App Review: Petronome for iPhone/iPad (FREE, or pay $0.99 to remove ads and add additional “pets”).
Petronome is just what is sounds like: a pet + a metronome. 🙂 It is a fun app to use for rhythm activities with preschoolers or any young beginner student. (Thanks goes to blog reader Elaine for letting me know about this app!) Continue reading “App Review: Petronome”
Piano teacher Patti Bennett from Georgia came up with an awesome way to use the music keys printable I created back in 2013 (see this post). She kindly agreed to let me post her photos and details about her incentive idea today!
Patti has her students participate in Piano Guild Auditions in May, so she always has a big scale push beginning in January. This year, she was inspired to use the keys printable to create an entire incentive program to get her students enthused about learning their scales, cadences and arpeggios following the Guild requirements.
Patti started by preparing packets of the keys for each student, cutting them out and placing them in Ziploc snack bags with their names. There are five little bins for the major keys: one for one octave (white paper), one for two octave (beige paper), one for three octave (blue), one for four octave (red). She also printed out sets for the minor keys.
She also created her own additional key cards for 10 hours of practice and for 5 pieces memorized.
As students master their scales and more by memory, they go to the bins, grab out their packet, locate the key and put it on their key ring on this bulletin board. Patti says that the parents have been coming over as well, excited to watch this part.
Patti says that everyone is all smiles and eager to work on scales, as opposed to saying “do I have to work on scales”, or “I forgot to practice my scales” (sure you did) or whatever other excuse.
What a great way to inspire everyone to work hard on those scales and more! 😉 Great job and thanks for sharing, Patti!
“I do not teach children. I give them joy.”
— Isadora Duncan
Feel free to download and share this quote or image.
App Review: 
Piano Maestro for *iPad only.* FREE and paid accounts available for teachers. Students who are connected to a teacher account have available to content for free.
I’ve been meaning to write this review for a long time. I wouldn’t surprise me if you’ve already heard all about the Piano Maestro app for iPad!
If you are not already familiar with Piano Maestro, here’s how I would sum it up: Piano Maestro is an app for iPad that provides music for the student to play, listens to the student’s acoustic piano using the iPad’s microphone (no wires required, although if you prefer to hook it up to a keyboard with headphones, you can), and evaluates the student’s playing based on note accuracy and rhythm accuracy. The student’s progress is saved over time and points are awarded, essentially “gamifying” the experience. The developer, JoyTunes, is a team dedicated to piano education and listening to feedback from teachers.
Watch this 30-second video to see Piano Maestro in action:
When student accounts are connected to the teacher’s account, students have the flexibility of using their account via the teacher’s iPad during their weekly lessons or they can use their own iPad at home.
Piano Maestro has the potential to be a game-changer in your studio, depending on how you decide to incorporate it into your teaching. Let’s first talk about the kinds of pieces available for students to learn in Piano Maestro. Continue reading “iPad App Review: Piano Maestro”
As a piano teacher, you have probably been in the situation where you felt that using your favorite traditional piano method might not be the best choice for a particular new student’s situation.
For example, perhaps you have a new student who already has experience reading music from school or band. Or an older beginner with a great ear who is largely self-taught. Or an adult student who is returning to piano lessons after a number of years. Or perhaps you have an average-age beginner who isn’t thriving in their method books and would benefit from additional supplement.
For those special situations, it is useful to be familiar with some method book alternatives, which I fondly refer to as “un-methods.” Un-methods are useful for creating structure in weekly piano assignments while maintaining the flexibility to round out the student’s curriculum with other styles of music they are interested in. In my mind, an un-method must meet at least two out of these three criteria:
Below is my list of some un-methods that you might enjoy exploring!
Right From The Start, by Lynn Freeman Olson (Fischer)
As the cover states, this thin volume is a “rapid piano reader.” Teachers who appreciate a landmark (aka interval) reading approach will appreciate the way this on-staff book begins: by teaching Bass F, Middle C, and Treble G. The book provides a solid, no-nonsense approach. I think it is a great book that truly leaves the teaching up to the teacher!
By the end of this 30-page book, students are playing basic rhythms (no eighth notes, unfortunately) within quarter note meters (3/4 and 4/4 time), a variety of articulations (staccato, legato) and notes covering the entire grand staff.
