Hello, friends! I just wanted to share an update I made to the repertoire tracking sheet I first shared last year.
You can read more about my thought process behind building this personalized repertoire tracking sheet in the blog post: Tracking Student Repertoire (A Free Download)
Here’s what the original sheet looks like (which is still available via the original blog post).
This past weekend, I had the honor of providing music for my cousin’s outdoor wedding.
I don’t know about you, but even though playing for weddings has never been part of my regular gig, it seems as if requests have definitely slowed down even more in the past ten years.
It likely has a lot to do with people having easier access to music tracks as well as the changing culture in church music and, thus, the declining demand for church pianists and organists. Of course, I’m COMPLETELY speculating here, but that’s my rough take on it.
Even though they happen infrequently and every wedding’s musical requests are different, there are a couple of books and several pieces of repertoire that I have found to be my trusty go-to’s.
In the course of my preparations for this past weekend, I came across a couple of other items that were great additions to my list. I now have enough now – I thought it was time to share!
Do you keep track of the pieces your students learn? I’ve done it for as long as I can remember, although I can’t recall what made me get started. There are two reasons one might consider tracking student repertoire.
(1) As time passes, it can be easy to forget the work that students have done. Writing down pieces makes it easy to look back on those accomplishments.
(2) You might need to intentionally track pieces in order to meet specific goals or challenges (such as the 40-piece challenge.)
While this post is not necessarily about the 40-piece challenge, here’s just a brief background if you’re not familiar.
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Piano Adventures by Randall and Nancy Faber has been a staple in the piano teaching community for a long time. The method books, supplementary PreTime to BigTime, and Developing Artist series are well-known and familiar to many teachers.
I feel like the solo sheets are less prominent, though, as it took me a few years into teaching before I realized they had Achievement Literature Sheets as part of the Developing Artist series.
It’s the same way with the Achievement Solo Sheets. I was familiar with a few but didn’t realize the full scope until recently browsing their website. There are more than 30 available (3-6 per level!)
While you can find all the Achievement Literature Sheets easily in the Developing Artist Piano Library, interestingly enough, there is no way on their website to easily see all of the Achievement Solo Sheets in one place. They’re not even listed where you might expect, which would be under the “Piano Books” segment with each level. The only way to find them is under “Quick Shop.” Let me show you quickly in this video:
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11/22/2023 Update
Unfortunately with the major website overhaul SheetMusicPlus just went through these lists are not shareable at this time.
I am leaving this blog post up in case that changes in the future with more site improvements and I can update this blog post.
Sorry for the inconvenience!
Since the closure of Primo Music in recent years, Sheet Music Plus has become my go-to site for purchasing music online. I’ve always had success finding music on the site and experienced good customer service.
While their discount (5% for two or more copies) is not as good as some sheet music sites like Primo have offered in the past, I can usually still get a discount either through MTNA or by using my Capital One Shopping Extension on Chrome.
That being said, I don’t worry about that too much because sheet music is a tax write-off for the business, and purchasing music is how we keep our composers paid!
Sheet Music Plus has a feature I didn’t know about in the early days (or at least didn’t start utilizing fully) until recently. That is, you can create your own “music lists.”
To save a book to a music list or create a new one, hover over ” Save to Music List” below the “Add to Cart” button.
(Be careful – clicking “Save to Music List” will just save the item to your “Default List.” You have to HOVER and then click on the list you want to save it to. Otherwise, you can select “Create New Music List.”)
To find your list on Sheet Music Plus, go to “My Account > Music Lists”
There are three scenarios in which I think using this feature would be useful.
(1) You want to have an easy way to save your favorite books without keeping a repertoire database of some kind.
(2) If you opt to have your studio families purchase books, you could keep a list of all your studio’s frequently used books so you can quickly reference and send links (the same could be done on Amazon as well!)
(3) You want an easy way to share repertoire lists with others (like me!). I honestly keep the lists mostly for my own record, but it’s a nice bonus that sharing the list with you is so easy!
My lists aren’t exhaustive, and I try to update them when possible, but they have a good start.
Amy’s Favorite Supplemental books for Students
Amy’s Favorite Church Music books for Students
Amy’s Favorite Pop/Disney/Video Game Music for Students
Amy’s Favorite Christmas Repertoire for Students
Amy’s Favorite “Classical” Repertoire Books for Students
Feel free to link to some of your repertoire lists on Sheet Music Plus in the comments – I love checking out books other teachers love!
