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Being able to read notes on the staff intervallically is crucial for sight-reading. I like to tell my students that reading music is at least 80% interval reading, and only 20% note identification. To help my students learn to identify intervals quickly upon sight, I created the Ice Cream Interval game. Continue reading “Ice Cream Interval game”
Even from the beginning, the pieces in most modern piano method books require the student to move around the keyboard quite a bit. Older piano methods (at least, the ones that utilize the Middle C reading approach) require the student to stay around the middle of the piano during the entire first level, or even further in some cases. I’m glad modern methods require the student to move around the keyboard, because this because it helps student become familiar and comfortable with the whole keyboard from day one instead of inadvertently teaching the student that anything away from the middle of the piano is “hard.”
I’ve had parents notice and comment on this difference between older and newer methods. They are surprised when their student needs to use the whole keyboard at their first lesson, because when they took lessons as a child, they remember playing around Middle C and never venturing to the extreme ends of the keyboard.
As an example: The first four pieces in the Primer Level of the Faber Lesson Book require the student to play a simple pattern on the black key group of 2 or 3, and then to repeat the pattern twice, moving up an octave each time. Other pieces throughout the series require students to play notes up or down an octave, especially at the end of the piece. Other method books take a similar approach.
Often, to the student, making those leaps across the piano is the most challenging aspect of a piece. They sometimes need to stop to think about where their hand needs to go. Even if they know where their hand needs to go, they still might take some extra time searching the keyboard with their fingers to put the correct finger on the correct key. This, of course, disrupts the rhythm of the piece.
How can we help students solve this problem? Continue reading “Teaching Tip: Leaping Across on the Keyboard”
“Of all the arts, great music is the art to raise the soul above all earthly storms.”
— Charles Godfrey Leland
Every Wednesday brings Words of Wisdom here at the Color in my Piano blog in the form of a musical quote or joke, intended to bring inspiration or humor to the middle of your week. Have suggestions? Send me a message here.
Do you have any 4×6 photo frames lying around? It’s time to put one to good use!
This do-it-yourself project will help remind your students about upcoming studio events each time they come for their piano lesson. 🙂
Materials:
Recital Countdown (1.3 MiB, 5,621 hits)
Directions: Design a background (or print the one I’ve created), insert it into a 4×6 photo frame, write the event & countdown number on the glass with a dry erase marker, and place your new Recital Countdown on/near your piano!
Enjoy! 🙂
Have you heard about International Week of the Piano Geek, yet?
Starting next week on Monday, the folks behind TeachPianoToday.com are holding a fun week of emails, giveaways, and more. Visit pianogeekweek.com to learn more and to subscribe to the email list to get the updates.
Color In My Piano will be making an appearance, and sponsoring a giveaway, too. You won’t want to miss this, so head on over and sign up!
Last weekend, my hubby and I took a little trip to my hometown in Michigan to visit family. I also had the opportunity to meet up with a fellow piano teacher in Grand Rapids — Jody Deems-McCarger. I connected with Jody last fall through my blog, and then soon after had the opportunity to meet her in person when I gave a presentation to the local MTNA chapter in Grand Rapids last October.
Jody invited me over to chat and see her studio, so I took her up on her offer. I thought you might be as inspired as I was after seeing her charming studio, so I have some photos to share!
When Jody and her husband bought their home, behind their home was a stained-glass artist’s studio. After renovations, it became “The Piano Cottage:”
“I compose music as a tree produces apples.”
— Camille Saint-Saens
Every Wednesday brings Words of Wisdom here at the Color in my Piano blog in the form of a musical quote or joke, intended to bring inspiration or humor to the middle of your week. Have suggestions? Send me a message here.
I was running low on business cards, so I ordered some new ones a couple weeks ago. I decided to try my hand at a little bit of graphic design and make the cards myself in Photoshop Elements. I’ve ordered from Moo.com in the past and have been very pleased with the quality, so I decided to order from them again. They have a handy photoshop template that you can download to help with the process of designing your own business cards. They also have lots of pre-designed templates to choose from.
Here is the result of my efforts:
The colorful design is to give out as an accompanist or when attending conferences with other teachers. The second design is for my piano studio, to give to students/parents.
The QR codes on the back of the cards lead to my websites. I generated them for free via this website.
If you’d like to order cards from Moo.com, you can use this link which will give me referral credit and give you 10% off your first order. The cards from Moo aren’t cheap, but the quality definitely shows: the paper is nice and thick, and you’ll get two-sided cards. I’m a happy customer! 🙂
Thank you to all those who entered the PractizPal giveaway last week and shared an idea for motivating students to practice! You can check out all the responses here.
And now to announce the randomly drawn winner…
Congrats to:
Orlia! Please watch your inbox for an email from me.
“What the English like is something that they can beat time to, something that hits them straight on the drum of the ear.”
– George Frederic Handel
Every Wednesday brings Words of Wisdom here at the Color in my Piano blog in the form of a musical quote or joke, intended to bring inspiration or humor to the middle of your week. Have suggestions? Send me a message here.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve shared a couple of video tutorials about how to create rhythm worksheets using two rhythm music fonts and how to create other types of music worksheets using two other music fonts for putting notes on the staff.
If you watched either video, you probably saw how wonderfully easy it is to use the rhythm fonts. You probably also saw, in the second video, that the non-rhythm fonts are more challenging to use and rather limiting in what they can do.
I have a solution. 🙂
To make the worksheet-making-process a little bit easier, I recently decided to create photo files (in this case, png files) of various music symbols. Clicking and dragging photo files into a worksheet is much easier than inserting a text box, calling up the font you need, and then locating the music symbol from with the font’s character map. Hooray!
I’m sharing this set of png files for FREE, and I’ve also made another video tutorial about how to get started using them.
To get started, you’ll need to download and unarchive the zip file containing the individual png files on the Printables > Worksheets page. Then, be sure to save the folder of png files to a safe place on your computer so you can use them for years to come. Then, using Microsoft Publisher (or a similar program), you are ready to start creating!
***Music Symbol PNG Files - for Making Worksheets*** (698.9 KiB, 92,983 hits)
I hope this video helps you get started, but please do let me know if you have other questions. I can’t wait to see what worksheets and other creations you will be able to create using those png files!
Copyright Information: These images are released under a Creative Commons copyright, allowing users to create and sell their own projects that make use of these images. However, the image files themselves should not be freely distributed or sold to others. Instead, please direct others to download the files directly from ColorInMyPiano.com. Thanks!
To follow up on my post from last week about my last group class (we call them “Piano Parties”), I wanted to share about the other two activities we did.
We started with this fun triad worksheet from Pianimation.com. This worksheet was a good reinforcement about what they learned from playing their major five-finger patterns, and was a good preparation for playing the 12-Bar Blues as a duet (as described in the previously-mentioned post).
Before playing the 12-Bar Blues, though, I had them playing the Happy Birthday song as a duet. I created a simple arrangement of the melody in Finale, with the chord symbols included above the staff.
I assigned the younger student to play the melody as written in the treble range of the keyboard, and instructed the other student to create a simple accompaniment by reading the chord symbols.
This was an excellent exercise in learning how to listen to each other! 🙂
I found out later that two of my students played the Happy Birthday duet for an older sibling’s birthday, a couple days later. What good timing! I think it is great for students to be able to play basic tunes like the Happy Birthday song for their families.
I also wrote an easy arrangement of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” but we didn’t have time to use it that day. You can download both arrangements as free pdfs on the Printables > Sheet Music page.
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