After purchasing a few more books from some of your recommendations, I noticed I had quite a few books that had suggested listening lists in the back of the book. Thus was born the idea to create listening playlists to accompany some of these books!
I’ve been using Spotify for years to create playlists of my own. It’s a wonderful place to create public playlists anyone can listen to.
In this post, I will share brief synopses of each of these 9 books as well as the direct link to each playlist.
As a bonus, as a way of sharing these playlists with your students, I’ve created a free printable of bookmarks you can print on heavy paper or cardstock and stick inside each book when it’s checked out.
This will be an easy way to give parents the link to listen to these playlists at home when reading these books with their children.
What kinds of activities do you do to help your students get focused at the beginning of a lesson?
I saw this question recently in a Facebook group post and realized it was time to share an activity started doing this year.
After attending a workshop by Melody Bober a couple of years ago, I was inspired to come up with a little warm-up routine to use at the start of each student’s lesson.
Not long after that, I was listening to an episode of the All Keyed Up Podcast where he was interviewing Marvin Blickenstaff. At one point, Marvin called warm-ups at the beginning of a lesson a way of “stimulating circulation.” I loved that phrase and it was another element that convinced me to come up with a fun little routine of my own.
The benefits of including something like this in your lesson are:
It helps students take a moment to transition from their day into the lesson time.
It helps students loosen up a bit and serves as a reminder of the elements of good posture and technique such as arms approximately at tabletop level, forearm rotation, relaxed shoulders, natural hand position, etc.
The routine I designed is now available in my shop. Here’s a look!
Piano Lesson Warm-Up / Focus Activity
While this was developed with piano students in mind, it could be used with music students of any instrument!
Some of my specific goals in developing this routine were:
Be something students of any age would feel comfortable doing (delivery and vocal tone have a lot to do with this. 🙂 )
Be easy to remember and take less than 1:00 to complete.
Be something that can be done sitting or standing.
Include movements for as many parts of the body used in playing piano as possible including head, back, shoulders, arms, wrists, hands, and fingers.
As a bonus, the words flow in a somewhat chant-like manner. The first two of the seven-line chant are:
Look to the left and right; Tilt your head side to side.
Gentle twist, from the waist; Body circles, that’s the way.
Here is a 0:15 snippet of the 0:50 routine.
Final Tips and How to Purchase
A couple of final things to keep in mind when incorporating a routine like this:
Yes, it’s good to be consistent, but it’s not the end of the world if we don’t do it every week. Sometimes students plow into their lesson and are so focused on being ready to play one particular piece, we just dive right into that.
Don’t force it. If you sense a student doesn’t like it or that it doesn’t work well for them, then don’t do it. Don’t feel like it has to be used with every student even though it was written in a way that all ages could be comfortable.
This product includes a PDF printable of the full warm-up chant as well as the full video displaying the motions.
Add it to your shopping cart now or from the Piano Pantry shop.
Do you have any favorite warm-up/focus activities you use in your studio? Share in the comments!
Welcome to the first Friday Finds of 2022! It’s been a busy January with the startup of The Piano Pantry Podcast. I hope you’ve had a chance to catch at least one episode if not all four.
As life moves forward, things change and evolve including what I’m doing here on Piano Pantry. If you’ve been around here awhile, you may have noticed that this weekly series has become a little more sporadic.
My beloved Friday Finds series has and will continue to remain, but may be more dependent on what life allows from week to week and month to month. At a minimum, you will always see an end-of-month “best of” publication.
So, thanks for sticking around for this series my friends, a Piano Pantry staple and reader favorite since 2016!
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I discovered the most DELICIOUS soup recipe this past weekend Pulled Pork Chili Verde (The Kitchn).
I added 1 c. fire-roasted corn (from Trader Joe’s) as well as additional liquid – the liquid that came out of the instant pot from cooking the pork shoulder. No additional salt was needed at the end due to the addition of that liquid.
While we’re on the topic of bread, recently I discovered a wonderful store-bought pita at our Walmart – Joseph’s Flax, Oat Bran & Whole Wheat Pita. It’s low in calories (60 apiece), soft, light-weight, and a good source of protein.
