for piano teachers: a site called GrowYourMusicStudio.com. Daniel is dedicated to helping teachers attract quality students and make a comfortable living doing what they love.

I’ve read and reviewed Daniel’s first ebook and I consider it highly recommended reading. Click here for the PDF download: The Piano Teacher’s Ultimate Facebook Guide.

Daniel’s first blog post can be found here. You’ll definitely want to subscribe to the email list so you will be notified about new content.

Be sure to check it out!

Conferences, improving as a teacher, Professional Development

Piano Pedagogy Seminar with Carolyn Miller

Joy Morin

On Saturday, my local MTNA/OhioMTA chapter — the Northwest District OhioMTA — sponsored a piano pedagogy seminar with composer and teacher Carolyn Miller!

It was an honor to have her present for us. Her first session was entitled: “Matching Music to Inspire and Challenge Students.” She shared with us some helpful thoughts about choosing repertoire to suit students and demonstrated for us a variety of her compositions for students. Carolyn’s compositions are published with Willis Music, F.J.H., and others.

20160130_105452 NW OMTA seminar

Next, Carolyn led group discussion on “Why We Teach Music.” This session was particularly encouraging and rejuvenating to us as teachers!

My friend, Susan West, and I helped Carolyn demonstrate a number of her piano duet compositions.

20160130_113440 NW OMTA seminar copy

Partway through the day, we went to a local restaurant and enjoyed fellowship and conversation over lunch. Here is our group photo with Carolyn before lunch.

20160130_114010 NW OMTA seminar copy

During the third session, we learned about Carolyn’s series of books called: “Sportacular Warmups“. The Sportacular Warmups books were created after the example of the A Dozen A Day books (also published by Willis Music), but have a sports theme integrated throughout the exercises in a clever way.

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We wrapped up the day with a masterclass. Four student participants performed pieces written by Carolyn.

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It was a wonderful day. Carolyn was a gracious and engaging speaker. Teachers who attended remarked that they enjoyed the sessions, the information, and the fellowship with other teachers.

Thanks goes to Carolyn Miller and my fellow members of the Northwest District OhioMTA for a successful day!

Reviews

App Review: Musiclock

Joy Morin

Musiclock appI’m excited to write this app review, because it is one of the most well-designed and useful apps I’ve come across lately!

Musiclock is a $2.99 app for iPad and iPhone that provides a variety of backing tracks intended to be used while practicing scales or improvising.

The first step is to select a scale. The scale choices are: major, major pentatonic, minor pentatonic, natural minor, melodic minor, harmonic minor, blues, and dominant bebop.

IMG_5067 Continue reading “App Review: Musiclock” →

seasonal / holiday

Sheet Music Christmas Ornament — Gift Idea for Piano Students

Joy Morin

Christmas is nearing! Today, I’m busy making sheet music ornaments as gifts for my piano students.

I found this idea from this blogger, thanks to Pinterest. Here’s my own take on this sheet music ornament idea.

Materials:

  • Old sheet music paper
  • Jute twine
  • Black pony beads
  • Scissors
  • Hole puncher
  • Ruler

For each ornament, I cut 12 pieces of sheet music into strips measuring 1 inch x 6.5 inches, and then punched holes at each end of the paper. I cut a length of 30 inches of jute twine, folded it in half, knotted it to create a loop, and added beads and knots at various places along with the sheet music (as described in the video). The last step is to gently pull apart the paper around to form a circular shape. I love how it turned out!

There are many ways to vary the ornament: perhaps cutting smaller strips of sheet music, cutting the paper with fancy-edged scissors, using a different type of bead, etc.

Thanks for reading.

repertoire / methods, Videos

Christmas Piano Duet Recommendations

Joy Morin

Hello, friends!

My piano teacher friend, Susan West, and I have been busy practicing a selection of Christmas duets in order to perform them for a handful of local events during this December. Check out our favorite duet books below!

2877961Here is the list of piano duet books mentioned in the video:

Do you have Christmas duet recommendations for us to consider for next year? Please leave a comment below!

Reviews, Videos

Teaching Tool Review: Wright Way Note Finder

Joy Morin

wright way note finderWhen I am teaching piano, one of the teaching tools I use frequently is the Wright Way Note Finder (find it on Amazon). I love this tool because it is useful for building a stronger sense of staff-to-keyboard correlation in students in just a few minutes’ time during lessons.

Watch the video below to learn more about how I use the Wright Way Note Finder during lessons. In this video, I also describe what I consider to be the four steps that our minds go through when decoding music on the staff during sight-reading:

  1. Recognizing the note’s location on the staff (e.g., treble clef line #2).
  2. Audiating (hearing in your mind’s ear) the approximate pitch (how high/low is this sound?).
  3. Correlating the note to a specific key location on the keyboard (e.g., the G above Middle C).
  4. Knowing the name of the pitch (e.g., G or sol). This step is not nearly as important as the other three steps; yet, in practice, we and our students tend to overemphasize the importance of the note names. This step is not crucial during sight-reading.

