One of my favorite quotes is this gem from Victor Hugo, author of the literary classic, Les Miserables:

“A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.”

I am always reminded of those words this time of year when I begin brainstorming for our next studio practice incentive theme. (Remember: today is the final day to get 20% off with the code SUMMER23!) My brainstorming page looks like this at the moment! But this is one of my favorite aspects of teaching and running an independent piano studio: the endless opportunity for new and creative ways to motivate my students and help them become successful musicians. A blank canvas on which to spill ideas and thoughts and dreams for the year ahead.

Here’s a snapshot of the pages last year that birthed the Redwood Resistance theme. At the bottom of the second page you can see the plethora of title ideas that were discarded on the path to the final one!

I have a compilation of all the students’ and parents’ theme suggestions that I solicited via our Year-End Evaluations, along with the various answers students gave to areas in which they want to improve, and my own ideas of areas I’d like to focus on across the board in our studio. With all of those elements in place, let the invisible labor begin!

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Anyone who’s been around here a while knows that I am a huge fan of Carnival of the Animals. It’s made its way into the theme of two of my piano camp programs! I was thrilled to discover recently that the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra performed a Carnival of the Animals: Remix that “takes viewers through a journey around the world, visiting all 7 continents and the animals and musical styles of each region. Infusing a variety of multi-dimensional art forms and musical styles – as well as introducing a lineup of new animal characters – brings a modern twist to this enduring classic.”

Additionally, there is a fabulous, free 39-page document with Educational Support Materials for music teachers who want to incorporate Carnival of the Animals: Remix in their classrooms or studios. Lots of great information and ideas that would be perfect for a set of group class themes, or maybe even a practice incentive theme…hmm, may need to ponder that possibility!

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We just wrapped up the year in our studio with Year-End Evaluations this week, and our Redwood Resistance practice incentive theme was a huge hit!

My studio age range right now is 6-17 years old, and levels range from brand new beginners to 10 years of lessons, and every one of them enjoyed the various aspects of this challenging, yet rewarding theme. There are always little things that we tweak along the way, so I’m happy to report that now that the theme is tested and tweaked it is available for you and your students!

And just because I know we’re all excited to celebrate summer, you can get 20% off any practice incentive theme between now and the end of the month. Just use the coupon code SUMMER23 when you checkout to receive the sale price.

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Several times now I’ve heard Dennis Alexander mention his personal website and how few teachers seem to know it exists. And several times now I’ve forgotten about it! So I decided that maybe if I make a point of writing about it, I’ll be more inclined to remember it. And while I was at it, I thought it could be helpful to compile a list of a few of my other favorite contemporary composers and their personal websites. Mr. Alexander’s website is such a fabulous resource where you can search for any of his compositions and find video recordings of him playing nearly everything he’s ever composed and published over the last four decades. And how much better to be able to send students here to listen to the composer himself playing his works rather than searching through whatever happens to be available on YouTube!

Husband and wife team Randall and Nancy Faber have authored over 300 piano books! To gain access to all of their content, you have to subscribe to the Teacher Atlas, but their free website gives you access to all kinds of information about their Piano Adventures method, numerous articles, and dozens of instructional videos. Piano Adventures is the method I used the most for many years prior to the publication of Piano Safari, and I still love much of their approach and their music.

Helen Marlais has been the presenter at some of my favorite workshops over the years (I’m honestly not sure if she even does any composing herself, but she has compiled many piano collections and presented hundreds of pedagogical workshops!). She has an engaging, energetic style, and is always chock-full of practical ideas that you can use right away with your piano students. Her website (which I just discovered!) features access to over 1,000 free pedagogical and teaching videos! You can easily search by title, specific book, or by pedagogical category when looking for a video to watch. Wow, I could “attend” a Helen Marlais workshop every month for the next 83 years…!

I wasn’t quite sure how to categorize this, but I couldn’t neglect to include the Piano Safari website because it is such a treasure trove of wonderful music and invaluable resources for piano teachers. Katherine Fisher and Julie Knerr Hague are the authors of the method, but the website now includes a number of other composers as well. Most recently I was delighted to discover the work of Charles Stier via his clever and fun book, Kitchen Suite. But the section not-to-be-missed on the website is the area devoted to Teacher Resources where you can practically acquire a whole piano pedagogy education reading the guides and mini essays that Katherine and Julie have written. If you have time over the summer, I highly recommend immersing yourself in these pages; it will undoubtedly contribute to your growth as a piano teacher!

