The first holiday of the school term is just around the corner! Halloween week falls perfectly mid-semester, making it a great time to switch things up—whether that means replacing your usual lesson routine with a group class or sprinkling in a spooky twist.
Introduce your students to spine-tingling, dramatic classical works with the Halloween Classical Music Playlist from PianoPantry.com. From Bach’s Organ Toccata to Stravinsky’s Infernal Dance, this curated collection features 13 hauntingly beautiful pieces—almost an hour of music to pick and choose from.
For a deeper listening experience, pair the playlist with the Listening Guide, which offers brief background notes and guided reflection prompts to engage students more fully.
Download the 7-page resource at PianoPantry.com/Halloween and make this Halloween musically memorable!
I’m Amy Chaplin, and you’re listening to The Piano Pantry Podcast, a place where you’ll find practical and sustainable rhythms for living teacher life.
Every 5 episodes, I like to have a casual chat with someone who is out there just like you, living studio teacher life.
Today’s guest—Nicola Cantan—likely needs little introduction. She’s someone I’ve personally always been a bit in awe of—especially in her down-to-earth demeanor, thoughtful mindset, and inspiring ability to recognize a need and create something to share with our world.
Amy: Welcome to the Piano Pantry podcast, Nicola. I can’t believe how long it’s taken me to have you on there, but I’m happy you’re here today with us. So why don’t you go ahead and just introduce yourself briefly to everyone, just in case they don’t know who you are, even though you’re Superwoman in Piano Teacher World, and just let us know a little bit of what you do.
Nicola: I can’t say that I’m Superwoman, but yeah. I am a teacher over in Dublin, in Ireland, and I’ve been teaching for over 20 years now. Last year was my 20th year of teaching, which is crazy, and I run a couple of websites. So Vibrant Music Teaching is my membership, and then we have the Vivid Practice app, and much longer than that, I’ve been blogging under the name Colorful Keys. Kind of a lot of spinning plates.
Amy: So I know a little bit of your background just from other things I’ve heard on other podcasts, but everyone may not necessarily. Would you mind sharing a little bit about that? I know that you actually didn’t kick off your career as a piano teacher, which is not unusual.
I was the same way. However, I was still in the world of music. At least I know. So I was a choir director, and then that evolved into piano teaching, a couple of nights a week, which evolved into a full-time gig here the last 15 years, maybe I would say. So I would love to just hear a little bit more details on that transition for you and what you were doing prior to being a piano teacher.
Nicola: Sure. It’s what I was doing concurrently in a way. So I started teaching as a teenager, just like my part-time job. It was a suggestion from my teacher at the time, who obviously had a lot of confidence in me, in me that I think was misplaced at the time, ’cause I didn’t know what I was doing.
But anyway, went off to teach. So I kept that as my part-time job all the way through college and everything. But what I studied in college was actually fashion design. And I worked in the industry for a couple of years after I got out of college as well, but I kept teaching all of that time. So I went to college, I did fashion design, still teaching all the way through that.
I stopped teaching for about a year. When I was working in a high street brand design office, I became self-employed because I was going into the bridal wear industry, so I was making bridal gowns, veils, and stuff like that. And that’s when I picked up teaching again, and the roles gradually flipped, where teaching took over as my main thing and sewing gradually became my hobby. And yeah, just all flipped around eventually.
Amy: Did your piano teaching become more of a thing because you were interested in taking on more students, or maybe because you weren’t getting as much work in the other job? Or how did that happen? Was it by choice, or was it a natural thing?
Nicola: I think it was a natural thing, but I think a subconscious choice, I would say.
So if you study fashion design, I mean, it’s supposedly this very creative thing, and it’s very creative in college, but actually working in the job is. Not that fulfilling creatively. And as I started teaching again after I’d finished college and been working in the industry a little bit, I started realizing I discovered blogs, I discovered different teaching ideas, and I started realizing that, hey, teaching can be the most creative thing.
And I still truly believe it’s one of the most creative things anyone can do is teach. And when you see it like that. It made a lot more sense to me, like it was a lot more fulfilling, and that’s how I gradually drifted in that direction and took on more and more students and obviously, word spread and yeah, it just went from there.
