Today, I’m sharing a review of a tool I have found extremely useful as a piano teacher and blogger over the past couple of months: a MagSafe tripod for my iPhone. I have found it SO useful, in fact, that I wish I had ordered one much sooner!
Read on to learn more and/or watch my short video review below.
Continue reading “Review: MagSafe Tripod Stand for iPhone”
I’m so pleased to announce that my Composition & Improvisation Prompts for Piano, previously available in Studio-Licensed eBook form, is now available in hardcopy!
Prompts for Piano provides a fun, easy way to guide beginner and elementary students to make their own music. Each of the 20 prompts provides inspiration and direction for the student to embark on a series of creative projects.
Continue reading “NEWLY RELEASED: Composition & Improvisation Prompts for Piano, Now Available in Hardcopy”
If you’ve been around my blog lately, you’ve probably heard me talk about Notion — my favorite online tool ever for managing my business and life.
I’m not alone in being excited about Notion. Notion is taking the world by storm, thanks to its unique, lego-like format allowing you to create pages exactly the way you want — whether simple or complex.
As Notion’s website states: “Notion is a single space where you can think, write, and plan. Capture thoughts, manage projects, or even run an entire company — and do it exactly the way you want.”
In this article, I’ll share 40 ways music professionals can utilize Notion. Without further ado, here’s my list.
Continue reading “40 Ways to Use Notion as a Music Professional”
I just updated one of the studio business forms from my Printables page for the 2023-24 school year. It is called the Lesson Attendance & Payment Sheet PDF. Even though I don’t personally use this sheet myself anymore (I now charge a monthly flat tuition rate), every year I receive requests from teachers asking if I would please update it for the upcoming school year. And I’m happy to do so!
Continue reading “Freebie: Lesson Attendance Sheet Updated for 2024-25”
This past weekend, I hosted two informal summer recitals for my students. They both went well, and I was pleased with how our “creativity” themed focus played out.
Here’s a few photos and reflections on how it went.
Continue reading “Summer 2024 Recitals: A Crescendo of Creativity”Hello, readers!
Happy Monday to you!
It was September of 2008, and I was an undergraduate college student at Hope College (Holland, Michigan) at the beginning of my senior year as a piano performance major.
One day, the professor of one of my classes announced that a guest by the name of Dr. Edwin E. Gordon would be visiting campus for a few days. Dr. Gordon was to deliver a lecture, lead a Saturday workshop, and join our class to tell us about his research and theories regarding music learning.
Continue reading “My First Encounter with Dr. Edwin E. Gordon and his Music Learning Theory (MLT)”
Hello friends,
Recently, I have received a handful of email inquiries asking for updates about my 2024 Piano Teacher Retreat. So I thought I should at least send out a quick blog post here now that the details are finally coming together!
(By the way, in case you want to learn more about my past retreats, here’s a recap post about the 2023 Piano Teacher Retreat you can check out!)
I’m pleased to announce the dates for my 2024 retreat:
Both retreat offerings will be held here in the Southeast Michigan area – just outside the wonderful town of Ann Arbor and about a 30- to 45-minute-drive from the Detroit Airport.
Every year, I choose a theme for my retreat — something I’m interested and passionate about and think would make a great topic for us to explore in large and small group discussions and activities. Here is this year’s theme:
EXPLORING IMPROVISATION AND COMPOSITION IN PIANO LESSONS
Together, let’s strive to expand the role of creativity in the piano lessons we teach. During this retreat, we’ll explore ways to guide young pianists to compose their own pieces, make their own improvisational changes to existing pieces, and create new music using what they know — including rhythm patterns, tonal patterns, and/or harmonic progressions. During group discussion and activities with fellow piano teachers, you can expect to engage in important conversations about creativity and MLT (Music Learning Theory), discover composition/improvisation resources your students will enjoy, and experience the joy of creativity in a variety of forms for yourself!
If you are looking for a professional development opportunity for this summer, I hope you’ll consider my retreat. This unique, small-group getaway experience is designed in every way to rejuvenate you and your teaching.
I will be sending out the event details to my separate “retreat” email list (so that I don’t spam everyone here). If you’d like to learn more, please join with your email address HERE. I’m very excited to share the full details with you very soon!
Would love to spend time with YOU this summer!
As my friend Amy Chaplin and I prepare for our upcoming online workshop about how to use Notion (a productivity/note-taking app we are both fans of), we’ve been receiving great questions from piano teachers about Notion. Today, I thought I would answer some of those questions and also share more specifics about how I use Notion to manage my piano studio.
An aside: I hope I’m not bombarding you with too much info about Notion! I think you’ll find this blog post interesting, but if not, rest assured I have content on other topics coming down the pipeline soon. 🙂
Q: Is Notion specifically for music teachers/professionals?
