The Piano Student: Top Posts
October 1, 2008
The Piano Student is a music resource directory for teachers and beginning-intermediate level piano students. Below are a few of the most popular posts and the most active posts. I hope you enjoy the resources you find. If you are having trouble finding a particular resource, please let me know. I would be glad to help.
Updated on May 7, 2016
Piano Apps
Apps that help kids to learn to play the piano.
MMF! Piano Primer App | Download on Apple App Store
Treble Clef Kids | Download on Apple App Store
Music for Little Mozarts | Download on Apple App Store
Meet Beethoven iPad App (Includes sheet music with interactive tools for practicing)
Free Printable Piano Books
All-In-One Piano Book for Beginners | Free eBook
MMF! All-In-One Piano Primer Book | Free Sheet Music eBook
Composing with Kids (Children) | Free Piano Lesson eBook
Beethoven Piano Book | Free Sheet Music Digital Print
Mozart | Free Piano eBook for Easy/Intermediate Solo
Tchaikovsky | Free Printable Piano Book (Easy/Intermediate)
Top Posts (with all-time views)
Also find links to free resources like…
Music Theory Arcade Games
Music Composer Biographies
And helpful posts on…
How to Make Money with your Music Studio Website
Careers in Music
Free Website Templates for Your Music Studio (and more)
3,756,426 All-Time Views – Thanks!
Summer Music Goals and Ideas to Make them Happen
June 7, 2017
Having a summer practice goal is a wonderful way to keep kids motivated and growing as musicians. It also makes the most of their free time. If you’re interest in taking on this challenge here’s a list of things to consider.
Length of Vacation
The first thing you’ll need to figure out is how many days your child has for summer vacation. Then you can factor in family vacation time and a few full days at the water park. What’s left are the days for the practice challenge.
Practice Goal
There are a variety of goals your can set, including:
a) Practice every day. No set time limit. Just accomplish something.
b) Practice 20 minutes every day. Mark your practice record as students achieve their daily goal.
c) Set a a goal of 25 hours. Some kids might like this best, and have the goal completed in a few weeks.
Practice Charts
We have a collection of free printable practice charts if you’re interested.
Reward or No Reward
You’ll also need to decide if the reward of becoming a better musician and playing fun songs is reward enough, or should you provide a reward to work toward.
A research study conducted by Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive: The Suprising Truth About What Motivates Us, looked at a group of preschoolers who chose to spend their “free play” time drawing. The researchers divided the students into three groups. The first was the “expected-award” group. They knew they would get something for completing their assigned goal. The second group was the “unexpected-award” group. They would receive a “Good Player” certificate, though wouldn’t know it’s coming. The third group was the “no-award” group. There was no promise of a reward, and nothing was awarded.
Children in the “unexpected-award” and “no-award” groups drew just as much and enjoyed drawing just as much. However, the children who expected to receive an award showed much less interest in drawing spent much less drawing.
Extrinsic rewarded can be great. You’ll just have to decide if they are right for your kids.
Here’s an arrangement of When Johnny Comes Marching Home for easy piano that not too hard to play. It offers younger players one of their first experiences to play a “composed piece” rather than just straight through the tune like most arrangements that they’ll be given at this stage in piano lessons. It also ventures in the key of G minor, so it a great opportunity to stretch them beyond C Major, G Major and F Major.
Sheet Music for Piano
Get When Johnny Comes Marching Home for Easy Piano
Students will also benefit by being able to listen to the Mp3 file of the arrangement that is available on the site.
Lyrics
When Johnny comes marching home again,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
We’ll give him a hearty welcome then
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The men will cheer and the boys will shout
The ladies they will all turn out
And we’ll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home.
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Browse other “The Piano Student” posts:
Teaching Dynamics: Linking the Visual Arts to Music
Free Printable Flash Cards | Treble and Bass Clef
Free Sheet Music for Piano | Level 2 (Easy)
Free Sheet Music for Piano | Level 3 (Easy)
Free Sheet Music for Piano | Level 4 (Intermediate)
Wynton Marsalis’ Twelve Practice Tips for Musicians, Athletes, or Anyone Who Wants to Learn Something New
May 11, 2017
I am a trumpet player, piano player/teacher and huge Wynton Marsalis fan. Here are 12 tips he offers for practicing which are beneficial to musicians as well as athletes or anyone else who would like to learn something new. Even if you only glance through these twelve tips you’ll see that his suggestions are sensible and realistic. They begin with the practical and move into the intangibles, such as developing creativity and optimism. They’re all “golden nuggets” because they’re coming from someone who has reached the highest level of achievement.