Wendy Stevens (who happens to be one of my local colleagues!) has a website with a rapidly growing collection of piano music for kids, teens, and adults, along with various other educational resources to help piano teachers in their businesses and teaching. I purchased many of her compositions when they were still available as printed sheet music and I love her focus on creating music that sounds more mature and difficult than it is to learn. Many of her pieces also lend themselves well to rote teaching and learning, which has become an integral part of my teaching over the years. Wendy also frequently offers webinars highlighting her newest compositions and how to use them effectively with students.

I’m sure there are others that I am missing! Do you have any favorite contemporary educational composers with helpful websites that you frequent?

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Tim Topham recently wrote a fabulous article that presents 4 Tips for Teaching Beginner Technique to piano students.

He outlines the importance of non-legato touch, emphasizes forming a naturally curved hand, discusses naming musical gestures, and describes rotating the wrist. These closely parallel some of the technique principles I’ve discovered over the years and incorporate with all my beginning piano students. He also has a great video highlighting his four tips and demonstrating examples at the piano:

Such a helpful and concise explanation that I wish I would have had when I first starting teaching piano!

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In response to my recent post about the wonderful AnyTune app, Tony contacted me with several codes for the AnyTune Pro+ version of the app (a $14.99 value)!

I know I’ve just barely scratched the surface of the capabilities of this app, so I’m excited to check out the Pro version. I’m also giving away two free codes from AnyTunes to two Music Matters Blog readers. Just enter below below for your chance to win. Winners will be drawn using a random number generator at noon (CST) next Friday, April 7, 2023.

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One area of particular interest for me is folk songs from different countries. Especially when I’m putting together the Piano Expeditions piano camp curriculum, I enjoy trying to find folk songs from the country we’re “visiting” and see if they can be adapted for use in our week of piano camp. I was recently checking out some of the resources available on the Hoffman Academy website and discovered that they have a collection of free piano arrangements of a number of folk songs, some from places I’ve never even heard of (Assamese Folk Song, anyone??).

Since this year’s piano camp will be focused on Vivaldi and His Four Seasons, I was excited to find 5 free piano arrangements of his famous theme from “Spring.” The website also has an article that gives an overview of classical music and includes a helpful list of some of the more famous classical pieces with quick links to YouTube videos. Could be a great reference page to send to families looking for a suggested classical music listening list for their kids!

The post 32 Free Folk Songs and Popular Tunes for Easy Piano appeared first on Music Matters Blog.

At a recent Dennis Alexander workshop sponsored by our local music teachers association, Dennis mentioned that Anytune app. Maybe I’ve been living under a rock when it comes to new apps, but I had never heard of this one, and boy, have I been missing out!

Anytune is a free app that enables you to open mp3 files and easily adjust the tempo or transpose it to another key. This will be a fabulous tool for students to utilize because they can download mp3 files for many of the piano songs they are learning, especially ones that include accompaniment tracks, and then adjust the tempo for practice purposes. I’m going to start recommending this to students and their parents right along with a metronome app as a necessity when they start piano lessons!

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When I was perusing the Virtual Sheet Music website the other day, I came across their section of free resources for music teachers and noticed that they have a music manuscript file that you can adjust and print in either landscape or portrait mode with your specified number of staves. Since I rarely use theory books with my students, I’m a huge fan of having lots of manuscript paper on hand to use for composing and/or custom worksheets that can be designed on the fly for students. That’s why I often include some form of manuscript paper in our practice incentive theme assignment books as well!

Here on Music Matters Blog, we also have two free downloads with music manuscript paper. This multi-file download includes 7 pdf files with a variety of options for printing: 1 staff (landscape), 2 staves (landscape), 4 staves, 6 staves, 8 staves, 10 staves, 12 staves.

The second free music manuscript option includes a page of 8 staves with a keyboard diagram and Circle of 5ths diagram at the top of the page as a handy reference.

There is also a whole website devoted to creating a blank staff called BlankSheetMusic.net. Here you can add clefs, specify certain instrumentation, shrink or grow the size of the staves incrementally, and more. A very versatile tool!

Musicca also has a nice selection of manuscript/staff paper available with a number of variables, including a page of piano diagrams that could be very useful for creating music theory worksheets for piano students!