I’m honored to be stepping in at the last minute, filling in for The Hungry Musician who normally works with Paula Dreyer on the food side of this virtual conference.
Hope to see some of you there as we make fluffy omelets together this Saturday, January, 29 @ 11:00 am PST.
If you’re interested in registering for the conference, you can do so here:
This post is part of a series called Your Questions Answered that highlights questions from readers just like you. If you have a question you would like to submit, you can do so here.
Hi Amy,
Which iPad do you use and what type of page-turner device do you use with that?
Do you use SuperScore or something else to play digital music?
Do you have your students purchase iPad if they don’t have one?
Need your advice as I would like to update my old mini iPad and stay current with tools.
Thanks,
Twinkle R.
Hi, Twinkle – good to hear from you!
For the last 5 years or so, I have been using the iPad Pro 12.9. There are two reasons I like the 12.9″
Once I started a full-time church job, I much preferred to read music off the larger screen.
I do not have a laptop so for travel, having the larger iPad makes it nicer to work from.
I like the Pro version because I can use the Apple pencil with it. Over the years I tried several different types of stylus’ but not of them has come close to the smooth use of the Apple Pencil. I find it to be much more accurate for annotation on my music and as a bonus, it charges directly from the iPad itself and does not need a separate plug to charge.
That being said, if I had a laptop, I would probably be OK with the 11″ iPad for sheet music. I know several people who have and like that size.
I have also always used and loved the Apple Smart Keyboard. The one that goes with my current 4th generation is a folio-style, which envelops the iPad.
The Apple Pencil 2 works with this 4th generation iPad and charges through magnetism along the side of the iPad.
While my current iPad is the 4th generation, if I were to do it all over again, I’m not sure if I would go with the 4th generation iPad 12.9″. It’s not because of the iPad itself – I actually love the 4th generation iPad 12.9″ because it’s a little smaller edge-to-edge than the 3rd generation 12.9″.
It’s because of the smart keyboard. I really loved the style of the original smart keyboard. The folio-style only allows you to set it up as a keyboard or fold it back and hold it as an iPad. The older Smart keyboard allowed you to prop up the iPad without having the keyboard out. Plus, since the old one did not wrap around the entire iPad, the backside of the iPad was exposed which means when I set it down it would slide more nicely on a surface.
This is just a personal preference though.
The first-generation Apple Pencil that worked with my old iPad Pro had a lightning plug directly on the end with a cap – you would charge by plugging into the iPad female end.
My page-turner is the iRig BlueTurn. I love it and highly recommend it. For years I used the Airturn PedPro. While I liked the slim profile, I had too many troubles with it not responding when I needed it to or turning more than one page at once. There’s a chance it was just a user error but I’ve found having the feel of actually pressing the button makes a big difference for me.
As for sheet-music readers, I have been using ForScore for years and love it. You can create setlists, annotate, export PDFs either with or without annotation, crop, and do all kinds of crazy amazing things with it. I highly recommend it.
As for your question regarding students purchasing iPads, no I do not find any reason to require my students to have iPads.
I hope this helps – if you want to check out more of my recommended resources including apps, business tools, and more, check out the Recommended Resources page here on Piano Pantry.
Ever since I started teaching piano full-time just over ten years ago, group classes have always been part of my studio offerings in one way or another.
While we’re not necessarily going to cover the variety of group class format options in this post (check out episode 3 of The Piano Pantry Podcast for that), I do want to share an overall group class lesson plan format that has consistently proven successful for all of my group classes no matter the level.
In this post, I’ll be referring to the style of a group class that is more of an occasional enrichment class, not a weekly “group piano lesson.”
Each class generally includes five key areas:
Student gathering/entrance
Performances (and directed active listening)
Audiation Activities (ear-training)
Ensemble Work (sightreading)
Music Theory Games
In this post, we’ll discuss why each area is important and share some of my favorite go-to resources.
Last week I shared a large list of 15 of my favorite piano-themed children’s books. You can check that out along with tips on managing a lending library in your own studio here.