A: No, Notion is not music-specific. It’s a general productivity/note-taking app that is taking the world by storm right now. Tons of people are getting into it and are finding great ways to use it.
Notion is part of the “no-code movement” — an effort to make it possible to build your own interactive pages, systems, or software without having to know computer programming. The basics of Notion are easy to learn. And over time, you can continue to learn and “grow into” it. It’s kind of like building with Legos: once you know what building blocks you have, you can build whatever you desire.
During our workshop, Amy and I are excited to share our enthusiasm for Notion and help other piano teachers find ways it can support our unique work as independent teachers and business owners.
Q: Can Notion take the place of studio management software?
A: Yes and no. Notion can do a lot of things, but it cannot do things like invoicing or collecting tuition payments, for example. You would need other platforms for those functions.
Personally, I have never used an all-in-one program such as My Music Staff or Duet Partner (although I do think they are good services). Instead, I use a variety of services for managing my studio business. For example, my students pay a flat rate tuition payment automatically each month using Coinhop. This eliminates the task of manual invoicing. For keeping track of my teaching schedule, I use Google Calendar. To keep track of student information and much more, I use Notion (more on this shortly).
Continue reading “Your Qs Answered, and How I Use Notion to Manage My Piano Studio”
Just a brief note from me today — I wanted to point you a Piano Pantry podcast episode that just dropped from my pal, Amy Chaplin. In this episode, Amy goes on a deep-dive comparing the two productivity apps, Evernote and Notion.
If you know Amy at all, you know that organization is a strength and passion of hers. She’s been a longtime user of Evernote as a tool to capture notes, ideas, and documents. As she describes in her podcast episode, when Notion came on her radar, however, she moved the majority of her Evernote content over to the Notion. In this episode, she also points out the main differences between Evernote and Notion and WHY she decided to make the switch. She also lists examples of how she uses Notion in her daily life.
Take a listen to Amy’s Evernote vs Notion episode (or read the transcript) HERE. And feel free to check out more episodes from her Piano Pantry podcast HERE.
Have a great weekend, friends!
PS: In case you missed it — I published my in-depth Introduction to Notion blog post last week. And Amy and I are working hard right now to prepare a special event: a two-day, online workshop where we help you build your own centralized digital workspace in Notion as a piano teacher. It’ll be held Friday, March 8 and Saturday, March 9, 2024, from 10:30am to 1:30pm Eastern each day. We are planning an AWESOME event with lots of bonus materials and Notion templates that you won’t want to miss. Please mark your calendar, and stay tuned for registration info soon!
Do you find yourself using paper LESS and using apps MORE when managing your to-dos and projects?
I know I do! Although there are a few areas of life where I prefer paper, most of the time I prefer keeping things digital.
In fact, I’ll admit I’m a little bit of a nerd when it comes to following what new apps or platforms are available in the productivity and note-taking space. I find it fun to see what each one has to offer, and if it looks interesting enough I might even take it for a test drive.
In 2021, I revisited a platform called Notion and was blown away with its capabilities. I downloaded a few of their free page templates and started customizing them to my own needs, and I’ve been hooked ever since.
Notion has become my go-to hub for keeping track of almost anything in my life, both personal and professional. For me, it has replaced other tools such as Apple Notes, Evernote, Trello, Airtable databases, and even Google Docs/Sheets/Forms in many cases. Notion is simple to use, yet can be incredibly powerful, flexible, and customizable.
In this blog post, I’ll tell you why you might want to give Notion a try, what it can do for you, and how you can get started with it. Perhaps Notion will become an all-in-one place for you to keep your life organized, as it has for me!
Continue reading “An Introduction to Notion — A Customizable Digital Workspace to Organize Everything in Your Life”
As promised in my recent blog post about organizing a Silent Film Recital for your piano students, today I’m sharing a few printables/templates I created for my Silent Film Recital.
Here’s what I’ll share:
Before I get into it, I should let you know that these templates were all created using Canva.com — my favorite resource for creating graphics or documents (e.g., worksheets, images for blog/social media, and much more). To access the templates linked below and edit them for your own use, you will need to create a free account with Canva.
If you haven’t used Canva before, you might be thanking me later for introducing you to it. It’s a fantastic resource for creating attractive documents and images for whatever purpose you might have in mind. Many of the graphic elements at your fingertips in Canva are free to use, but you can also purchase premium elements very affordably (think, ~$1 each) if you want to. (BTW, if you use my referral link to set up your free Canva account, you’ll earn a Canva Credit to get one premium item for free!)
Without further ado, let’s get into it!
Continue reading “NEW: Printables for Your Silent Film Recital”Your Cart is Empty