Teacher: “Billy, do you want to play any Christmas music this year?”
Billy: “Eh, no not really.”
Am I right when I say this is a phrase you rarely if ever hear from piano students? 🙂
I would suffice to say that Christmas is the time of year when many students get most passionate about what they want to play. Some have quite strong feelings about what favorite Christmas tunes they want to play and some just want to play as much as they possibly can.
Today I’m excited to share with you a new Christmas book that is unlike any other Christmas book for piano students.Â
I’m confident that you’ll not only find it to be completely unique, but incredibly versatile as well.
What is it?
It’s a book of 8 Christmas tunes to harmonize and play by ear including:
The overarching goal of this book is to enable piano students to feel like they can sit down and play some of their favorite Christmas tunes anywhere and at any time without notation in front of them.
Many students find great joy in the annual musical feast that comes around each year making it a great opportunity for the development of life-long musicianship skills.
Students will be encouraged to discern between duple vs. triple meters and major vs. minor tonalities, learn to harmonize using chords, play in a variety of keys, use several accompaniment patterns, and more.
The format encourages the development of audiation, improvisation, and creativity skills by presenting multi-level steps/variations on playing each tune. Each song includes its own checklist so students can use and build on these sheets year after year as their skills progress.
Besides developing skills for playing by ear and playing tunes in a variety of ways, students are also gaining the valuable skill of learning how to play from a chord chart in any key.
Think of it kind of like “build-a-bear” – students are “building-a-book” of Christmas music! 🙂
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!
Do you have favorite collections of Christmas music for your students?
My middle kid wants me to get out ‘the’ Christmas music book (we have a very old primer from my in-laws).
I told him he had to learn two new songs from a non-Christmas book before I would think about that. So, he sat down and sight-read the whole Faber Piano Adventures, Level 2A Performance book.
Do you have any other recommendations?
-Anna Parkinson
Hey, Anna!
Why yes, I do! I actually have an entire blog post dedicated to some of my “Trusty Christmas Favorites.“
But first of all, bravo to you for finding a way to light the fire for your kiddo! It sounds like you’re probably headed in the right direction.
As far as Faber goes, I don’t know if you intend on doing the Christmas books that correlate to the student library or the ones that are part of the “Show Time,” “Big Time,” and “Play Time” series. While either is fine, my personal preference is the latter.
Since I have a whole post of my favorites, I won’t share too many more details here but will mention that you might also consider getting him the  Adult Piano Adventures Christmas Books.
Each book has a lot of music. The first 1/3 of book 1 is labeled as “beginning Christmas songs: easy arrangements with simple harmonies.” Section 2 has 13 pieces labeled as “Christmas songs in the key of C Major with I, IV, and V7 chords) and Section 3 is the same but in the key of G Major.
Due to the primary-chord structure and keys included, I would say book one is leveled with the student library up to level 3A.
I started trying some of Piano Pronto’s holiday books in the last couple of years. I haven’t used any of them long enough to say they’re ones I return to “year after year,” but there are some unique little finds. In particular, you might consider the Multi-Level Holiday Classics, which includes three difficulty levels for each piece.
Some of my older students enjoyed the arrangements in Christmas Classics: Contemporary Lyrical Solos. That book would probably not be his best next step, but I still wanted to mention it.
I hope this helps!
~Amy
My new Christmas By Ear collection is now available in the Piano Pantry shop!
Do you have any favorite Christmas collections? Share in the comments!
It’s finally time to talk about organizing hardcopy music books! This is a topic I’ve wanted (and I know YOU’VE wanted) me to address for a long time. I’m sorry it took long!
Organizing music – whether hardcopy or digital – is one of the biggest organizational struggles for many teachers out there. It’s understandable why; I mean, who of us doesn’t own too much music?! 🙂
Should we organize by artist, genre, title, or dare I say color? LOL (Sorry, Home Edit, not this time!) There are so many ways!
Not only that, but we need to be able to locate music quickly and maintain perspective on what we own so we don’t keep buying music we already have.
Today we’ll look at a couple of different storage solutions for storing music as well as ways of categorizing for ease of use. You’ll also get a peek into my own personal system.