Another one I particularly like is this page from the Free Printable Paper website that has a grand staff and bar lines included – perfect for a quick theory worksheet for students that is already organized into measures!

Music Sheaf has a clever design that features 12 staves on the left hand side of the page with lots of room on the right hand side for taking notes or recording answers (if you use it to create a music theory worksheet for your students).

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Grab your tickets and get ready to travel because this summer our Piano Expeditions Piano Camp is off to experience the wonders of Italy!

Our summer piano camps have been a highlight in the studio for many years, and for the last several years the Piano Expeditions programs in particular have been a fabulous way to introduce new students to the wild and wonderful world of music. In fact, four of my current students started out as piano camp students!

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is such a beloved work with energetic and memorable tunes, so I’m thrilled to use it as the theme for this year’s piano camp. Plus, since there are only four seasons, but I plan for five days of piano camp, there’s an extra special surprise thrown in for Day Five. But it’s a secret for now! Stay tuned for more news and the official release of the full piano camp curriculum this summer! In the meantime, feel free to check out To France with Saint-Saëns and His Carnival, To Russia with Mussorgsky and His Exhibition, or To London with Handel and His Messiah if you’re looking for some fun piano camp ideas for your studio for this summer!

The post New Piano Expeditions Piano Camp Curriculum Coming This Summer appeared first on Music Matters Blog.

In the spring piano repertoire sampler from Kjos Publishing I noticed a link to their Multimedia Library. I was thrilled to discover that they have a HUGE collection of piano repertoire recordings for most of the books in their library.

The model performance recordings are by Diane Hidy and would be a fabulous reference to use alongside Jane Magrath’s Piano Literature for Teaching and Performance as you consider repertoire possibilities for your students. Sometimes it’s challenging to find reliable recordings of easier level classical piano literature, so I’m grateful to have this collection that is well-organized and free to utilize!

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Years ago I acquired a used copy of Jane Magrath’s book, The Pianist’s Guide to Standard Teaching and Performance Literature, published in 1995 by Alfred Publishing. It has served me well for many years, especially in my early days as a piano teacher when I was learning how to appropriately level and select repertoire for my students. In 2021, the Frances Clark Center published an updated edition, re-titled, Piano Literature for Teaching and Performance: A Graded Guide and Annotated Bibliography. I’ve had my eye on it for a while, but was reluctant to part with $60 not knowing if this new edition would have enough changes or improvements to justify replacing my well-worn older edition. It was a long shot, but I decided to see if I could find a copy to look at via our fabulous interlibrary loan system, and lo and behold, they managed to track one down from a private college in Georgia! So as I’m perusing the two books and making note of the commonalities and difference, I thought perhaps it would be helpful to share those here for anyone else facing the same conundrum!

The most notable difference when I picked the book up from the library was the size. The 1995 edition is 6×9″ while the 2021 edition is 9×12″ – a full 2x larger! The former contains 569 pages and the latter 634, so there is considerably more content in the new edition.

The next thing I was curious to see is whether there were any changes in the leveling. I appreciate that the 2021 edition includes piece examples for each of the listed composers to specify the assigned level. The only change I noticed in the overview is that Tchaikovsky’s Album for the Young, Op. 39 has been moved from a Level 4 designation to a Level 5 designation. Two female composers – Florence Price and Amy Beach – have also been added to the overview. One of the features outlined by editor E.L. Lancaster of this edition is “the expanded listings of music by women composers and other underrepresented composers.”

The font appears to be the same size in both editions, but the 2021 edition is more spacious, resulting in a cleaner layout and plenty of room to make notes in the margins. Much of the verbiage remains the same, with brief tidbits about each composer and concise background information about some of the collections. Various entries have been modified and expanded throughout the book. Each entry still includes a helpful description along with the assigned level. I also appreciate that Magrath includes information about where the pieces may be found (particularly helpful is the IMSLP denotation!). One surprise I discovered while counting the composer names in the index is that there are fewer total entries in this edition than in the first one. Seventy-three composers were removed and sixty-six were added (give or take a couple in case of a counting error!) in this 2021 edition. There is no explanation given as to why certain composers were removed, but just know that you may want to hang onto your old edition even if you decide to upgrade.

In going through this comparative process, I was reminded anew of what a vast treasure of piano repertoire we have available as piano teachers. A huge thanks to Jane Magrath for her decades of work in compiling and updating such an invaluable resource. Any piano teacher who takes a few hours to sift through this tome will undoubtedly emerge with a collection of new repertoire gems for both personal enjoyment and to pass along to their students!

