Christmas Collaborations: Recommended Piano Ensemble Music

October 4, 2018
by Amy
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Perhaps more than any other time of year, Christmas is a time when we, as a society, make music together the most. Whether it’s caroling, singing Christmas music in church, or as a family in the car while you drive to grandma’s house, there’s just something about Christmas music that encourages music-making together.

So if with our voices, why not also with our instruments? Each year, the week before Christmas, we have group classes in my studio. These classes are the perfect opportunity for ensemble playing.

In this post, I will share a few go-to resources I use in my piano studio so my students can make music as a group. The books and music mentioned in this post do not include duet repertoire, piano trios (such as piano, cello, violin), only piano ensembles of three or more.

I’m lucky enough to have four keyboards in my studio that we can use, which is, of course, ideal but not always realistic. If you don’t have four keyboards, don’t despair – there are options here for you and ways you can equip your students to make music together!

Speaking of Christmas piano ensembles…perhaps one of the most-watched on YouTube (with currently 18,950,525 views), is the Piano Guys’ version of Angels We Have Heard on High with 32 fingers and 8 thumbs.

Granted, this is exactly a “piano ensemble,” but it felt fitting to include it in this post because it’s so incredible.

Downloadable Sheet Music Ensembles

Susan Paradis

Susan Paradis has several Piano Trios available on her website.

She also has a Jingle Bells Duet with Rhythm Ensemble that, while it’s a piano duet, includes an ensemble of 4 rhythm instruments. This is a fun ensemble to use during group class with elementary students especially.

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Fun Postcards for Student Birthday’s

August 28, 2018
by Amy
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Do you do anything special for your student’s birthdays?

I’ve always felt like recognizing student’s birthdays is something that takes little effort and yet can really show a student – and their family – that you care.

While there are various things you could do, I’m a big advocate for the simple act of sending a card via snail mail.

I mean, how many kids ever get much – if anything – in the US mail?

Very few, I’m sure.

Heck, who doesn’t love getting something besides bills and junk mail hits my mailbox? Personal cards with little hand-written notes are the best.

I first advocated for student birthday cards and why they are a great way to build rapport within your studio in the post Marketing with Postcards (it’s not what you think!)

Today, I want to share some fun postcards I came across recently that you may want to use for your students’ birthdays!

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Book of Student Compositions

July 3, 2018
by Amy
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Recently, when visiting my friend Joy Morin’s studio during her piano teacher retreat, I noticed a book of piano student compositions she had sitting in her waiting area and thought it was a fun idea!

Today I’m giving you a free printable of the binder cover I created for my own book so you can create your own as well!

Why a Book of Compositions?

A few students in my studio absolutely love composing. Luckily, our state MTA hosts a yearly composition festival called “Opus,” where students can submit a composition and receive feedback from a judge. The winner in each age category then gets their composition submitted to the MTNA Composition Competition for free and gets to perform their composition at the next state conference in the winners’ recital.

Students put so much time and effort into their pieces that displaying them keeps their work present and valued. It’s also a great way to help generate awareness of the Opus program and composing in general. Students could sit down at one of the studio keyboards and play through each other’s music!

Keeping it simple, I used a 1″ 3-ring binder. Each composition was printed and placed in plastic sleeve covers. Compositions that were winners got an award seal sticker on them and I wrote the year it was the winning composition.

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Manipulatives and Piano Games for Private and Group Lessons

March 6, 2018
by Amy
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How many manipulatives, piano games, and other resources do you have in your music studio? You probably don’t even have to count to know the answer. A lot!  Am I right?

Keeping track of all our teaching resources can be a daunting task. Lesson planning for private and group music classes can be enough work in itself without having to continuously recall and rehash all the different manipulatives and games we have each time we plan.

After finding myself physically walking back and forth regularly to my game files, flashcard box, and such, I decided it was time to put together a master list of every activity or manipulative I had or could use to teach a concept.

It can be very easy to lose track of what we already have. Having a document like this has allowed me to not only have an easy place to reference what activities I could utilize at any given time, but it was an awesome snapshot and inventory of what I owned.

Keeping a master list is also a great place to keep teaching ideas that may not necessarily have physical items to accompany the activity.

I thought you might find this document useful as well.

The Master List

Since it is a document that I update on a regular basis, I decided to simply share the public link to a Google Doc. Keep in mind that it’s a working document so it’s possible I will add to, edit, and even remove items as time goes by.

There are three ways you could utilize this document

  1. If you want to keep the document as is and not risk being at the mercy of my future edits, you could download it.
  2. If you want to always see the updated version, I would recommend bookmarking the link in your browser. This way, you simply click on the link, and you always see the most updated version.
  3. If you wanted to create your own list, you could even copy and paste it into your own document to get you started and create your own version with the materials you have!

May this document help you add a little more sanity to your lesson planning and studio organizational life. 🙂

Get Access Here

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Candy Jar Contest (Free Printable)

January 31, 2018
by Amy
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Candy jar contests are sure to grab the interest of young and old alike. Let’s be honest here, when is the last time you turned down an opportunity to guess the number of items in a jar whether it be candy, pennies, or otherwise! 🙂

In my piano studio, I find the candy jar contest to be an easy way to build community. It may feel a little far-reaching, but since most music lessons are solo events, any time I can create an opportunity for all students to engage in the same thing (even if they’re not doing it together all at once), I consider that a win.

For more on building commmunity in your music studio, see the Varsity Musician’s Playbook series here on Piano Pantry.

In this post, I have a free download for you to run your own candy jar contest.