I like to use the Wright Way Note Finder to help the student improve steps 1-3.

Where to find the Wright Way Note Finder and similar tools:

  • The Wright Way Note Finder costs about $12 on Amazon.
  • Alfred Publishing offers a similar tool called the All-In-One Flashcard for about $8. As the video on Alfred’s website shows, the tool is two-sided with letter names printed on one side. And the quarter note can be flipped upside down so that the stem is pointed the proper direction.
  • Slide-A-Note is a similar teaching tool, sold for about $7 at slideanote.com, that shows a sideways printed keyboard for the intent of further building the student’s sense of correlation from staff to keyboard.

Thanks for watching!Wright-Way Note Finger vintage

All past broadcasts are here: ColorInMyPiano.com/live/. To watch future broadcasts live, download the free Periscope app (for iOS or Android), search for @joymorinpiano, and hop online on Mondays at noon Eastern time. Hope to see you next time!

Do you have suggestions about what we could discuss in future Periscopes? Please submit your ideas by clicking here. I appreciate your input!

Conferences

2016 OhioMTA Conference

Joy Morin

OhioMTALogoLast week, I attended the Ohio Music Teachers Association state conference, held November 12-14 in Columbus.

As always, my teaching batteries are recharged after enjoying three days of excellent sessions and wonderful conversation with colleagues. Our OhioMTA conference committee did a fantastic job organizing and running the conference this year.

I’ve created a summary of the conference below, in case you are interested in seeing what our state conference is like! During various sessions of the conference, I used the Periscope app to grab 5-10 minute highlights (those of you already on Periscope might have caught some of those!). Please enjoy watching those clips below.

Warning: Lengthy blog post ahead! 🙂

2015 OhioMTA Conference

THURSDAY November 12, 2015

1:00-1:50 Dr. Cecilia Yuhda and Dr. Ewelina Boczkowska. Chopin’s Mazurkas: A Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration. This session was a great way to kick-off the conference. The two presenters shared all about their collaboration as pianist and musicologist to study the Chopin Mazurkas.

2:00-2:50 Dr. Ya-Liang Chang. You Are Not Alone: Duet Repertoire that Ignites Studio Teaching and Enhances Collaborative Learning. We gained many duet repertoire ideas from this session.

3:30-4:20 Dr. Christopher Durrenberger. Get into the Action: Piano Technology for Pianists and Pedagogues. This session was both entertaining and informative! We learned about five different aspects of the piano action that any pianist can understand and identify issues regarding.

20151112_160728 Continue reading “2016 OhioMTA Conference” →

Studio Business

Productivity Tips for Piano Teachers

Joy Morin

If you are like me, you probably wear many hats: teaching piano, volunteering for local music teachers organizations, balancing family life and work life, etc.. Below are some of the productivity tips I have developed since I started running a piano studio full-time ten years ago.

Tip #1: Maintain Morning Rituals

I find it helpful to maintain a morning routine when possible. I wake up at the same time every day and always start by opening the curtains to let in some natural light, feeding the cats, eating breakfast, and listening to podcasts or audiobooks as I get ready for the day. Following through on my routine helps me feel ready to tackle my to-do list. 

Tip #2: Adapt a System for Getting Things Done

Most of my teaching occurs between the hours of 3:30 and 7:30pm. For the first half of the day, I have to be self-motivated about accomplishing what needs to be done. I find it helpful to begin the workday by deciding what exactly I wish to accomplish that day, and then planning my day around those tasks.

An important aspect of planning my days/weeks and keeping track of tasks and projects is my “Thinking Journal.” A Thinking Journal is my own version of the “Bullet Journal” and the process described in the classic book, Getting Things Done by David Allen.

Here is how it works: 

Continue reading “Productivity Tips for Piano Teachers” →
General

Monday Broadcast: Christmas Chain Piano Studio Project

Joy Morin

005 Piano Studio Christmas ProjectGreetings! During today’s live broadcast via Periscope, I shared a little bit about a studio holiday project that I have been doing for the past two years: building a paper chain to decorate the studio, adding a new chain for every holiday piece that students learn. Preparing for this tradition again this year has made me excited about giving out Christmas music to students this week!

Here is a picture of the chain from last year:

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Watch today’s quick video here, describing the Christmas Chain project:

You can download the free PDF sheet of paper describing the Christmas Chain project here:

  Musical Christmas Chain Project (155.5 KiB, 4,872 hits)

Thanks for watching! Do you have your own holiday traditions for your studio? Please share! I would love to hear about them.

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All past broadcasts are here: ColorInMyPiano.com/live/. To watch future broadcasts live, download the free Periscope app (for iOS or Android), search for @joymorinpiano, and hop online on Mondays at noon Eastern time. Hope to see you next time!

Do you have suggestions about what we could discuss in future Periscopes? Please submit your ideas by clicking here. I appreciate your input!