1) Seek out instruction: A good teacher will help you understand the purpose of practicing and can teach you ways to make practicing easier and more productive.
2) Write out a schedule: A schedule helps you organize your time. Be sure to allow time to review the fundamentals because they are the foundation of all the complicated things that come later.
3) Set goals: Like a schedule, goals help you organize your time and chart your progress…. If a certain task turns out to be really difficult, relax your goals: practice doesnʼt have to be painful to achieve results.
4) Concentrate: You can do more in 10 minutes of focused practice than in an hour of sighing and moaning. This means no video games, no television, no radio, just sitting still and working…. Concentrated effort takes practice too, especially for young people.
5) Relax and practice slowly: Take your time; donʼt rush through things. Whenever you set out to learn something new – practicing scales, multiplication tables, verb tenses in Spanish – you need to start slowly and build up speed.
6) Practice hard things longer: Donʼt be afraid of confronting your inadequacies; spend more time practicing what you canʼt do…. Successful practice means coming face to face with your shortcomings. Donʼt be discouraged; youʼll get it eventually.
7) Practice with expression: Every day you walk around making yourself into “you”, so do everything with the proper attitude…. Express your “style” through how you do what you do.
8) Learn from your mistakes: None of us are perfect, but donʼt be too hard on yourself. If you drop a touchdown pass, or strike out to end the game, itʼs not the end of the world. Pick yourself up, analyze what went wrong and keep going….
9) Donʼt show off: Itʼs hard to resist showing off when you can do something well…. But my father told me, “Son, those who play for applause, thatʼs all they get.” When you get caught up in doing the tricky stuff, youʼre just cheating yourself and your audience.
10) Think for yourself: Your success or failure at anything ultimately depends on your ability to solve problems, so donʼt become a robot…. Thinking for yourself helps develop your powers of judgment.
11) Be optimistic: Optimism helps you get over your mistakes and go on to do better. It also gives you endurance because having a positive attitude makes you feel that something great is always about to happen.
12) Look for connections: If you develop the discipline it takes to become good at something, that discipline will help you in whatever else you do…. The more you discover the relationships between things that at first seem different, the larger your world becomes. In other words, the woodshed can open up a whole world of possibilities.
Learn more about Wynton Marsalis here.
7 Ways Teachers Can Increase Their Income
April 10, 2017
Teaching is satisfying in so many ways, but teacher salaries can be challenging at times. If you’re up for doing something about it, here’s a list of ideas.
1) Sell Your Teaching Materials
TeachersPayTeachers.com is the largest marketplace for selling teacher created digital print lesson plans and resources. If you’ve got a few lesson plans that you think would be a hit with other teachers, you should create an account.
If you’re interested in selling on Teachers Pay Teachers, Pinterest will soon become you best friend. The traffic to Pinterest is amazing and the people visiting this site have more of a shopping mindset that any other social media site. Below are tools and resources that will be helpful.
TrafficWonker makes marketing easy by automation just about every aspect of Pinterest marketing.
TrafficWonker.com – The Auto-Pilot Pinterest Pin Scheduler
The following 10-page book will help guide Pinterest marketing newbies to make the most of the site – and get it working well in just 21 days. Thie book is FREE!
Pinterest Marketing :: 21-Day Plan for Marketing Campaign Automation
2) Teach Online Courses
Teachable.com is one of the top sites for marketing online courses. With Teachable.com you can easily build a beautiful course website, share your knowledge, and be rewarded for it. I personally know a teacher who put together a video course and launched it to Teachable.com. In the first few days, she made over $2,000. Wow!
3) Tutor Online
Tutor.com provides online tutoring – and you can be one of their tutors. You can also do it the old-fashioned way – in person.