Are you ready to tackle that stash of music? Here we go!
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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,
I’m really enjoying your posts, especially Friday Finds!
Regarding method books, my question is: what do you use after Piano Safari, level 3? Or do you design your own curriculum?
Many thanks, as always for your help.
Warmly,
-MJP
Hi, MJP!
As far as method books go, I am definitely a zigzagger. Rarely do I put a student in one method book series covering books 1-2-3 back-to-back.
Sometimes that works just fine and can certainly give the student a feeling of progress by “moving to the next level.”
I find many students, however, transition better through levels if I either supplement between each one for a few weeks (or months) or even cover the same “level” in two different book series. For example, I might have a student finish Piano Safari Level 1 and then do Piano Adventures Level 1 before moving into Piano Safari Level 2.
One thing to keep in mind is that (with the Piano Adventures series in particular), I’m not one to give students both the Lesson and Performance books. I usually just do one or the other, especially if I’m weaving it between levels of another series.
In answering your more specific question on what I would do after Piano Safari 3, I often go to Piano Adventures 3B or into a repertoire series such as Celebration Series Repertoire Level 2.
(The authors of Piano Safari say that book 3 transitions nicely into Celebration Series Repertoire Level 3 but I always find doing a little in C.S. book 2 first a nice transition.)
Piano Safari 3 covers Major and Minor keys and technical skills in the keys of C/Am, G/Em, and F/Dm. Piano Adventures 3B focus on the minor keys only.
Here’s an example scenario.
This may be a little excessive example overlapping however, something like this might work for a student who is professing a little slower. Also, as I said previously, keep in mind this would just include one book in the P.A. series (such as a lesson or performance)
I hope this gives you some ideas. Good luck!
~Amy
Reader friends, do you have any suggestions?
MJP and I would love to hear where you take your students when they finish Piano Safari Level 3. Please share in the comments!
Happy May! If you missed last week’s big April re-cap, you can read it here: Friday Finds #217 Best of April.
I don’t know about you, but I often struggle to remember to put in music orders far enough in advance from when new terms start to actually have music by the first lesson!
So, today, I’m sharing some resources to help you as you plan your student’s Summer repertoire. This list focuses on what I would call a more relaxed repertoire such as popular tunes, what my teens like to call “flowy” music, and some fun and unique patterned repertoire.
You’ll also see a few favorite repertoire lists from other bloggers as well. Let me know what fun repertoire you have planned for your students this Summer in the comments!
P.S. This week, I answered a reader’s question regarding how I run my Summer lessons. Catch that post here.
Back in 2018, my studio’s Spring Recital theme was “Songs we Know.” In a follow-up post, I shared a list of some favorite books with popular tunes.
Will Bailey has a great site full of fun original music kids seem to enjoy. I especially love his Way Cool Keyboarding Books for teens who play at a mid-late elementary level.
The music is very patterned and young teens absolutely love the way it sounds. Plus, they get a taste of how to play chord charts intertwined between each piece.
Piano Music for Teens (Lauren Lewandowski)
Favorite Beautiful Modern Piano Music for Teens (Jill Ice)
Who doesn’t love fun variations on Chop Sticks? Here are a few I keep bookmarked:
Chopped Sticks Rag for Three by Joyce Grill (1 piano, 6 hands / Early Intermediate)
C.S. Theme and Variations by Randall Compton (1 piano, 4 hands / Early Advanced)
Whitewater Chopped Sticks by Calvin Jones (Early Advanced)
Summer might be a good time to explore the rote repertoire series, Blitz Books, from Samantha Coates.
How about having students spend time learning some tunes by ear and harmonizing? Perhaps better yet, have them sing the melody while chording in the RH and playing octaves or other patterns in the left.
Here are 147 Tunes to Harmonize (Piano Pantry) to help get you started!
Chrissy Ricker’s Let’s Quest! (video game-inspired music) Songbook or any of Andrea and Trevor Dow’s Classical Pop Sessions would be a fun way to change things up for students in the summer!
Summer is a wonderful time to do a studio-wide project to learn the important Happy Birthday tune. Use my new Happy Birthday by Ear teaching resources to guide both you and your students through the process!
(I guess the desire for Christmas music was a good motivator!) So, I’m going to get the Faber Christmas books for levels 2 and 3.