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:”
My blogging has been rather sporadic so far this month — this is a busy time of year for piano teachers, isn’t it! I’m so glad my Spring Recital is over, but this month is still somehow very booked. 🙂
On Saturday, I had another Piano Party with my students. It was a small group of students this time because it was the tail-end of Spring Break when many students were out-of-town. However, I took advantage of the fact that I was working with just four students and planned to do something a little bit different this time! Our theme-of-the-day was chords. Students play duets with each other, one student playing a melody and the other accompanying with chords. Two students played on my Kawai, and the other two played on my keyboard which I set up in the guest bedroom.
One of the things we did was a duet improvisation with the 12-bar blues. Tim Topham has made a video that breaks down the 12-bar blues into manageable steps for teachers to use with
their students:
To help my students learn how to improvise the 12-bar blues, I created this printable:
On page 1, the notes of the C blues scale are shown both on the keyboard and on the staff. I put the student sitting on the treble side of the keyboard in charge of playing a melody using these notes. If you are not doing a duet, this is simply the RH part. I helped the student work out a good fingering to use.
Then, I showed page 2 of the printable to the other student. I chose the “Blocked 5ths & 6ths” pattern and made sure the student understood how to play the pattern for each chord change.
Finally, I showed students the 12-bar blues progression on Page 1 and set them loose to work it out! The most important part, of course, was helping them learn to listen to each other to stay on beat. I went back-and-forth between the duet pairs and coached them throughout the process.
I plan to follow-up with these students during their next lesson, to further experiment with the 12-bar blues. It was a fun part of our Piano Party this month!
You can download the “12-Bar Blues in C” printable (it’s free!) on the Downloads > Sheet Music page.
12-Bar Blues in C (642.8 KiB, 52,633 hits)
I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful Easter weekend!
Saturday was my students’ Spring Recital! Like last year, I held it at my local library. My students all did such a nice job — they make me so proud!
In photo above you’ll see each student with a rose, which is a tradition I’ve kept up for the last few years. It’s nice to give something at the end of the recital, and giving a rose is a nice, affordable gesture to congratulate them for their performance and hard work.
Do you have a recital tradition? 🙂
The Level 1 Rhythm Cards have a been a popular item in the Color In My Piano shop. I’m excited to announce that Level 2 has been released!
Today, I’m sharing a simple but useful freebie: I call it the Piano Keyboard Printable.
I love using my wooden/foam silent keyboards during group classes (both Piano Readiness or Homeschool Music Classes) and for theory worksheets/activities at my Piano Parties — but sometimes I just want paper, so I designed this printable. I printed and laminated a bunch of these keyboard printables — and I love that I can also print these to send home with students. I like to encourage my Piano Readiness students to play the games from class at home with their parents.
A quick list of a few uses for this piano keyboard diagram printable:
You can download this free printable by visiting the Printables > Other Resources page and scrolled down to “Piano Keyboard Printable.”
P.S.: The 20% sale in the Color In My Piano shop has been entended for one more day! (And the sale won’t be back until next year!) Use the discount code “YAY4YEARS” by midnight EST on Friday, March 15, 2013.
At our last Forum Q&A, I asked about what piano books you studied from as a child. It was so fun reading all the responses! Read the comments here on the blog and here on the facebook page.
I must be feeling nostalgic again… 🙂 For our new Forum Q&A, I want to know:
What kind of piano was the family piano you remember learning on as a child? What brand? Upright or grand? Was the type of piano you had a factor in your success as a student? Did your parents upgrade that piano at some point? Is you childhood piano still around?
Leave your comments below!
Every teacher approaches technique exercises a little bit differently. I usually start teaching students 5-finger patterns (aka pentascales) during the first month or two of study. I start by assigning the C Major 5-finger pattern (5FP) and sometimes G Major along with it. Every week or every-other-week, I add a new 5FP to their list, following the Circle of 5ths.
Personally, I don’t teach the theory behind the major 5FP’s until a little bit later (i.e., the pattern of whole and half steps: WWHW). To introduce each 5FP, I let the student figure out what black keys are needed — using their ear. I say: “Today we are going to add the D 5-finger pattern. There is a black key in this 5FP. Do you think you can figure out where the black key needs to be?” The student first plays the 5FP with all white keys, and we discuss that it doesn’t sound right — it doesn’t match the sound of the C and G 5FPs. The student then uses his/her ear and trial-and-error to discover that the 3rd note should be a black key. Now it matches! Leading the student through this kind of discovery makes the learning moment memorable.