Amy: Did you feel like in any of that time while you were teaching piano and still like studying fashion and stuff, did you always have an inkling of Ooh, maybe piano would be more interesting to do, or it was, it always just, oh, a side thing, I’m just doing this to make a little money while I’m going through college, or was there ever like a desire that, ooh, maybe this could become more in the future.
Nicola: No, it was never. I never had it really on my radar because it was a nice side job. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it. I liked working with kids. I liked the job. I think I always thought, oh my, my part-time job is so much better than all my friends who were just working in a shop, but that’s the comparison I had in my head, and I think it’s because I had no perspective on the whole wide world of piano and of possibilities within teaching and playing music. Even like – I knew that jazz existed but I had no concept even at the time of how one went about playing in that style. I was just entirely in this classical world. Specifically, over here in Ireland, we’re very focused on exams. So I just went through all the exams, and that was the majority of my experience.
So I thought you had to sit there and say, okay, play the next scale. Why didn’t you practice it? Okay, let’s prepare for the next exam. Like I just. I thought that was baked into it, and so I never would’ve considered it because it seemed so regimented, but it didn’t have to be.
Amy: I remember when I was in Australia teaching, and I was working part-time in these offices and then doing one night of students. And I remember at the time again just thinking, okay, how do my teacher do this? What books do I do? And I would go to the music store and look at all these books and be like I don’t really know what to give them. And it’s the same thing. It takes a while until you really learn the world of pedagogy, that there’s so much more beyond just Oh, here’s a book that I dug out of my drawer from when I was a kid, or this classical piece that I studied that I can maybe give to them.
So anyway, let’s just talk a little bit about your studio itself. So, of course, because you’ve progressed through teaching part-time into a little bit slowly, more full-time, and now you’ve got a lot more going on with all of your other things, I would love to hear how your studio setup, just like how you run your lessons and stuff, has evolved over the years.
Nicola: Sure. Yeah, I guess I gradually went full-time by myself, and then I introduced Buddy lessons. So if people aren’t familiar with what I mean by Buddy lessons, it’s like overlapping lessons. So my students. Most of my students for a long time now come for a solo lesson and then a shared portion of a lesson with another student.
So it’s like the lessons overlap in the middle. And I did that for a good while, and then I started taking on other teachers. So what my studio looks like today is it’s me and two other teachers. Some years it’s three, but two or three other teachers, depending on the hours. And we’ve about 70 students.
And as I say, we teach primarily in buddy lessons, but some solo lessons as well, depending on the student. And yeah, it’s…there’s a lot going on.
Amy: Have you ever done group classes at all, as part of their lesson structure?
Nicola: Yeah, so I, we do like beginner groups, that’s the students’ main form of learning.
So for our preschoolers, we also have a program called Piano Launchpad that we do for first-year students. Not every beginner goes into one of those, but just. Depends on demand and different things in different years. But yeah, we usually have one or two of the piano launchpad groups and a mini musicians group on the go. And then we have some group like workshops that are supplemental to that for all students.
Amy: What made you think about doing Buddy lessons? Was that kind of an original idea of your own, or had you heard about it from somewhere else? Do you even remember how that occurred? Because it’s been so long?
Nicola: Yeah, it’s been a good while.
I don’t wanna say it’s my idea, ’cause I’m sure I got it from somewhere, but I don’t remember anyone sharing the specific format that I do, where it’s just overlapping in the middle. I had heard about labs, and I’d been hearing about different types of lesson formats. Yeah. From various teachers in online sources, podcasts, and things.
But yeah I started trialing this thing called Buddy Lessons, years ago now. And it’s just my favorite way to teach. It’s my favorite thing. Initially, it was 40 minutes of solo and 20 minutes of buddy time, and I quickly changed that the next year to 30 and 30, ’cause I wanted more time that was shared between the two students.
Amy: Let’s now jump on the other side of things and just chat a little bit about your world of content creation. I don’t know, maybe what, how many episodes ago it was, I think it was very early on the podcast. I did an episode on the history of content creators because I’ve been following bloggers myself since the early two thousands, when I was only teaching two piano students, and I was following Natalie and Susan Paradis and Wendy.