View it on Amazon or SheetMusicPlus.com. Continue reading ““Un-Method” Books for Piano Students”
Remember this set of worksheets (Matching Staff to Keyboard worksheets) I posted a couple of weeks ago?
At the suggestion of a reader (thanks, Elaine!), I have created a new digital version.
Using an annotating app such as GoodNotes (my review here), you can upload the PDF to your iPad and have students complete the worksheets digitally. It’s a great way to coach students through a concept while saving paper.
The PDF contains 20 pages, each with 3 notes that must be matched to the keyboard.
Download link here:
Matching Staff to Keyboard -- Digital Worksheets (307.2 KiB, 9,586 hits)
You can find the other digital worksheets I have created for tablet here.
Need inspiration for music-themed gifts for music students? Below are photos submitted by piano teachers just like you!
From Liz Hurst from Tooele, Utah:
Here is my little ornament I did this year. It is made with little wooden stars, vintage sheet music and modge podge. Glitter glue if you want the initial and hot glued ribbon to make the loop.
Continue reading “Piano Student Gift Ideas for Christmas/Recitals”
Hope you had a nice Christmas and are enjoying a break from teaching!
Now that Christmas is past, I can share about the gifts I made for my piano students this year. 🙂
As you may know, I love creating homemade gifts. Last year, I home-recorded a CD of a few favorite classical teaching pieces. In 2012, I baked iced music cookies and in 2011 I created personalized glass sheet music ornaments.
For this year’s project, I decided to compose two pieces (one mid-elementary level and one late intermediate level) and give them to my students for Christmas. Here is a peek at how the elementary piece turned out:
Continue reading “Student Christmas Gift: Original Piano Composition”
A couple of years ago, I reviewed some lovely sheet music by British teacher/composer Elena Cobb (read the review here). She is the author of the Higgledy Piggledy Jazz books, the “Blue River” book of solos, and more.
Elena has recently released a new book: a piano method called “My Piano Trip to London.”
“My Piano Trip to London” contains 40 pages. The pieces throughout the book are based on various landmarks and themes from London.
The first piece in the book is a black-key piece to be learned by rote.
Continue reading “Review & Giveaway: Elena Cobb’s “My Piano Trip To London””
Note: As you can tell, this week I’ve been playing catch-up with a few apps I’ve been wanting to share! Hope you don’t mind all of the reviews/giveaways this week. 🙂
Bobclass ($19.99) — iPad only.
I’m so excited to share my review of this studio management app with you today! Let me begin by sharing Bobclass’ description:
“Bobclass is an all-in-one productivity app for instructors, tutors, trainers, coaches and other independent professionals. It offers appointment scheduling, client tracking, progress monitoring and payment tracking from your iPad so you can get rid of separate agendas, clipboards and spreadsheets. With a fast & friendly user interface and a fully functional offline database you can do your client administration in the gym, class room, studio or park.”
I think Bobclass it is an outstanding studio management option for independent music teachers. Here’s how it works:
First, visit the settings to set-up your basic information for you and your teaching.
Continue reading “App Review & Giveaway: Bobclass for Studio Management”
Music Flash Class ($3.99) — for iPhone/iPad.
Music Flash Class is an app developed by a piano teacher Henry Flurry. It has been around for a couple of years now, but an update for iOS 8 was recently released. The new layout looks good!
Music Flash Class is an interactive note identification app. The settings offer a myriad of options to customize the experience. I love that you can chose to show or hide the timer. And that you to choose a particular range of notes to practice. Teachers can even customize and save their own “decks” of notes. Continue reading “App Review & Giveaway: Music Flash Class”
MusicNotes Deck: Music Flash Cards (FREE) — for iPad or iPhone.
This free app comes from the folks behind MusicNotes.com, which by the way, is an excellent website for purchasing arrangements of pop music at various levels for students.
The MusicNotes Deck app provides three decks of flash cards: (1) 50 music symbols/terms, (2) two octaves of treble clef note identification, and (3) two octaves of bass clef note identification.
Please note that this app is NOT a game nor does it automatically correct answers in any way. Instead, the app shows flashcard and allows the user to “turn over the flashcard” to see the answer on the back. The app also can pronounce each term with either American or British pronunciation.
The flashcards are shuffled into a random order each time the app is loaded.
This app is a great way to study musical terms and symbols as well as practice note identification. The graphics are gorgeous, too!
View it in the iTunes store here.
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