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Piano Teacher World: A Year in Recap: News, Happenings, and Impact

December 29, 2017
by Amy
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Dear Piano Teacher,

OK, OK, I’m a total copycat! I admit it. This is not an original idea. Last year, Leila Viss wrote a post called 40 Trendsetting Piano Teaching Resources that she compiled along with her friend Marie Lee (which included Friday Finds B.T.W. 🙂 and I absolutely loved it.

So, I started making a list of items that impacted me this past year and the list just started flowing. As the list evolved, it started to include not just specific events, items, and products that impacted me, or that I “discovered,” but items and happenings that I would consider “big news” in piano teacher world.

In alphabetical order…

 

In Piano Teacher News

Big changes at The Francis Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy

There’s lots going on at The Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy! Not only did they hire a new Full-Time Executive Director in October 2017 (Dr. Jennifer Snow), but in December 2017 they appointed Ryan Greene as the new Director of NCKP (National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy).

 

Carol Matz’s inter@ctive Piano Method

Composer Carol Matz wrote and published a new method that has online interactive materials.

 

Colourful Keys Quick Clips

After attending NCKP this summer and seeing all the wonderful teaching demonstrations, Irish piano teacher Nicola Canton began posting short clips of her own teaching on her blog Colourfulkeys.ie.

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Favorite Hymn and Praise Piano Books

October 24, 2017
by Amy
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Finding quality arrangements of hymns and praise/worship music for piano students is not easy. To help make your search easier, in this post, I’m going to share a few that have proven to work well with my students in recent years. I’ll also share snippets from a church-music-themed piano recital I did with my students.

Let’s discuss why finding appropriate hymn and praise/contemporary worship music arrangements for piano students is tricky.

First, hymns are written in a homophonic (and even more specifically, homorhythmic) texture, meaning they sing the same rhythm in a blocked chordal structure – one that is not easy to play for even intermediate-level piano students.

Second, while many churches are moving away from hymns, contemporary worship music trends, and changes so quickly, many “praise” books published in years past no longer resonate with students.

This creates a struggle for piano teachers!

Functional Musicianship in Daily Life

One of my solutions is to ensure all my students learn to play chord charts and lead sheets so we can easily download any worship song they like and learn how to play it or at least sing and accompany using chordal patterns.

Part of my teaching philosophy is that I want to enable my students to be functional musicians who can operate in multiple situations, especially those they encounter daily. For many in my studio, the church is a big one.

One of my students just started playing in their youth worship band, and many others are providing music as preludes, communion, offering, and leading during youth-led services. I have several students who are also singers and love singing and playing contemporary worship music.

The next two photos are from our church music recital.

All my students learn to play from chord charts and lead sheets, and a few older ones work on 4-part hymns on occasion, even if their church doesn’t sing hymns. It’s still an important skill they may be able to use someday!

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Top Tools and Resources – Grammarly: Spell-check on steroids

June 26, 2017
by Amy
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If you spend any time on Facebook at all, we’ve all seen posts in our news feed from trending sites like Lifebuzz, Buzzfeed, or Boredpanda, such as:

10 Funny Spelling Mistakes.

or

18 Funny Spelling Errors Children Make That Made Me Burst Out Laughing.

While I find those types of posts typically annoying, sometimes they can give us a good chuckle.

Spelling and grammatical errors are good for a little social media humor, but today I want to share with you a tool that can save us, as working professionals, from becoming the next find on Buzzfeed.

I recommended this tool on my Resources page but wanted to explain in more detail why it’s such an important and useful to me as an independent music professional.
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Three-in-One: A Review of Little Gems for Piano (and an MLT-based Application)

June 13, 2017
by Amy
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As I was driving to my studio this morning I was thinking about the early years of piano instruction. While they’re often the hardest for parents and children to get through, the first few months and years are the most important for several reasons.

First, we must engage our music students in a way that fosters a love of and a successful experience at making music. Second, we must develop a healthy technique so they have freedom at the piano from the start. Third, we need to introduce students to a variety of sounds, tonalities, and meters so they can hear, think, and engage in music with understanding. 

That’s a whole lot of goodness wrapped up into a student’s first experience at the piano!

Today I’m to going to share my thoughts on a book called Little Gems for Piano and how rote pieces like these can cover all three of these critical areas in one. We will focus especially on the last one as it is part of the philosophy I am slowing working to incorporate in my teaching called Music Learning Theory (MLT) by the late Dr. Edwin Gordon.

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Game Day Roundup for your Studio and Kitchen

January 30, 2017
by Amy
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Soon, many Americans will be gathering for one of the biggest annual sporting events – Super Bowl Sunday.

In honor of the upcoming festivities, in this post, I’ll share some:

(1) Favorite football-themed lessons, worksheets, games, and music

(2) Favorite game-day recipes

(3) A couple of personal memories of years past

First, the memories.

Football, “Footy,” and I

As a non-sports fan, Super Bowl Sunday is a day where I have fun making fun food and spending time with people I love. I’m that person: the commercial-watching, appetizer-eating, half-time show critic. The only time I’m ever interested in the game is when the Indianapolis Colts are playing.

If you’re like me when it comes to the Super Bowl, you may check out the podcast An Egghead’s Guide to the Super Bowl by Freakonomics.

My biggest Super Bowl memory was Super Bowl XLI (2007) between the Colts and the Chicago Bears. At the time, we were living in Melbourne, Australia. We kept a blog of our adventures back then called Aussie Chaps. Here’s what I said at the time:

Did you think we’d actually miss seeing the Colts play in the Super Bowl just because we live 12,000 miles away? Of course not! We ordered the sports channel for a month just so we could catch the game!

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