So I’ve always just been interested in that, and I used an RSS reader to follow all the blogs, so I know what’s going on with everybody. So correct me if I’m wrong, but did you start in 2012, and I think that was about the same time as Leila Viss and Melody Payne, is that right?
Nicola: 2013.
Amy: Okay. So I was close – 2013.
Nicola: Yeah.
Amy: What is it that made you jump into that world? Did you just see a need for things out there? Was it more of a creative outlet for you, yourself, that you were just like, I have all these ideas and I don’t see anybody else doing them, and I just wanna share them? What kind of prompted you to get going?
Nicola: Yeah, I think there were two different things going on. I had set up a website, I was getting really serious about, making sure my studio was full-time, and it was my main thing by that point. And so I had read that having a blog was useful for your website. So that was on my mind to have regular. This is very old SEO advice. So no one take this and add a book to your current, this is very old now, but at the time, that was some advice that was out there. But also, I had, in an effort to expand my studio, started teaching preschoolers, and I had reached out to a few local Montessori and preschools, and one of them got connected with one.
So I was getting a few preschool students, and I was just finding that. There wasn’t enough material for me. There weren’t enough games to play in the lessons. There weren’t enough manipulatives, different things I was finding I needed, as I created my lesson plans for them, and I had this design degree that I was apparently not really using anymore, even though I was.
I was like… that’ll take me two seconds to create, so I’m just gonna create it, and I might as well share it because I’ve gotten things from other blogs that are out there. So it was just a matter of, I’m gonna create this anyway. I might as well share it online. And then started sharing more articles, thoughts, and different things from that point.
Amy: Did you have a vision for all of this moving forward, or was it just like everything came as it I assume it was just everything came as it was. So you had your blog, and then I think after that, maybe it was your YouTube channel, probably you made a bunch of videos, which you’re still doing, like weekly. Is that right? And then you’ve got your VMT, which came a little bit after that. And then the Vivid Practice app. Is something else on the horizon? What’s that timeline?
Nicola: Okay, so the blog started, the YouTube channel was on and off for a while, so I’m not sure exactly when that started, and before the membership was my first book.
And a course that I created from that book, and that’s what led me down the road to creating the membership eventually, and knowing that I could do it, which my first book was the Piano Practice Physicians Handbook, which is just practice ideas for different issues. So that was in 2017 that I think I released that, and then the membership was after that.
So vibrant music teaching. The podcast started somewhere in there. Yeah. And Vivid practice is much newer. That’s only two years old now.
Amy: It seems like you always just see a need, and then you just fill it.
Nicola: Yeah, pretty much like from the first blog post I put out, it was just, why has no one created this resource? Or why can’t I find it somewhere to buy or free online? And I’ll just put it out there. And the same thing with the membership started with this game’s library because it was so frustrating to me that you couldn’t find. The right thing that would actually teach a concept. It was random, and you were scrolling on Pinterest for ages.
It was what it felt like to me. So that’s where that came from. And yeah, the practice app was, I’m frustrated with some things about how another practice app works. Let’s find a way to make it ourselves and make it the way that I think would be best for music teachers.
Amy: You do have a new thing. You’ve seen another need that was lacking in Piano Teacher World. And you have something that you just launched, didn’t you? A book or something? You looked surprised, like what is she talking about?
Nicola: Yeah. I know for a second I was like…what did I do? LOL. Yes. I’ve just launched a method book, which is called Piano Paint Books, and it is a method book for young beginners because I couldn’t find one that worked the way I wanted it to with my students.
Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of great method books out there, but I wanted something that was more focused on getting kids playing right away, which is what I wasn’t really seeing with a lot of young beginner methods, at least in the way I wanted to see it. So yeah, that’s the most recent launch,
Amy: So of all these avenues that you’ve been doing, is there one particular aspect of the work that you do that you enjoy the most, or do you just enjoy? Enjoy the variety.
Nicola: I really like variety. It’s true.
Is there one specific aspect? I think designing is still my happy place. I wouldn’t actually want to do it 24/7 or anything. And I don’t think it would make any sense without the teaching. It’s a given that teaching is my favorite thing, but designing, just getting to sit down. And disappear for a while inside Adobe software is a bit of a happy place for me. It’s just like deep focus and yeah, at the time just melts away when I’m doing that kind of work.
