The Piano Pantry Podcast is available on these podcast streaming networks:
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Overcast, iHeart Radio, Castbox, Pocket Casts, Radio Public
Episode Summary
A brief history tour of the development and evolution of the world of piano teacher blogs and websites. From this perspective, I’ll interlace my own story of Piano Pantry, highlighting some of the resources available to you. Lastly, we’ll look into how you, too, can “share your stuff.”
Items Mentioned
Hot Air Balloon Ride with Natalie Weber of Music Matters Blog
Piano Pantry – celebrating 6 years with a discount in the shop.
Transcript:
In 2021, blogger, podcaster, and author Laura Tremaine wrote a book called “Share Your Stuff, I’ll Go First.” The goal of the book is to encourage us to show up with our whole selves in order to develop deeper and more meaningful relationships. While I’ll admit I didn’t finish the whole book, I absolutely love the life principle.
Just a few days ago, Piano Pantry had it’s 6th birthday. If you’re new around here, I don’t mean this podcast, but the PianoPantry blog I started back in 2016. Through recent reflections, the title of Laura’s book kept popping in my mind as it’s not only fitting to it’s original contents but also makes me think of what I and many many others have been doing in spaces like this for the past 15 years or so – showing up and sharing our stuff.
In today’s episode, we’re going to take a brief history tour of the development and evolution of the world of blogs for piano teachers where individual as well as conglomerates of teachers “share ours stuff”. Please know that this is from my own perspective for the time that I’ve been part of the independent music teaching community – that is, in the early to mid 2000’s – and is in no way exhaustive. Also, no one is paying me to mention their names.
Through this view from my perspective, I’ll interlace my own story of Piano Pantry, while highlighting some of the biggest resources available on the site. Lastly, we’ll wrap up with a look into how you too can “share your stuff.”
Welcome to the Piano Pantry Podcast where together we live life as independent music teachers. I’m your host, Amy Chaplin. In this space we talk about all things teacher-life related from organizing our studios to getting dinner on the table and all that comes between. You’ll get loads of easily-actionable tips on organizing and managing your studio while balancing life and home.
It was the late 90’s when my toes first got dipped into the world of music teaching. As a high school student, I taught a small handful of kids out of the front room of my parents house one or two summers at the end of high school and start of college. I clearly recall having no clue what I was doing and just using materials I already had from my own years of childhood music lessons.
When I got my first job out of college teaching middle school and high school choir in the mid 2000’s, I taught piano one or two nights a week out of our home. For about a 5 year period, I vaguely recall getting ideas online from some of the first piano teacher blogs I can recall including Natalie Weber’s Music Matter’s Blog which she started in 2005.
Can you believe it, teacher friends? 2005?! I mean, if you’re like me then you remember when Natalie made a stamp in the world of blogs for piano teachers. As one of my old choir director mentors would say, she’s a “dinosaur” in blogger world – and I mean in an entirely respectful way, Natalie! 🙂
Other early bloggers in this time frame – though I don’t know exact years for sure – include Wendy Steven’s Compose Create and Susan Paradis.
In 2009 I decided to go back and get a Master’s in Piano Pedagogy and Performance – which just so happened to be the same year Joy Morin started her blog, Color in My Piano.
In 2010, while President of Ball State University’s MTNA Collegiate Chapter, I got to attend my first Music Teacher’s National Conference in Albuquerque New Mexico. As a person who likes to take opportune moments to get full experiences, I decided to email my favorite blogger, Natalie, to see if she wanted to join me on a hot air balloon ride. Luckily she took me up on the offer!
At that same conference, Natalie hosted a readers dinner for her blog which is where I first met Joy as well. While I was wide-eyed and star-struck in New Mexico hanging out with Natalie and Joy, Jennifer Foxx, Tim Topham, and Trevor and Andrea Dow were starting their sites.
After finishing my masters in 2011, I started teaching piano full time, opening my current studio which I named Studio 88. The following year, Leila Viss and Melody Payne introduced themselves to the blogging world with Nicola Cantan and Sara Campbell following in 2013. Jennifer Fink also had a website with a lot of resources I used in those days called Pianimation but unfortunately that site has since been shut down.
In that same two-year time frame as the five ladies I just mentioned, two of the current biggest Facegroup groups launched: The Art of Piano Pedagogy and Piano Teacher Central. Yes, this was the start of the world slowly moving away from online forums and into Facebook groups.
Around 2015, I had a student I wanted to do more chord charts and pop piano with – an area I felt needed help on best teaching practices. After a bit of research, I came across Tim Topham’s Pop Piano Flix course he has just launched in 2014. Little did I know that I would meet Tim a year later at the 2016 MTNA National Conference when I presented my first national session “The Wild West of Marketing: How Do You Know What Really Works?” and that that session would be presented later that year for Tim’s new Top Music Membership Community which opened that same year.
Since we get personal here on this podcast, I’m not afraid to tell you that once again, I was star-struck. It’s funny because, as I mentioned in the trailer of this podcast, I don’t generally consider myself someone who get’s star-struck. Apparently though I don’t with people in Hollywood but I do with piano bloggers because I certainly was with Natalie, Joy, and Tim.
As all of this was going on, Sally Cathcart and Sharon Mark-Teggart started The Curious Piano Teachers, and Tracey Selle’s Upbeat Piano Teachers.
2016 was a big year as not only was it the first time I got to present at a national conference as well as do my first webinar, but it was the year I launched my own blog, PianoPantry.com.