Please note: Some links above are affiliate links that enable us to receive a small commission from purchases made through them. We only recommend those that we find valuable for teaching and studio use. We are so grateful for the support of teachers and musicians who use our affiliate links to help offset the costs of running Music Matters Blog and providing free resources for music teachers!

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I just downloaded a 36-page Virtual Sheet Music edition of Schubert’s Two Marches, Op. 121 for piano duet. For free! It’s one of the two featured free music downloads that Virtual Sheet Music is offering this month. I discovered that they offer two new free downloads every two weeks. Definitely have that page bookmarked now!

I also rediscovered the annual membership they offer that includes unlimited access and downloads of 10,000+ pieces of sheet music, many of which offer interactive score features and instant viewing in several popular digital sheet music viewers (like forScore), plus over 50,000 audio files, including mp3 accompaniments. The membership is only $37.75 for a whole year, and you could conceivably download everything on the site for future access on your own computer if you were so inclined.

I love the interface of the website, though, and how you can see a lot of information at a glance, including links to the interactive scores and an overview of the instrumentation, skill level, genre, key signatures, and more. The interactive scores allow for playback and many of them have the option to transpose the piece as well. Some, like this version of Happy Birthday arranged by Fabrizio Ferrari, provide a drop down menu with alternate instrumentation to play or download.

Even though many classical piano pieces are available for free on imslp.org, I appreciate the clean typesetting of the Virtual Sheet Music editions and the smooth process for downloading the scores. I’m looking forward to exploring it more in the days ahead, and am happy to have rediscovered such a wonderful resource!

Please note: Some links above are affiliate links that enable us to receive a small commission from purchases made through them. We only recommend those that we find valuable for teaching and studio use. We are so grateful for the support of teachers and musicians who use our affiliate links to help offset the costs of running Music Matters Blog and providing free resources for music teachers!

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My ever-enthusiastic Trio Class graciously agreed to model a few new items of studio swag that I recently acquired, thanks to a promo offer from Rush Order Tees! When one of the sales reps contacted me to see if I’d be interested in reviewing some of their products here on Music Matters Blog, I decided it would be fun to try out a few items with our Piano Expeditions brand. I ended up ordering three Baseball T-shirts (one for myself, one for my faithful assistant Stephanie, and one as a giveaway for one of this year’s students), one drawstring backpack, one tri-color tote, and one tumbler.

Here’s a closer up of the printing on the bags. I was very pleased with the quality of printing and the vibrancy of the colors! I’m leaning toward using both of these items as giveaway prizes during this year’s Piano Expeditions summer piano camp as well. I think it would be fun to let the students put their names in containers for each item each day and then draw winners at the end of the week.

Here Adah models drinking out of a teal tumbler with the colorful Piano Expeditions logo. All in all, I’m excited about the quality of the products offered by Rush Order Tees. The selection process was a little bit clunky in that you can’t see pricing on items before selecting them, adding the design, and choosing a quantity to add to the cart. To see pricing changes based on quantity, you have to update the quantity in the cart. And overall, the prices are higher than I would typically pay for such items. The shirts were $34-$36 depending on the size; the drawstring bag was $27; the tri-color bag was $29; the tumbler was $35. Granted, these are for individual items since I wanted to try out a variety of the products available, but even adding multiples of the same item was pricey for a small studio.

It’s always fun to have custom-designed studio gear, so I’m grateful for the chance to try out these items and share them with my students. If you’re looking for a way to invest your advertising budget and build your studio brand, you may want to give Rush Order Tees a try!

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Note Rush is one of the best apps I’ve found to help students develop their note identification skills. It has a simple, clean interface that is intuitive. And one of the best features is the ability to customize a level and share it with your student so that you can have them work on learning specific notes. Since I have quite a few beginning piano students this year that will be working on learning notes on the staff soon, I decided to create a handy list for myself and my studio families to take students through a systematic process of how I want them to work on the notes. It’s based on our use of the Piano Safari method that introduces landmark notes Treble G and Bass C and then has students reading intervallically in 2nds up and down from the landmark note.

The list includes 16 custom levels and is now available for free in the Music Matters Blog store! Feel free to download and share the whole document with your studio families and/or copy and paste specific links to levels that you want them to work on. The link can be sent via email or text and opens up right in the app if the student has the Note Rush app downloaded. Hope this is useful for you!