Amy: You mentioned Adobe Software, so I’ll go to a question I was gonna ask a little bit later, but I was curious if you use InDesign or something like it. I assumed it was something like that, Adobe, because with the design background, you weren’t maybe just using Canva, but maybe you do use Canva some, I don’t know.
Nicola: Yeah, we use Canva a little bit. I get this question a lot and I always feel like unhelpful answering it because I have this design degree. So, of course, I learned to use Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign. Photoshop a little bit. We would use that a little bit. Yeah. Less, but I can use it.
So yeah, primarily those two programs. But that’s a really unhelpful suggestion when somebody comes to me and says, I have this one game idea. I wanna create hr. I wanna create this PDF for my students. Canva is the answer to that. Like, it is user-friendly. You don’t have to be a designer; you don’t have this extreme learning curve.
If you want to become a full-time graphic designer, sure, go learn Adobe Software. But if that’s not your goal, I think Canva’s great for that. And Canva is also great within our team at Vibrant Music, too, ’cause it’s so easy to share designs and templates between each other and easy for anyone to pick up and use.
Amy: What has been the hardest thing that you’ve done as a content creator?
Nicola: Every time you put out a new thing, you don’t know how it’s gonna be received. So I’d say that’s one of the hardest things is just this moment of, okay, am I right? Vulnerability a little bit, right? Yeah. Yeah. Work. Yeah. Yeah.
Does anyone else also have this problem that I’ve worked hard to try and fix? So I’d say if I was picking one moment, it would be launching the membership in the first place eight years ago, because that was just. Do people care about games as much as I do? Are they going to go for this?
And yeah, it’s been fantastic and a wonderful community, but there’s always that moment when you create something new.
Amy: Of course, we have to talk apps and productivity stuff. I don’t like to say that I’m a productivity person because I really don’t like that word. I’m more about managing life and being organized, but in a way that works for you. So just putting that disclaimer out there. But I do like to talk about tools and things that people are using because it just interests me.
I know that years and years ago, I heard you talk about using ClickUp. And actually, you inspired me to try it because at the time I was looking for something different.
I was using something like Google Tasks at the time, or Apple Tasks for just some basic to-do lists. And of course, I had Evernote, and I was just like ready to transition to something else. But I wasn’t quite sure yet what it was. So I did try ClickUp, but for me, mentally, it wasn’t the right program. But if someone is doing a lot of project management, I think it’s really fantastic for something like that.
Do you still use that a lot, and do you have anything else that’s a part of your workflow for managing everything that you have going on?
Nicola: Yes, we do still use ClickUp. I think it’s great as a team, and yeah, it can be used absolutely as a solo person as well.
Like we have a course in the membership showing studio owners how to use it to manage tasks. It’s just a way of getting things to automatically repeat on a set schedule, and organize things, and to subdivide tasks of this thing. But no matter what software you use, it’s about the system and having one system and sticking to it.
And for some people it’s about finding the right system. And for some people, it’s about stopping trying to find the right system and just settling on one that’s okay, like you don’t want something that doesn’t work with your brain at all, but you do want something that you stick to long term because nothing’s going to actually be perfect.
So I just…along with your disclaimer about the word productivity, which I also hate that word. I think it’s terrible because it implies producing products, and we don’t work on a factory line. So it’s nonsense. It’s a terrible word, and it leads people down all sorts of poor directions where they realize they don’t actually enjoy what they’re doing and all of this.
Anyway, but alongside that disclaimer, I just wanna put out the disclaimer that it can be really tempting to spend your time researching the next best way to be efficient instead of just. Doing the thing, just putting the head down and getting the work done.
So yes, we still use ClickUp. That doesn’t mean that if you’re current using, currently using Asana or something else, that you should jump ship and spend ages moving to Clickup. That’s not necessarily the case.
Amy: I actually don’t try a lot of apps and stuff out there. Like, I think about it for a long time. Stick with what I do, and then I ultimately ended up going to Todoist, which is a task-type app. And you can do similar things, recurring reminders, project management, organization, things like that. And then, of course, I also use Notion for the rest of everything in life.