The beauty of this approach also is that the student inherently learns the concept of transposition through this moment! The concept of being “in a key” and the concept of transposition between keys is such an integral part of the way music works, but is so often it is neglected until students begin playing scales and learning key signatures. However, after learning just two or three 5FPs, the teacher can easily ask the student to play a few familiar folk tunes by ear in different keys. (See my printable from a couple years back, “Melodies to Play by Ear and Harmonize.”) The student will understand that depending on what note the tune begins, they will need certain black keys in order for the tune to sound “right.” Continue reading “Teaching 5-Finger Patterns (with a Free Worksheet)”
In the comment section of previous post, a reader asked for suggestions with helping a young student connect notes on the staff with their names and their corresponding piano key. I gave a response in the comment section, but thought I would share some of those thoughts with you all as a separate blog post!
Sometimes, beginners (or even transfer students) seem to be missing a piece of the puzzle for understanding note-reading on the staff. Below is a description of how I would systematically try to figure out what is missing with a student who is struggling with note-reading!
I would first make sure the student can say the musical alphabet verbally forwards and backwards. This seems basic, but believe it or not, sometimes beginners miss this step, and then note reading makes little sense to them!
The next step is making sure the student knows the names of all the piano keys. My favorite thing to do is to ask them to find 3 C’s on the piano, and then 3 D’s (etc.). I also like using The Amazing Keyboard Race game. Continue reading “Missing Steps to Learning to Read Music”
After finding the new Fun & Learn Music website last night, I simply had to share the link with you all. This website has a large variety of FREE music worksheets, organized by subject. The worksheets are clear and to-the-point, but also cute and fun for students. I will definitely be using many of these worksheets with my students in the future!
Fun & Learn Music also has a Shop area, where they sell complete theory books and a couple of rhythm games that look really fun and well-designed. I can’t wait to see how this site develops in the future!
Check out their website here, and their facebook page here.
I have been receiving TONS of questions about my homeschool Music History Classes lately, so I decided to write a post that explains more about how I started and currently run the class.
You may recall that my husband and I moved from Michigan to Ohio about a year-and-a-half ago. Starting up a new studio from scratch takes time, and there is a business strategy that says: “Diversify your income.” I had been wanting to reach out to the home-school community for awhile already (Fun fact: did you know I was home-schooled for 5 years of my education growing up?). 🙂 When I saw Sheryl Welles’s idea (see her blog here) about having a Music Appreciation/Music History class for home-schoolers, I decided I wanted to try to start one, too!
After some online research, I discovered that the home-schooling families in my area have a Yahoo group where they chat and stay in touch about upcoming events. I joined the Yahoo group and posted some information about the classes I want to start. I received only one reply, from a family with three children. Those three children were the entire class for quite awhile, and eventually two more joined.
I decided to hold each class for 50 minutes, so that I could have 10 minutes to put everything away afterwards and still have time to start a private lesson at the next hour if I wanted to.
At first, I taught short lessons about a new composer every week, but soon realized that this was not enough time to give the composer justice — and the students were not absorbing the information well enough. When I would review information from previous weeks, they would get the composers mixed up. That is when I decided to format my curriculum into lapbooks. Using the lapbooks, we cover a new composer every three weeks. (My music history curriculum “Great Composers & Their Music” is currently available for purchase in my Shop at $10 per composer.)
We generally spend about 20-25 minutes each class working on the lapbooks while I read the biography and play musical excerpts by the composer. The rest of the class time is spent doing a variety of activities. I plan worksheets or games that cover rhythm, aural, or theory concepts that are appropriate to the students’ current music knowledge. I write weekly lesson plans, so that I can easily look back and plan ahead.
As you already know, I often create my own games and worksheets and share them here on my blog. 🙂 But I do often use materials created by other teachers, too. The two resources I have been using the most recently are pianimation.com and susanparadis.com. If you don’t already know about these two websites, you should definitely check them out now!
If you have other questions about my homeschool music class, please leave a comment below this post!
I just got caught up with posting some new composer lapbooks to the Color In My Piano shop!
As you may recall, I teach a Music History Class for homeschoolers each week. I started creating my own music history curriculum after I was unable to find anything quite like I was looking for. I ended up using the lapbooking format for my curriculum, because it is a visual, interactive way to learn historical facts and information. It has been quite a success so far! I am constantly impressed with how much information my students are able to absorb each week.
I call my curriculum The Great Composers & Their Music. Each $10 pdf download includes all the pages you will need to print for each student to create their own lapbook, as well as a printable biography booklet, and a few pages of extra information for the teacher. The license for this curriculum allows you to print as many pages as you like, as long as you are using the materials with your own students.
The curriculum is a pretty flexible. I teach each composer over three class periods, spending about 20-30 minutes out of the class on the lapbook. (We do other activities during the rest of the class time.) If you wish to use these lapbooks for a one-time class, you can probably cover the whole lesson in 60 minutes (or maybe 45 minutes if your students are junior high or older). A lot of it depends on how much time you devote to listening to excerpts of the composer’s music (a link to a YouTube playlist is provided).
Here is a peek at the 4 newest composers that have been added to the Color In My Piano shop! Continue reading “4 New Lapbooks Added to the Shop”
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