That first year, I cranked out three large resources which remain to this day including Friday Friday, Assignment Sheet Central, and Evernote for the Independent Music Teacher.
The weekly Friday Finds blog series is currently at #240 and is a place where I highlight approximately 8-12 things I found interesting or useful in recent days or weeks that I think you, my music teacher friends, will enjoy and find useful as well. Since this podcast launched, it’s become more of a monthly series, but is still posted on Friday’s and is going strong.
Assignment Sheet Central now houses more than 20 different free downloadable assignment sheets and has something like 40,000 downloads.
Back in the day I was very gung-ho on Evernote, even becoming part of their community leader program. I knew it was a tool that would be highly useful for helping teachers organize their lives and studios and thus was born the 3-part video tutorial series, Evernote for the Independent Music Teacher. Of course, there have been lots of updates since then, but the core functionalities and uses remain.
Around this same time, the idea of membership sites really started taking hold and we saw already established sites from Tim’s, Nicola, and The Curious Piano Teacher’s and others launch membership-type programs.
While I continued to blog over the next few years, in that time, my husband and I broke ground on a new home where a lot of the work was being done ourselves. It was a long drawn-out process that slowed my ability to create big resources though I continued to share as much as I could.
In August 2019, I finally opened up a shop with a Music Lab Series which includes 9 different labs – the most popular being the holiday-themed listening labs, as well as an e-book on how to set up and organize a lab time in your own studio. I distinctly remember creating this series in my home office while living in our completely unfinished basement with no paint, carpeting, and minimal lighting.
While incorporating a music lab was a popular thing when I started one in my studio in 2011, there weren’t a whole lot of resources for setting them up. The App Store was exploding with lots of wonderful new apps we were all learning about but I struggled to figure out a way of utilizing them in an organized manner including assigning, tracking, and maintaining a program for my students.
The Music Lab product was the result of what I had been doing in my own studio for the past 10 years. Whether you call it “music lab time”, “lab time”, or “off bench time,” the premise is the same.
The next thing life brought to us all was Covid, and, as I’m sure you can relate, with a full-time studio, I continued to blog but it would be another year before I was able to make more products available in the shop. The past year though has see 5 new ones though.
The first is what I call your ultimate guide for teaching “Happy Birthday” by ear. The resource serves both as a step-by-step guide for teacher and student as well as a bit of a tangible “worksheet” if you will. The goal is to walk students through some of the basic aural aspects of the tune such as whether the piece is in duple or triple and major or minor as well as recognizing rhythmic and harmonic patterns. The first page of the guide focuses on melody, the second on adding harmony, and the third on helping the student create their own arrangements.
In a similar format to the Happy Birthday by ear is the product Christmas By Ear: 8 Tunes to Harmonize. Students and teachers are walked through the process of playing 8 of the most traditional Christmas tunes by ear including how to play from a chord chart and sing along.
The shop also houses a sequenced note-naming assignment series designed for use with the Note Rush app and a warm-up focus activity that’s excellent for preschool piano lessons, group classes, or even as a lesson-time warm-up for all your students.
Lastly, after six years and getting lots of email inquiries for advice on a variety of studio-related topics, I realized I should make a more tangible way for us to work together and now offer consulting services as well.
I would be remiss if I didn’t let you know that since we’re currently celebrating the 6th year of Piano Pantry, all items in the shop are currently on sale through the end of this month, March 2022. I’ll pop a link to that in the show notes.
As I mentioned at the start of this episode, I know I have not covered every single piano-focused blog or website in this brief history tour timeline. There are many others both old and new including Diane Hidy, Chad Twedt, Elissa Milne, Rosemarie Penner, Bradley Sowash, and more.
The bottom line in all this my friends, is that we all have stuff to share. We all have unique experiences and creative ideas that can benefit not just our students, but each other. So, what are some ways you can do that? Maybe you would like to “share your stuff” but just don’t know where to start. Let me offer some possibilities.
The first way would be of course to start your own website as I and others have done. I completely understand how that may not be for everyone though. Luckily in the past 10 years, technology has brought about wonderful resources tools and helpers along the way.
The next two ways are really great ways to “share your stuff” without feeling like you have to necessarily having a personal “brand” or website.
The first and perhaps easiest is to be active on social media. Facebook groups are a great way to share and learn from other teachers. Order the past year or two, I’ve personally especially enjoyed the community of teachers that has developed over on Instagram. It’s a fun place to see little snippets of other teachers studios and lives – especially in this past year through stories and reels without the sometimes overwhelming amount of posts and comments that happen in the Facebook groups. There are many teachers who are highly active and well-known to give well-trusted advice in Facebook groups that may not necessarily have their own blog or website.
The second way to share your stuff would be to get on with a multi-teacher supported site such as Top Music Marketplace or MelodyPayne.com. They do all the backend work and you just create and sell your product.
Well, friends, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little piano teacher world history tour. If you’ve been enjoying this podcast so far, would you help me out and jump over to Apple podcasts to share a review and 5-star rating? I’m not shy about asking.
You can find me on social media – Piano Pantry on Facebook or @amychaplinpiano on Instagram. I would love to connect with you.
As always, I like to share a little fun fact about myself at the end of every episode to help you get to know me a little better. Today I thought I would share that I have a hard time staying awake during moves. I’m talking about when we’re watching movies at home. I probably fall asleep at least 25% of the time though my husband would probably argue it’s more like half. To be fair, I’m usually OK if we start them early enough in the evening but if don’t start one until 10:00, the odds go down greatly.
What about you?
Alright, that’s all for today, now, go share your stuff!