So, do you have anything else besides ClickUp that you use on a daily basis?
Nicola: So a notebook and a day planner diary type thing is what I actually use to manage my own things so I don’t spend all day following the ClickUp list.
That’s more, it reminds me to do things, especially quick things that I just would forget about that crops up periodically, and it helps me stay on top of what the team’s doing in different areas. But for my own, what I’m gonna do today, it’s probably in my written diary.
Amy: I think a lot of teachers are probably rejoicing to hear you say that, such relief, and also maybe a little bit surprised.
Part of me is surprised to hear you say that, but part of me isn’t as well, just the creative side of you. I could see how… There’s a special type of journaling or writing…I wish I could think of what it was called where it’s almost like very artsy…bullet….is it bullet journaling?!
Yeah., there we go. Do you do something like that, or is your notebook like artsy and does it have lots of drawings? Are you pretty? No, you’re not?
Nicola: No. There’s some very messy diagrams. That would be the only drawing. No one would be impressed by it. My handwriting is pretty horrible, so it’s in a secret code. Because very few people can read my handwriting.
Amy: That’s funny.
Nicola: But yeah, no, there’s definitely like color coding on all of that, but there’s no. I don’t have a whole bullet journal system or anything. I don’t think I would maintain that. I write a list, like I’ll often write a list. That’s just everything you could be doing right now if my brain feels too full.
And then another type of list, which is, okay, what has to be gotten done this month or is often by a certain event, like I’m going away at a certain time. What has to happen before then? So the notebook is for like longer term lists and messiness, and then. The day-to-day diary is just, you must do these things today.
Amy: Okay, so as we come to a close, just a couple of fun life-type questions.
What is something that is saving your life right now?
Nicola: You know what, the first thing that comes to mind is that I have earlier finishing times this year, my teaching schedule, and I still haven’t gotten over the joy of it. We’re like almost two months into the year over here.
But it’s just amazing, especially my one day that I’ve finished super early at like quarter to six, which is very early for me. It’s like half six is standard, but it’s just like that bonus 45 minutes. That’s just wonderful.
Amy: Okay, so the opposite of that. What is something that you need to let go of or that you’ve recently let go of that wasn’t really working for you in this season of life?
Nicola: Yeah, so I thought about this one, and I think this is in between those two categories, which is actually the way we used to do group workshops. And I know you’ve gone through so many iterations of group workshops in your studio. I’ve heard you talk about it, but we need another iteration, and I’m in the middle of it now. I’m trialing something, seeing if parents will sign up for that, then I’ll have to try something else. But I don’t know, I’m completely letting go of them because I don’t really want to do that. But I’m definitely letting go of them being on a set schedule that we’ve had before because it’s just some work anymore.
Amy: I think that is all of our questions, Nicola. This has been really fun.
Is there anything else that we haven’t chatted about that you would like to share with the Piano Pantry podcast listeners?
Nicola: You know what, I think I would like to thank you for your Piano Pantry content over the years, but also especially for Friday Finds, because I know I’ve found a lot of different things through that, and it’s been such a fun little tradition, and I’m sure that’s true for many teachers as well.
Amy: I appreciate hearing that. It’s been super fun. It’s one of those things I always enjoyed reading on other people’s blogs, so when I kicked off my blog, it was like one of the first things I did, and it was just easy to do because it just comes naturally. So I’m glad you found some useful stuff on it.
Thanks so much for being here, Nicola!
Nicola: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Amy!
If you’re enjoying this podcast, show a little love on Apple Podcasts or Spotify by leaving a rating and review—and don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.
Even better, consider joining me on Patreon. For just $4 a month, you’ll be teaming up with other friends of the podcast to help keep it ad-free. I don’t know about you, but I find ad-free podcasts to be such a relief.
At the end of the month, I’ll be presenting a special session for Patreon Insiders called A New Primer: Audiation-Based Lessons for Young Beginners. We’ll dive into Marilyn Lowe’s innovative Keyboard Games books and explore how singing, movement, art, creative exploration, and guided improvisation can completely transform your young students’ piano lesson experience.
Visit PianoPantry.com/patreon to join today.
Thanks, as always, for being here. Until next time!