4) Write an eBook
Writing a book certainly isn’t a quick process, but it can be rewarding. Just research which topics seem most successful and start writing. It is also important to start building a list of people who may be interested in your book once it’s published.
5) Become a Grader or Test Scorer
If you don’t mind increasing the mind-numbing number of hours you spend grading papers, you might consider offering your services to other teachers or school districts. To find out about and apply for jobs like these, you can visit the job board on HigherEdJobs.com.
6) Writer/Proofreading
If your grammar skills are strong and you like writing and/or proofreading, you can offer your services on UpWork.com. I use this site often to find talented people.
7) Taxes
Just being better informed about what you can deduct can save you tons of money at tax time every year. The following article can help you identify a few ways you could be saving. Of course, consulting your accountant should always be the final word on these types of things.
Émile Waldteufel, born on December 9, 1837 was a French pianist, conductor and composer. He is known for Skaters’ Waltz and Dolores.
This arrangement of Dolores is for level 4 piano solo. It gives students an excellent opportunity to work at musical expression, while not being over technical.
Get Dolores Waltz (Waldteufel) | Sheet Music for Piano Solo
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Browse other “The Piano Student” posts:
Teaching Dynamics: Linking the Visual Arts to Music
Free Printable Flash Cards | Treble and Bass Clef
Free Sheet Music for Piano | Level 2 (Easy)
Free Sheet Music for Piano | Level 3 (Easy)
Free Sheet Music for Piano | Level 4 (Intermediate)
5 Tips for Encouraging Today’s Music Students
February 21, 2017
Today’s kids take ballet, soccer, and gymnastics, always do the work there. They are conditioned to complete their goal while they’re with the teacher. Music lessons require a completely different conditioning for the student – and the parent. A conditioning that requires daily work at home.
So what can be done to point our kids in the right direction?
1) Get to Know Students. Start by getting to know the interests of your students. Ask them about what’s going on at school, what they are interested in, and what movies they’ve seen recently. The last question can often give teachers ideas as to what they might be interested in playing. The music from those movies can be found on MusicNotes.com.
2) Mark Mistakes. Make mistakes with a colored pencil to show students what to practice – and what mistakes shouldn’t be mistakes by next week. Use a new colored pencil next week.
3) Ask Students What They Want. Ask students what they want to play. Some students will practice every song in the book and be faithful to practice every week. Others won’t. That’s when you ned to find out what motivates them. What song is so great that they wouldn’t want to miss practicing it. Then find it.
4) Use a Point System. Award a point every time something is played well. At the end of the lesson, they get a treat from mom or dad. I find that 25 point goal works well.
5) Educate the Parents. Keep parents informed about how things are going. They can often help keep your students remembering to practice and remembering what they’re supposed to practice.
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Teaching Dynamics: Linking the Visual Arts to Music
December 14, 2016
Finding the perfect words to express what you mean and make the concept understandable to young students can be a challenge. When we finally figure out how to express our ideas, we tend to repeat these phrases over and over again.
I have been enhancing my students perfomances with dynamics (p, mp, mf, f) for many years. I have accomplished this with two strategies:
1) Define Terms – I teach students to pronounce the terms and defined them.
1) Demonstrate – I play examples and explain the terms. Mezzo Forte (mf) is easy. You don’t need to work hard to play soft or to play loud. Mezzo Piano (mp) and Forte (f) are more challenging because they require extra effort. Piano (p) requires the most effort.
Nothing special here. It has worked well enough, but it was difficult to achieve artistry-level performances with grade school students… until now.
For the past 5-6 years I’ve been taking art lessons, and decided to see if a connection between art and music might help my music students play their music in a much more expressive way.
I introduced value.
Value refers to the visible lightness or darkness of a color, and is one of the most important design elements in a work of art.
So, how does this relate to music?
The following chart shows the four most common dynamic levels and assigns a value to each of them.
I found that drawing a box above a section of the music, and shading it with the appropriate value, gave students a visual indication of how loud or soft the phrase should be played. A light turned on for my students and it transformed their performances.
In some instances, you might draw a box above a four measure phrase and that will be enough. Other pieces are so well written, and your students so capable, that you might want to dig a little deeper -adding value boxes above individual notes.