Today, I wanted to share some fun music-themed comic books I’ve run across over the years.
I never even knew such a thing existed until I won a copy of Welcome to Harmonium by William Soller at an MTNA conference years and years ago.
Some of my students enjoyed it so much I went looking for more and this is what I found:
The Metronome Man series by William Soller (Music Theory Super Hero Comic Book)
Description from the publisher: Read about the adventures of Harmonium’s Super Hero, Metronome Man. In the issue, music theory puns and adventures abound! Metronome Man is an educational comic book. Loved by musicians of all ages, the educational comic book was pilot-tested in 7th-grade music classes.
Description from the publisher: The Art of Piano Performance is a series of comic books perfect for use as an engaging and humorous teaching aid. The comic book form has an immediate appeal to young adults and adolescents. Pianists and teachers will enjoy the “in-jokes” within the illustrations and settings. All musical terms are defined when introduced, while the illustrations present important pedagogical information in a light-hearted, understandable manner.
Cost: $3.95 – $4.95 each
Do you know of any other music-themed comic books? Share in the comments!
(Note: This photo is missing a couple of my recommendations you’ll read about below.)
Thanks to reader Emily Suszko for this post suggestion!
Ever since I opened my studio, I have been building a collection of piano-themed children’s books in my lending library. I’m not sure if I got the idea from someone else or it just seemed the natural thing to do. In any case, a lending library can be a fun and valuable addition to your music studio.
Today I want to share with you 15 of my favorite books thus far so you can begin building your own library! Since it can be an expensive endeavor if you’re not careful, I’ll also share a couple of tips on how to do so without breaking the bank as well as how to track check-outs.
Why Keep A Lending Library
First of all, let’s talk about some of the benefits of keeping a lending library in your music studio.
#1 Reinforcement
Many books will support what we do in the lesson as well as teach valuable life lessons including the joy of creating at the piano, the importance of practice, the joy of music-making, and more.
#2 Added Value
Anything we can do in our music studios to take it to the next level shows potential clients they’re getting added value. It also conveys to families that we care about students in a multitude of ways outside of just their time at the piano.
#3 Ease of Access
Families may not have ever considered looking for books at the library for their children that are music-themed. Having a collection right in your studio makes it easy for them to utilize and enjoy.
It’s only every 7 years (ish) that New Year’s Eve will land on a Friday. We celebrated our “Best of December” Friday Finds before Christmas and I told you it would likely be the last unless I just ended up with some great stuff. Well, here I am with one more batch of goodies as the new year turns over!
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If you buy much of anything on Amazon, you know that sometimes the order total does not always end up being the transaction amounts that show up on your form of payment. Multiple items in an order may ship differently and don’t charge to your form of payment until they ship.
This has proven quite tricky for me as we download and categorize all of our transactions into Quicken for budgeting purposes (read more on that here). As we were struggling through the holiday transactions, Drew finally Googled something like “how to quickly find Amazon transaction amounts”.
Lo and behold!!!!
It took a few steps, but here they are:
In Amazon go to > Accounts & Lists in the top right corner
Chad Twedt doesn’t post often on his site, Cerebroom, but when he does, I always find it thought-provoking and fascinating. Check out: New MyNoise Soundscape: Piano Escape.
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Following up from #4, in my opinion, the best way I find to keep track of new content on your favorite sites (especially those that don’t post a lot like Chad’s) is to use an RSS reader. Find out more here: Managing Internet Content the Easy Way.
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Joy just launched a new product, it’s a project kit on creating a studio-wide video of The 12 Days of Christmas. The launch promo code expires on January 10.
As we wrap up one year and head into another, I’m excited to let you know about a new podcast I’m launching in January 2022.
An extension of all we do here at PianoPantry.com, The Piano Pantry Podcast will be a place where together, we’ll live life as independent music teachers.
We’ll 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.
The plan is for the 8-15 minute podcast to publish each week. The voice is such a powerful tool and I can’t wait to connect with you in this space!
Want a sneak peek? Check out the 60-second trailer