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One of my young beginner piano students loves the worship song Build My Life by Housefires and wanted to learn how to play it on the piano. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything even remotely close to his playing level, so over my Christmas break, I decided to write a simplified arrangement that he can easily read and then adjust rhythmically by ear as he sings along with it. He is thrilled to start working on this, and I’m excited to see how he does with it! It’s available on Sheet Music Direct for anyone else who is interested in getting a copy.

Another project I’ve had on my to-do list for a while was to publish an arrangement I wrote years ago for the wedding of a couple friends. It’s a medley of their two favorite hymns: A Mighty Fortress and Holy, Holy, Holy. I arranged it as the processional for their wedding, so it’s perfect for a wedding ceremony, but could also be used for a church service prelude or special music. That arrangement is now available in the Music Matters Blog store!

The final addition to the collection of sheet music is something a bit different – a vocal duet with piano accompaniment originally written and sung for my sister’s wedding (17 years ago!): One Heart. The lyrics are a creative rendering of the words from Jeremiah 32:38-41, a blessing from God to His people. Some dear friends of mine (who also happened to be the parents of one of my students at the time!) arranged for us to go to a real live recording studio to make a professional recording of the song for my sister and her husband. We had a blast, and, incidentally, that experience inspired the Climbing the Ladder to Success practice incentive theme that I implemented in my studio the next year!

Here’s a copy of that recording:

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My husband has pointed out that one of my apparent missions in life is to create a cozy reading nook in every room of the house. I don’t deny that one of my greatest delights is curling up with a warm blanket and a cup of hot tea to lose myself in the pages of a book or magazine. It was a sad state of affairs that my piano studio lacked such a place of respite, so toward the end of last year we remedied that situation (with the help of the able crew from Illumicast). Here’s what the corner of the studio looked like before:

I couldn’t find a picture of just the room, so I pulled this one from last year’s Piano Expeditions piano camp. It gives you a pretty good view of the tiny window giving way to a minuscule amount of light in a decidedly uncozy corner housing my bulky lateral file cabinet. Here’s the post-installation photo:

After moving the massive lateral file cabinet, I traded out the tall bookshelf for a black and cherry console table that was more inviting. With the addition of a couple of hanging plants and some framed prints on the wall, the cozy factor increased exponentially and I’m now much more wont to tuck myself away in this corner for some reading or lesson planning or blogging.

It’s amazing how much relatively little changes like this can contribute fresh inspiration for a New Year. I have a handful of projects I’ve been working on that I’ll be sharing soon, but meanwhile I’m looking forward to welcoming all my students back next week! Here’s a sneak peek at their progress with this year’s practice incentive theme: Redwood Resistance.

The trees are growing one “ring” at a time, and the students are working hard to get to the next milestone so that they can continue their own growing projects. I’m excited to see what the New Year holds for all of us!

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One of the things I started doing almost a decade ago is keeping a document titled 2022 Year in Review (or whatever the year happens to be). I include a number of categories that are meaningful to me and then I update it throughout the year. It’s fascinating to pull up previous years and be reminded at a glance of important happenings. The categories I include are:

• Items Produced
• Speaking Engagements
• Travels
• Books Read
• Births
• Marriages
• Deaths

Obviously one could include any categories of their choosing, but these are the ones I’ve stuck with over the years. Rather than give a rundown of everything, I thought it would be fun to just share a highlight from each category, some studio-related, some not.

Items Produced

Heartbeat Rhythms was a project I had in mind to create for a long time! Originally the idea was gleaned from D’Net Layton’s blog and the idea was to use pieces of wood of differing lengths to represent the duration of each note value. I’m not particularly handy with tools, so this project stayed on the back burner year after year. Until last year. All of a sudden it occurred to me that I could achieve the same objective using laminated pieces of paper cut to various sizes, which would also require a much smaller footprint for storage. I combined that idea with a Heartbeat Rhythms worksheet that I’ve used for a long time and now we have a manipulative ready to go for fun rhythm activities during private lessons and group classes!

