piano – Page 12 – Color In My Piano

Many teachers interview prospective students before accepting them into their studio. While I haven’t yet felt the need to do so with my own studio, after reading James Bastien’s insight concerning interviews in his book Teaching Piano Successfully, I’m convinced that interviewing students is a great idea — even if you are planning to accept the student anyway.

It’s difficult to know how to spend the first lesson: should you buy a book in advance for the student, and jump right in? Should you hold off on the music books, and first teach them the musical alphabet, some simple tunes, and maybe some five-finger patterns? Maybe. Continue reading “Conducting Student Interviews” →

Music Theory, Printables, Resources, Worksheets

New Worksheet: Intervals (unison-5th)

1 July 200919 November 2021 Joy Morin

Do you find yourself telling students how much easier it would be if they learned to recognize intervals on sight when they are sight-reading? Here are two new free, printable worksheets, designed to help students who have difficulty distinguishing between different intervals on the staff. The first one is for younger students who have just begun reading staff notation. It teaches and quizzes the difference between unisons, 2nds, and 3rds. The second worksheet is a little bit harder, adding 4ths and 5ths into the mix. Enjoy!

Worksheet: Intervals Unison through 5th

This worksheet is designed to teach/quiz the student in identifying the intervals unison through 5th, in both treble and bass clefs. The top line gives an example of each type of interval, and the rest of the page is dedicated to quizzing the student on identifying the interval.

To download, visit the Printables > Worksheets page and scroll down to the I’s for “Intervals Unison through 5th worksheet.”

Intervals Unison-5th Worksheet (40.6 KiB, 20,043 hits)

Music Theory, Printables, Resources, Worksheets

New Worksheet: Intervals (unison-3rd)

29 June 200919 November 2021 Joy Morin

Worksheet: Intervals Unison through 3rd

This worksheet is designed to teach/quiz the student in identifying the intervals unison through 3rd, in both treble and bass clefs. The top line gives an example of each type of interval, and the rest of the page is dedicated to quizzing the student on identifying the interval.

To download, visit the Printables > Worksheets page and scroll down to the I’s for “Intervals Unison-5th.”

Intervals Unison-3rd Worksheet (39.0 KiB, 21,649 hits)

General

…it's been a while.

18 June 2009 Joy Morin

Hello, again! It’s been a while. I took a longer-than-intended break from blogging, unfortunately, because I was dealing with graduation (yes! my hubby and I both graduated with Bachelor’s Degrees) and moving (we moved 2 hours away, where we will be attending grad school in the fall). We have settled into a little apartment, and things have calmed down a little, I’m happy to say!

The move, unfortunately, meant that I had to give up all my wonderful students to other teachers. 🙁 How sad is that! I miss teaching something awful. I won’t be back to teaching piano until the fall, when I’ll begin teaching through the Community Music School at my new college. Meanwhile, I’ve been reading up on pedagogy techniques and various aspects to maintaining a piano studio. I’m about halfway through: How To Teach Piano Successfully, by James W. Bastien, and have managed to get quite a few good ideas from him. I hope to blog about some of my discoveries soon. 🙂

Motivation, Resources

An Inspiring Reminder…

13 April 200910 January 2010 Joy Morin

The following is a something that has been recently circulating via email forwarding (thanks Dr. Le!). I thought it make some excellent points, reminding us of our ultimate goal as musicians. Hope you find it as inspiring as I did! (Sorry for its length — but let me tell you, it’s definitely worth taking the time to read it!)

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(Welcome address to freshman at Boston Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division at Boston Conservatory.)

“One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school—she said, “you’re WASTING your SAT scores.” On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works. Continue reading “An Inspiring Reminder…” →

Memorization, Motivation, Performances

Benefits of Holding a Piano Studio Recital

8 March 200931 October 2010 Joy Morin

Recitals are an important part of having a piano studio. Performing is a important skill for any pianist. Despite the hard work involved, in the long run, the students find it a rewarding activity.

Benefits of having a recital include:

Parents enjoy hearing the progress their student(s) are making under your instruction. Grandparents and parents love attending these performances and getting pictures/video recordings of their child’s performance (esp. when it’s their first). There’s something special about watching your child all dressed up and playing a special piece for an audience onstage. Continue reading “Benefits of Holding a Piano Studio Recital” →

Motivation, Practicing

Incentive Programs for Piano Students

7 March 200913 September 2021 Joy Morin

Do you use an incentive program in your piano studio? Incentive programs can be a useful way to motivate and encourage students to be diligent and productive with their practicing. More importantly, an incentive program can help emphasize the behaviors or goals the teacher expects from the student. Below is information about how I designed an ongoing incentive program for my students.

Growing up, I recall my piano teacher implementing a number of different programs while I was taking lessons — unfortunately, she never stuck with one long enough for me to earn a prize very often. A good incentive program must be simple enough for the students to understand, and cannot be too time consuming as to take up a lot of the lesson time. It needs to be easily attainable, otherwise students will give up on ever earning a prize. Continue reading “Incentive Programs for Piano Students” →