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!
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 Triosavailable 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.
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.
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 stickeron them and I wrote the year it was the winning composition.
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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
If you want to keep the document as is and not risk being at the mercy of my future edits, you could download it.
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.
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 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.
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.
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).
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.
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!
Favorite Church Music Books for Students
In my opinion, Alfred, in general, has the best collection of sacred music out there. Their Sacred Performer series is full of a plethora of any type of book you could imagine. A lot of sacred music I get for students is published by Alfred.
Disclaimer: All opinions regarding publishers and books are 100% my own. This is not a paid advertisement. However, please note that Piano Pantry is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. There may be links to Amazon products in the post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Simply put, being an associate allows me to make a small percentage from Amazon on items to which I link at no extra cost to you.
One of my all-time favorites
I had been on the lookout for a while for a book of hymns in their original state (not arranged) that were slightly simplified. The homophonic texture of most hymns is quite complicated for most students to play.
Praise Hits is a solid selection of music that’s generally not outdated. Often in the “praise hits” world, with the quick shift in contemporary worship music styles that occur, it’s easy for a lot of students to not be familiar with the music even in books marked as “Popular,” “Current,” or “Contemporary.”
Levels 1 and 2 are OK, but Level 3 is my favorite. The pieces are written in a very chordal style with inversions and voicing similar to what I might choose to play if I were playing from a chord chart.
All of the levels correlate with the Alfred Basic Piano Library levels.
Of course, I can’t go without mentioning Faber’s Hymns supplements.
Book 2Bis one of my favorites from this series since it focuses on using primary chord progressions.
Book 4 is one of my all-time favorite hymn arrangement books for students. There are lots of pieces, and the arrangements are all very pleasing. I go for this book before I go for books 3 or 4 in the Play Hymn Series mentioned above.
Bastien doesn’t make it into my studio often, but I have used the Hymn Favorites books quite a bit. Level 2, once again, is my favorite.
Like Alfred and Faber, the levels correlate with the levels of the piano method series.
The Popular Hymn series is similar. I’ll be honest; I’m not exactly sure the difference between the two series. Maybe one was published later with supposedly more “popular” hymns of the time?
Christian Hits for Teens is one of my newest discoveries. One of my students performed “The Prayer” from Book 3 at the recital.
As an intermediate-level student, not only was the piece a bit of a stretch, but I’ll admit I didn’t allow enough preparation time for her to master it.
We were about to cut the piece short during one of her lessons when we took a moment to listen to Celine Dion and Josh Grobansing the piece on YouTube. It gave me a brilliant idea!
Since we had two keyboards on stage, she played the first 2 1/2 pages, and I picked up when it became beyond her ability halfway through page two and played to measure 60. She played measures 61 through the downbeat of measure 64 then I played the final page. She joined me on the final two resting chord measures to close it out, and it worked quite splendidly – just like Josh and Celine! 😉
Carol Tornquist is one of my favorite arrangers of Christian piano arrangements. Her book Current and Classic Praise (Late Intermediate / Early Advanced) is one of my absolute favorites. A couple of my students have played from it and really enjoyed it.
The selections are current and classics, literally! My favorites, in particular, include 10,000 Reasons, How Great is our God, In Christ Alone, Your Grace is Enough, and Your Great Name. I have to say though that there’s not one arrangement in the book that I don’t like!
Christian Hits
She also has a book called Christian HitsI recently purchased and am excited to keep on hand. It’s marked as “Easy Piano,” but we all know that’s a lie. 🙂 Come on, publishers!
I have a student who plays around the Faber Level 3B level; this was perfect. It includes inversions, root-5th-octave-crossover accompaniment patterns, dotted 16th rhythms, and plenty of syncopation.
My biggest qualm with the whole “easy piano” mark is that when people other than teachers (like piano parents) go out to buy a book for their students for Christmas or something, they never pick the proper difficulty level because of labels like this. They think, “gee, my student has been taking piano for five years; they surely play harder than easy music,” and they get them an advanced level book that is not even close to what they can handle. We should all put our heads together and develop a better labeling system!
Super Easy Songbook: Hymns
This Hymnsbook from the Super Easy Songbook series by Hal Leonard is a great resource to have on hand as it’s full of 60 hymns in lead-sheet style in the keys of C, F, and G.
It includes charts with suggested chord inversion at the beginning of every piece.
One of my adult students, who has played by ear her whole life (and only in the key of F!), is playing out of this book. I also have her reading 4-part hymns in various keys and playing one-chord chart praise hit each week. She is doing great with the combination and is a star student!
The Phillip Keveren Series
One of my other favorite composers (even more than Carol Tornquist, shh!) is Phillip Keveren. The guy is brilliant. Hal Leonard has a gold mine with his incredible Phillip Keveren Series out there LOL. 🙂
This is from the Piano Solo Late Intermediate/Early Advanced series. My student playing in the RCM Celebration Series Level 6 is playing from this book.
There’s also a Hymns with a Touch of Jazzbook I came across while writing this post that’s already in my shopping cart. I can’t wait to try it out!
From his Easy Piano series, is the Weekly Worshipbook that is full of 52 hymns.
The leveling would be good for a student around Faber 3A-3B. It is also a great book for adult students interested in playing hymns that may find the homophonic hymn style too challenging.
As a bonus, each piece includes a short “hymn history” segment – a beautiful tool for discussing the piece.
One of my students, who’s big into praise and worship music, has gone through nearly every piece in this book!
Our Church-Music-Themed Recital
For our church-music recital, every student had the opportunity to perform two pieces. The first piece was an assigned “reading” piece arrangement. For their second piece, they were given the option of:
Another reading/arrangement
A piece by ear
A chord chart to play and sing
A lead sheet
4-part hymn with the possibility of the audience singing along
Other ideas they may have…
Four of my youngest students played a piece by ear. They included “The B.I.B.L.E.,” “This Little Light of Mine,” “God is so Good,” and “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” They played the melody in the RH, and we added single bass tone harmonies on the left.
This father/son duo played an arrangement of Christ the Lord is Risen Today. How special is that!?
I was especially happy to have a couple of students play hymns that the audience sang along with. One played “Faith of our Fathers” about halfway through the recital (I “led” the singing), and another did the “Doxology” as the final piece of the recital. It was a great way to close out a church-music-themed recital and to pull the audience in to make music together!
Aren’t they delightful?
What are your favorite church music books? Let’s keep the list going in the comments!
AFFILIATE DISCLOSURE
Please note that Piano Pantry is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Simply put, being an associate allows me to make a small percentage from Amazon on items to which I link at no extra cost to you.
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. Continue reading
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 experienceatmaking 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 Pianoand 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.
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.
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!
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.
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 
The Play Hymns Series by Melody Bober and Robert Vandall is really nice.
Of course, I can’t go without mentioning Faber’s Hymns supplements.
Bastien doesn’t make it into my studio often, but I have used the 
She also has a book called 
This 
There’s also a 
From his Easy Piano series, is the 