Speaking Engagements

One of our local music teachers associations asked me to present a workshop at one of their meetings last fall. They left it wide open for me to choose any topic I wanted! An idea for a workshop had been mulling in my mind for a while, so I was excited for the occasion to organize my thoughts and put together a complete presentation. I titled it Freedom to Play: How Improvisation and Rote Teaching Can Revolutionize Your Studio. It was a jam-packed workshop, taking the other teachers on a journey with me through 25 years of exploration and discovery into these realms of creativity that have been instrumental in my own teaching and playing.

Travels

In December my husband and I celebrated our anniversary with a trip south to Belize. Since our anniversary is in December, we always aim for somewhere closer to the equator where we can enjoy a reprieve from the cold! The climate was a critical factor, but Belize also appealed to us because we got a good deal on airline tickets, the official language is English, and the country is home to numerous ancient Mayan ruins – an era of history that we enjoy exploring. This photo is from the top of El Castilo at Xunantunich, which we reached from our Airbnb in San Ignacio via a bus ride, a hand-cranked ferry, and a steep hike. So worth it! [If you’re interested, you can read more about our Belize trip on our blog Hammock in the Woods.]

Books Read

An assortment of books is always lingering on my nightstand, from biographies and memoirs, to Christian living, to economics and finance, to music teaching, to gardening, to cooking, to marriage and family, to an occasional mystery. I love having a variety to choose from at any given time depending on my reading mood. This year I managed to make it through 44 books, but the one that stands out the most as a fascinating and memorable story is The Small Woman by Alan Burgess. This became the inspiration for the Biography Night that I shared for some women from our church. Mr. Burgess’ writing is vivid and Gladys’ life is truly awe-inspiring!

Births

Of course, the most incredible highlight in this category (probably of the year!) was the birth of my first granddaughter. Here’s a shot of the two of us on Mother’s Day. Who could have imagined that in the last 10 years I would transition from being a single, full-time music teacher to a wife, mom, homeschool teacher, and now grandma?! What an adventure this life is, and how grateful I am for God’s many undeserved blessings!

Marriages

Perhaps most notable in this category is the wedding we didn’t make it to. Our niece was getting married in Orlando on Thursday during spring break week and my husband, daughter, and I arrived at the airport that Tuesday for our flight. We were informed that our budget airline had canceled the flight in January “due to safety concerns” and there would not be another flight until Friday. We tried for several hours to re-book or figure out any viable means of getting to Florida, but all to no avail. So we cut our losses and spent several days visiting small towns around Kansas City instead. (This marked our third canceled trip in a row, so we were eager to salvage it in any way we could!) The silver lining was finding the charming town of Weston, Missouri and snagging a last-minute opening at an otherwise-booked hotel, then meandering through the shops and enjoying a late night cup of tea while listening to live music in a second-floor Irish pub.

Deaths

Last year brought a slew of unexpected and difficult deaths, beginning on January 5 and ending on November 30, with ten others in between. A number of my friends lost spouses or parents. Some were barely older than me. Many were younger than my parents. It was a sobering reminder of the reality succinctly expressed by Solomon in Ecclesiastes that “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven,” including “a time to die.” We don’t know when our time will come, so as I reflect on the year behind and make plans for the year to come, I’m mindful that life is short and I want to make the most of it – not just for the here and now, but for what will matter in eternity.

I’m curious to know if anyone else keeps any kind of Year in Review record. If so, what categories do you include?

Please note: Some links above are affiliate links that enable us to receive a small commission from purchases made through them. We only recommend those that we find valuable for teaching and studio use. We are so grateful for the support of teachers and musicians who use our affiliate links to help offset the costs of running Music Matters Blog and providing free resources for music teachers!

The post Year In Review – 2022 appeared first on Music Matters Blog.

#5 – Diana

Congrats, Diana! You’ll be receiving a box in the mail with a complete set of the Huge Bundle of Music Theory Flashcards. Thanks to all who participated in the giveaway. If you want to snag a set for yourself, the downloadable package is on sale for 25% off now through this Saturday using the coupon code: Flash22. Hope this is a blessing to you and your students!

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I have an older beginning piano student who plays beautifully but still struggles with music reading. She loves Christmas music, so I wanted to give her an arrangement to learn that would be easy and motivating to learn and play. This arrangement of Infant Holy, Infant Lowly is composed to sound sophisticated and sweet. It will be simple for her to learn with a combination of rote teaching and note reading, so I’m super excited to share it with her!

Here’s a video of the arrangement, and below you can purchase a copy if you’d like to give it a try with any of the students in your studio!

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